What make?

What make and model of laptop is it you are trying to 'rebuild'?

If you bought it new it might be worth your while looking around for the manufacturers 'rescue disks'. These will have an automated recovery process with all the drivers and operating system built in. It will also save you a nice amount of time as they are usually disk images rather than being a raw install.

I would definitely try and track down a local friendly techie. Most techie types are keen to 'play' with a clean install on someone elses machine.

Good luck