Help - I've inherited a laptop set up in German!

Many & varied apologies for asking this in such b-a-s-i-c terms (am a bit of
a techno-retard, a fact of which I am not very proud...)

....but I've just been given a hand-me-down lap top which is running on
Windows 98 - entriely in German. Tragically, I have about a 10-word German
vocab (and no, I won't provide it for you to laugh at!)

I've been able to guess my way into what I've fairly sure is the
languages/display section (a challenge) and I'm at a point where it's letting
me choose between English (Australien) and Deutsche so I think I'm on thr
right track... but it won't let me change the default language without a
CDROM (and I know it wants CDROM because fortunately the words is the same
for both languages!

My firends don't have the relevant CDROMs any more/with them - they're fresh
off the plane, so to speak & didn't bother bringing such (useful) trivia with
them.

Can anyone help me by letting me know what I need to get hold of (what's the
name of the CDROM) and if this likely to be impossible? - in English please!!
I don't think I'll be able to get downloads onto the laptop beucase it's not
net connected (and is effectively unusable to me for now!).

Thanks a million in advance,
Anna