Start the Laptop and reset the bios to Factory defaults. Reboot, and go into the bios again this time change the boot order to start by booting fromt he CD / DVD Drive (Is the cd drive DVD compatible?) Is the boot disk you are using a CD or a DVD?
Once you have determined the boot order...On most HP devices I believe if you enter F12 it will show you which boot device you need and you can select the CD /DVD drive...At this point you should be able to do a clean install of WinServer 2003 or WINXP....
But of course if the hard drive is corrupt (you should be able to see the hard drive listed in the BIOS, you would not be able to laod and OS on this laptop.)
Good Luck
If you are not sure about the drive working correctly, let me knwo I can give you some idea on how to determine if the drive is working correctly, SATA or ATA.
Scott
