ahem....i got my laptop back. it seems to be fully functional now. haven't run it through the full gammet yet, but so far so good. it found my cd/dvd drive on the first boot, then again on the reboot. i have it playing sleepy hollow right now, to see if it'll make it through enough of the movie to be functional. i'll try making it skip aftier a few minutes into it, just to triple check. praise the gods....
:)