need help

i purchased a laptop, older one, for a good price on ebay, the problem is: microsoft office, and i believe win nt, don't like it either way, and would like to totally get rid of all of that crap and put a different os on it. is there a way to do that? i have boot disks for win 95,98,2000 and xp. if there's a way to do that, please tell me how, also, i can't get online with it either, and don't even have a start button for the toolbar to shutdown. guess i'm just used to xp now for that is on my desktop. thanks so much
brenda

 

this should help you out http://www.compu-docs.com/LapBoot.htm