Snibble, is that hard drive running windows that isn't xp? If so, and if the connections are compatible (they seem to be pretty standard nowdays), maybe you could put the hard drive into a new laptop and boot into safe mode. Then you could change the drivers, etc, to the new hardware. I think xp authenticates itself with hardware signatures, though, allowing changes in only 2 components or something, so this probably wouldn't work for xp without calling ms and getting new codes or whatever they do.
Best of Luck.