Drivers can be recovered from the official website - i recently formatted my hp compaq and recovered all my drivers online... All you have to do is specify model number. Wrong drivers will install but not work,, some driver packages tell the user that the drivers are wrong. As for recovering lost data - its tricky and takes some time - and each hardisk responds differently... i have tried using those free web programs - but after 6 hours - i only recovered 1 jpeg file - and it was corrupt... So I would recommend you visit experts like "data posit" in westlands - or contact Phares [the skunkworks moderator] for other contacts... You could also check skunkworks mail archives for those many posts over the years on "data recovery" w/regards Snn