This is my mother's machine, a two-year-old HP desktop. It has the periodic problem, mostly because we all know how good mothers are with PCs, but not usually anything major. Except this time, we ran into a relatively unsolvable problem, and reformatting her computer consists of backing up 5 gigs of word documents and pictures, then throwing in the HP restore disk. So that is what we did.

Now, the whole process was going fine, until the restore disk told me to reboot... Ok, so off and on... ... ... HP screen, good sign... aaand ERROR! Anyway, we found out later that the disks were messed up (the restore disks) and so I just did a clean install of windows, no HP crap. The current problem: the restore disks have all the drivers, windows does not. No internet, pci cards, or graphics. Basic compatible-level performance, but it does turn on and give me picture. Problem part two, the drivers from the HP site don't seem to work. I downloaded them from the site on my PC and transferred them via usb drive, and installed them all. No luck. Windows still won't recognize the hardware. I tried doing a windows driver update, and pointing it in the right direction. No luck. What do I do now?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a wood chuck could build a trebuchet?