Before you reformat your PC, or if you realize you have misplaced the the HP driver disk that came with your HP computer, you should visit the HP website and download the software drivers.  Try HP Drivers and Downloads for easy access to the appropriate driver downloads.  You may need to know the serial number or model number of your PC to find the drivers.  If you happen to be on the HP computer, they have an auto detect feature that will help to identify the HP model number and take you to the page you need to be at.

Installing HP Drivers

Installing HP drivers is normally a painless process, but if you have reloaded the Operating System manually, you may have found that nothing works correctly.  For instance, your display might be stuck at 600 x 480 resolution with 256 colors or the you will not be able to get onto the Internet.  This is because the drivers haven't been installed for the hardware.  If you navigate to the Device manager, you'll probably see a lot of errors next to the hardware icons.  Normally this is in the form of a yellow circle with an exclamation point inside.  Either that, or you will see numerous Unknown Devices.

Install the HP drivers, then go into the Device manager (START>CONTROL>SYSTEM>HARDWARE>DEVICE MANAGER) and remove these unknown devices after the driver has been installed.  Then reboot the machine.  XP should auto detect the new hardware and then load the hp driver you had previously installed.

If you need more help with HP Recovery, visit our HP Recovery Disk page.