Systems Deployment

Hi all, this is my first post.

I'm pretty good with computers in general, at a mid level with networking and have never done scripting before, so please go easy on me when (if) you reply.

I have a Sony PCG-R600MX laptop that I installed a new HDD after the last one failed...

When the time came to install the OS on the laptop I hit brick wall after brick wall.
Firstly, I placed the recovery CD into the CD-ROM drive (which is external) only to realise that USB isn't supported for booting.
There is no floppy drive built into the laptop, so booting a command shell with CD-drivers is out of the question aswell.
Other boot options include an "i-Link" boot option (but you look at the prices of a CD-ROM that boots over a IEE1394 interface (aint cheap))
Finally there is boot over LAN. Which I can't seem to do....

I have up to this point installed the Windows 2003 Server OS onto the laptop, which I thought would allow me to utilise the recover CDs, but sadly the recovery CDs are in a .img format......

What I'm trying to do nopw is have the images stored onto an empty HDD on the server and tell the server to supply these images to the laptop on request...
So far I have tried "Acronis" and "Network Boot Tools 1.2"..... The Acronis only works virtually (and I don't want to pay for it if it's not going to suit my needs), and as for the "Network Boot Tools 1.2", I can get it to supply an IP address but not the image files.

Is there another tool or package that I can use? At the moment I'm looking at Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition (as a Trial) but the download is over 100Mb.

Anyone have any suggestion?

Basically I just want the recovery CDs to be the ones installed on the laptop (and I don't care how it's done)