Right on. I guess if I want to use this system that's what I'll have to do 'cause I sure as heck ain't hunting down and buying a cd drive for this thing.
 
It hit the Keyboard settings screen then the screen froze and the disc kept spinning and spinning and spinning. I was like "oh it's just busy... it'll let me click ok in a coupl minutes". Half hour later *spinning* "Dammit!" *unplugs power supply*.
 
Now it just makes a sad little sputtering noise when a disc is in there and does nothing.
 
Oh and thanks again. Just ticked off right now. Totally blew my brilliant scheme of the day right out the window. D'oh.

You can boot load a portable Linux from a USB drive (without invoking your hard drive's boot loader) and just not let it see the hard drive at all. Just as you would not run Windows from an account in the administrator group, don't run Linux from root. Surfing and email can all be done from the USB drive.
 
http://www.maketecheasier.com/install-portable-linux-on-usb-drive/
 

I think if you do a search for "linux usb boot" you will find a way to boot and install from a flash drive. There are a few Linux distros that are built for the express purpose of running and installing from a USB drive - Damn Small Linux (DSL) and Puppy Linux come to mind, but there are others. I think there still may be a solution for your old laptop even without a working CD drive, although that does complicate things a bit.

This may sound silly to some but I actually use the current linux mint tria ldvd to surf the internet.  I don't bother to install it.  I just let it run from drive ( it can be done from USB too which is much faster) and I can do pretty much everything i want online except use netflix or any other service that requires OS specific protocols that exclude linux.  Other than the minute or so it takes to load up, nothing feels abnormal and i am done with it the moment I shutdown or reboot

dubdisciple
This may sound silly to some but I actually use the current linux mint tria ldvd to surf the internet.  I don't bother to install it. 

 
Yes, it's very cool how easy it is to boot and use the live DVD from Linux Mint. You can even access the Windows partitions on your hard drive to save files.
 
For those of us who have a working DVD drive.   
 

For now based on some of the fine advice kindly provided here I have a solution that meets my needs that don't involve the ancient system I was going to try this all on. I have some humorous tales of my slapstick shenanigans from this morning's futile efforts to work around some of the issues I was having but I haven't quite reached the point where I can laugh yet so maybe another time after my blood dips below the boiling point.
 
Thanks for taking the time, guys. I have a working live disc that I managed to connect to the intertubes with and frankly it's even snappier than my HDD installed copy of Windows. Bit of a hassle to load and connect with but it's worth the few minutes to have that extra piece of mind.
 
Cheers.

Glad you got that worked out.  At some point i am going to setup another linux box.  Maybe even fool around with ardour

Due to the high cost of Windows (seriously... how many times do I gotta buy that stupid OS?) and my desire to have another PC around if I build a beater it's gonna get some Linuxin'.

So Beepster, did you consider a VM image and the free VM player?  You could write a baseline image to ensure the Linux image has not carried something over from the previous use.  I find that it simplifies my Linux support requirements and may get rid of the dual boot thing (although I do use dual boot for some specific hardware that does not share nicely).
 
Glen

There may be viruses that "understand" Linux, so if its on Windows, why can't it modify the HDD where Linux is?