Acer Aspire ZG5 (AOA110-BB) issues

I have a AAO netbook and it came preinstalled with windows xp home edition sp3, but due to a client's blunder it now has no operating system on it. I want to put winxp back on it but nothing i have tried has worked.
I have access to an acer recovery CD that contains the eRecovery tool and a copy of the OS in question only accessible from withing the app, and a system CD containing .SWM files, which I haven't messed with before. I have been using flash drives for booting as i do not have access to an external CD drive.
So, how do I accomplish this?
Any help would be appreciated.
Also, the BIOS seems to be outdated, (v0.3305 and the current released version is v0.3310) and I would like to know how to update the bios.
thank you.

*EDIT* Also, the hdd has been reformatted (the blunder and the reason for the reinstall being necessary) and the hidden partition is gone too.
I also have access to a live version of gparted that works, i just need to know what i need to do.

 

tricky - I used an external usb CD drive to load the recover sw; the one that came with the machine. However all the crapware is put back on (as new)

If you have your own recovery disks that are bootable, then using this method would work to.

The other option would be just to install linux via a usb stick, I've tried this to.

could you not borrow a usb cd drive?

Cheers.

 

well i don't know how to use the swm files, and no one i know actually has an external cd drive, as for linux, i did have kubuntu for netbook on it once but have long since gotten rid of it due to some bug with the latest release, and i have a live d of ubuntu 11.4 (non install) that i can work temporarily on.