HDD quandary any ideas?

[Bluerinse]

I am trying to fix an Acer 340 model Travelmate laptop that belongs to my Father-in-law. When he purchased it second hand, there was no floppy or optical drive. The laptop does have a strange connector on the side which I think these would connect to, if they existed.

The problem is that it is BSODing with a stop error which states that the HDD cannot be read from, this happens part way into loading up Windows 2000.

Safe mode, same problem, as well as LKG and any other selective start up options.

The BIOS does not have an option to boot from USB, hence I am in a pickle with this one.

What I am considering is to buy a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter, so that I can at least run a chckdsk /r from one of my other PCs, this may work but then again maybe not. Even if the HDD is FUBAR'd I will need somehow to get an OS onto it without using a magic wand.

I am thinking that with the converter, I might be able to install W2K from another computer and then run Sysprep and re-install it back in the lappy and hope for the best or maybe DOS 6.22 and copy the W2K i386 folder to the hard drive

Any other ideas are most welcome, those with the least amount of administrative effort win a VB.