Automated System Recovery Without a Floppy Drive

Hi,
First off, I have read several other threads but none of them seem to get to my questions. I am trying to restore Windows XP Pro on my laptop (I don't need the documents back-they were saved earlier). I never created an Automated System Recovery disk while my laptop was running (you can bet I learned my lesson). Is it possible to run the back up wizard on another computer with Windows XP Pro to create the ASR disk (does this mean it will simply match the configuration of the other computer)? Then I run into my other issue, my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive! Would it run properly with an external USB floppy drive (even though it has never been installed)? Have I missed anything? Do I need anything else to restore Windows? Thanks in advance for any help!
-ivoidwarrenties

I dont know whether you will be able to do that with one exception. Incase you mean that you have another similar laptop, the same in every way including the drive configuration, you can then use ASR from the identical system. But its really hard to find similar systems.

How would you recommend doing a fresh install? What are my options?

My own choice would be to instal a fresh copy of Windows and then run restore using that. I've found many first-hand claims online that this works.

Alternatively, you can try using freeware software called "virtual floppy", or try burning an image of the ASR floppy to CD (fooling windows into thinking you've got floppy).