I want to connect a (corrupted) laptop to a pc via USB, but the pc will not recognise it- is there a solution?

Yes, get a cd-rom from the web, it's legal because what you buy is not the actual software, but the license to use it, and you have that because you bought it OEM. Restore the laptop to it's original configuration, and that's that. Have you tried entering the setup menu and restoring the last correct configuration? It usually doesn't work, but you never know... other than that you can remove the disk from the laptop and install it in the PC it will recognize it as another drive, but you have to know a lot about hardware to do this.