Ghost.exe not working

Hi  I have an Acer Aspire 5102 laptop runnning XP with a HDD that has died.   I have an image created by Norton Ghost 2003 on an external drive. The laptop BIOS is set to start with USB/CDrom  but Ghost.exe on CD doesn't start.   The old dead HDD is still in the laptop.  Would this stop Ghost.exe starting?  This Ghost.exe works fine in another laptop I have.  I need to know it will work before I buy another HDD.   Any help please?