So my cousin gave me this laptop he bought in Vietnam right. I've had it for one week after it did a few windows updates it says its a fake copy of windows (no suprise there). Now it will boot to windows logon screen when you try to logon it logs you right out under ANY user. I thought it was no problem I have a valid copy of windows xp pro anyway and I'll just put my real verison of xp on it, but it will not boot the CD for anything, I've changed BIOS settings to load CD first as top prority but it just skips over loading my CD and loads HD (fake windows) How can I get it to boot my copy of windows?

Will it boot any bootable cd? Either the cdrom or cd is probably bad. Also, I've run across some bios' where a boot device can be disabled even though it's showing in the boot priority. Make sure that's not the case with yours.

will try another boot disc...............that didnt work the disc drive seemed to be working fine when windows was working though

Ive even made CD rom as the only bootable system now it is saying operation system not found

well i had a old compaq boot cd laying around and it worked. im at the recovery or format and install new version of windows and............I CANT FIND MY CD KEY FOR MY WINDOWS great!

Do you see a message to hit any key to boot from the CD? If you don't see that message then your disk is not bootable or there is something wrong with the hardware. If you are trying to use the Compaq restore disk and a full version key, that isn't going to work. If your WinXP CD is not working then borrow a disk from a friend. The version MUST be the same type. retail home/ retail pro/ retail/media edition, etc. OEM CDs shouldn't need a key, if they work at all. You will need that key for a full version.