No idea. I'm not sure he knows. 
Is there any way to just wipe the whole computer without a disk and without having to start up Windows? o.O
Not sure what you want to accomplish with this; effectively you "wiped out" the whole computer when you attempted to re-install the recovery disks. If you want to SECURELY delete the contents of the harddrive, look here:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/.
Presumably you want to recover the use of the CD drive, toward that end, I'm confused here:
Okay, so something is definitely wrong with the CD drive. My boyfriend did something to it to make it show an exclamation point next to the missing hardware in the boot order list in Setup. The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, so obviously that had a "!"...but, it said there was no CD drive, either.
Sounds like you are referring to the Boot Order screen in the BIOS. Refer to the first BIOS screen, is the CD drive shown there? Is the harddrive? In other words, are the CD and harddrive detected by the BIOS?
If the CD is not detected by the BIOS, I would remove the CD drive and re-install it and see if the BIOS detects it. If not, I would replace the CD drive.
Once you have a working CD drive, it's back to installing the operating system. You said that you have recovery disks. Did you ever go to the HP website and determine what recovery disks you have and how to use them? I would do that, if you haven't, and then follow the directions to recover the OS.
When re-installing or doing any critical task, I suggest that you have the computer plugged in.
Please let us know how you make out!
