I purchased a Compaq Prisario F700 a few years ago, I got it because it was a cheap solution (it was a floor model) and it was HP, and I love(d) HP.

I had to downgrade the system to Windows XP for work, and though I could not have everything working due to lack of drivers, it served it's purpose. When the requirement for an XP computer went away, I was happy to switch the computer back to Vista. If for no other reason than all my peripherals would work.

As I could not locate my original recovery disks, and my recovery partition was wipe during the XP install, I ordered them from HP using my computer's serial number. They arrived about a week later, and I started the recovery process. Then I had to start it again, and again before it "completed". The touchpad did not work, so I grabbed a mouse off of my daughter's computer, figuring that the drivers had not completed their install. I entered my preferred username for Vista, and skipped over the ISP setup, as I use Cable. I then went to connect to my local, secured network, and discovered that my keyboard did not work either. I inserted the "driver and application recovery disk" that came with my recent purchase and went looking for the drivers. Only to discover the CD does not contain a SINGLE driver file for anything. Though it does contain a whole bunch of useless software, such as for SlingBox.

I called HP, know that they (had) great service, I figured a short call and at least a link to a driver that I could download.

HP informed me that the driver for the keyboard that is a part of my computer is not included in the recovery disks, nor is the touchpad driver.

In order to get this driver, I would have to pay for their tech support.

I was not allowed to speak to anyone else, and the rep did not master English before another language.

I went online (on another computer) and tried to connect to HP chat support. It took me 17 minutes to get a rep. After dealing with a bit of a language barrier, I reset the BIOS and it appeared to be working. Then the rep told me to re-run the recovery. Not likely, as this was the third try in a week and I still hadn't gotten the computer to even connect to our local LAN. It seemed like the rep was not listening to me or reading carefully... ME: "... (not the computer I am on)"

OTHER CONVERSATION

REP: "Are you chatting from a different Notebook or Desktop Computer?"

OTHER CONVERSATION

ME: "It looks like all is good now"

REP: "We are trying to get driver from Recovery manager to be installed... "

ME"... And it appears to be working now."

REP: Is the keyboard/touchpad working?