Asus F3jp with some issues

Hi! I just bought this from ebay. The guy did not mentions any problem in it, he just said it works fine as he was just using it for playing games and listening to music.

It is installed in windows xp home (the coa is vista premium <-- it might be the compatibility issues here) It turns on fine. The hard drive is in NFTS. It is divided into 2 partitions, both in NFTS.
I think that it is the compatibility issues as I could not access to internet. The ethernet does not detect any cable connections. When I check, its TCP/IP is in media disconnected. And I try to repaired it but then I realized new problem. This laptop cd drive does not realized any cd thus making me unable to reformat or reinstall any new operating system.
I tried to reboot it with linux usb and cd (of course it does not work). Although the boot order has been changed to the 'removable hard drive', 'cd drive' but it does not do anything.
I was trying to install linux from hard drive, but it is too much of a hassle.

Not being able to connect it to the internet making it unable to have a direct access for files that can be installed from the internet. So, I usually kept transfering data from another computer. But this is very tiring and I had no head clue on what to do. I tried to install the driver, but it did not have any effect.

So I thought of replacing the hard drive with a clean new HDD. Will this solve my problem? or is there any forum thread that I should look into more? I have been reading many forum thread, but mostly not applicable to this model. Please bump me if there is any thread. I don't mind reading forums related to this problem. I want to have reformat/reinstall the OS, so that I can actually have some control of the laptop. Any help is appreaciated!

Thanks