-I'm not sure if this is the correct subforum for this particular question, but I could really use some help. My laptop recently got so bogged down with viruses that it could no longer function. I tried every kind of virus protection and removal I could, but nothing worked.

-This morning I reformatted the hard drive using a copy of windows XP that I had in my house. The problem now, is that I have absolutely no driver CDs to install. I also cannot get on the internet to update or download them.

-I do have an external hard drive and another computer with internet access. Is there a way to get the drivers on my laptop without the CDs? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Can you not just download the drivers to the external harddrive using your good computer and then plug the external hd into your laptop?

Download all the drivers from the internet onto your external then plug it into your laptop. Start it up and go into MY Computer and just install them.

You might need to start in safe mode to do all this depending on whether or not you have the ID code for windows. If you don't have the ID then you can either call support and wait for them to give it to you or you can just look around on the internet for one.

I just did this ~2 days ago for my computer. Just e-mail me if you need the crack for it i'll try to find the one i used.
i_say_woah[at]hotmail.com

Common sense should tell you to use another machine, that does work, download at least the network drivers for your laptop, put them on an external or burn to CD, and install them.

If you're unsure what drivers you need, or where to locate a driver, go into the device manager (right-click My Computer, Manage, Device Manager). There will be a large list of question marks under Unknown devices. You can go to your laptop manufacturers website and look up the model to get drivers, or you could google the vendor device code for a particular device. You can locate this code by double clicking on a device, go to the details tab, and select Hardware Ids in the drop down menu. You'll see a series of codes that look like:
PCI\VEN_11AB&DEV_4362&SUBSYS_81421043&REV_20
You can google the entire thing or just everything starting at VEN and ending before the &SUBSYS, like:
VEN_11AB&DEV_4362
If you google that, you'll find out, after reading the results on the first page, that that is a Marvel Yukon PCIe GB ethernet controller. The more of the string you search for, the more accurate the results will be, but you'll also get fewer results.

Thanks for the help guys! I was having a hard time getting the drivers to install on my external HD, but it did work, and now I'm back on my laptop. Everything is peachy as well as much faster. I should probably have some virus protection this this time that isn't symantec.