Windows 7: DVD died. How do I reinstall OS with external USB DVD drive

I wiped my hard drive clean with a Wipedrive CD, then went to reinstall my Windows 7 OS and the DVD drive is dead. NO DVD will open. I have an external USB DVD drive, but can't get it to boot. Any ideas on how I can reinstall Windows 7 in this laptop without having to get the built in DVD drive repaired?

Start by checking the BIOS settings - set the boot devices and order then let us know what happens.

Regards,
GEWB

I tried that. It doesn't do anything.

I don't know how to make a bootable external HD.

However, using an external flash drive works well. Here's one way to prepare it:

Installing Win7 using a USB Stick | TechNet Edge

(If you scroll down to the bottom, there's a brief description of the technique. It's too bad that the author replaced the original text article with a 7 minute video.)

Can you get into the boot-menu? What are the boot devices listed there?

You may create an install pendrive with Universal USB installer. Universal USB Installer – Easy as 1 2 3 | USB Pen Drive Linux . Select Windows 7 Installer in the drop-down menu, show it the location of the Windows 7 ISO, select your pendrive, tick format and then Create.

+1 works every time.

you can simply select it in the boot menu. You don't even need to set it in the BIOS as boot device, just make sure there is an option such as "USB legacy detect" or "USB for DOS" enabled in that BIOS. To get into your boot menu, when post screen appears press the needed key like crazy until there's the boot menu. Key is F11 for AsRock motherboard, F8 for Asus and Packard Bell, F12 for Gigabyte, etc

At the risk of a brief hijack of this thread, I wanted to comment on this. It *is* possible to install from a bootable HD, but it's a pretty bad idea because you will have major startup issues (due to the installed boot configuration being spread between the source and target disks) with the resulting setup. It also creates a single Windows partition (omitting the hidden 100MB partition) on the target disk that looks more like a Vista installation. OTOH, it's REALLY FAST to setup from a HDD, and even faster from a SSD. Yeah, setting up from a SSD to a SSD takes about 4-5 minutes. It takes less time to perform the installation than it does to fix the resulting Boot problem.