Im new at this and need help with my laptop

Ok, I recently purchased a lapto and the harddrive crashed. I bought a new one and now half of the functions on it wont work. I cant watch DVD's and non eof my Fn keys work. Any suggestions? Also wanting to learn how to program, anybody know a good way to go about it/learn computer languages?

  1. Firstly what is it you have?

a. What hardware - manufacturer, model, spec

b. What operating system - vendor, name, version

  1. What type of programming do you want to be able to do?

I have a Sony Vaio FS742/W. Im runing Winows XP professional, 120 GB Hitachi hardrive, 512 Ram. When I installed the new hardrive I downloaded all of the original software from the Sony website onto an external hardrive and then loaded and installed it on the laptop. I already contacted Sony twice and they have been no help.

The programming I really dont know to much about what their is out there.