Rolie

I've been running 2000 pro, on an IBM thinkpad for 2 years. All of a sudden it will not recognize my cd player/burnner. If I swap out my hard drive it will work fine, but as soon as I install my old hard drive, it reverts back to the same scenario. In device manager it tells me that I have a corrupted file in my registry. Error code 31. Question. Some have sugested that if I upgrade to XP,(somthing I have wanted to do) it will sovle my problem. I must do this over the internet, because I obviously can't use a disc. Any Ideas? Thanks Rolie