I was stupid and somehow deleted my video driver/device from my HP notebook. Of course when I next brought the 'puter up, I have no display past the windows xp drivers loading screen. I need a way to re-install my vid driver without losing a lot of valuable stuff on my HD. Any good suggestions and guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks-
Lee

Can you get a useful display in safe mode?  If you're using XP, boot into safe mode with networking, then use that to get to HP's site for the right driver.

should be F8 then you will get a menu then you can reinstall.

Thanks guys but it won't boot past the vid driver load when trying to boot in safe mode. Also won't boot from last known good configuration. I can't believe there's not SOME way to get the vid driver re-installed.

Do you have a real Windows install CD, or just HP's crappy system restore CD?  You could reinstall Windows using the "clean install" option, which will leave your old data in tact, but a system restore CD probably won't have that option.

You can also download Knoppix, which is a Linux distribution that can boot off of a CD without doing anything to the data on your hard drive.  Navigating it won't be quite the same as Windows, but you should be able to find your data and shovel it off to a USB thumb drive or something with that.

I've just got the HP restore discs that came with it. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll study on the Knoppix some and see what it's about, I'm not familiar at all with linux. If it boots into a linux OS will it get me to where I can reinstall my vid driver?

It won't get you to where you can load a video driver.  At this point, you're probably going to have to run the system restore disc to get it running the way it should.

The Knoppix CD will give you a functioning operating system in the mean time, that way you can copy your files off of that computer before you nuke it with the system restore disc.

Quoted: It won't get you to where you can load a video driver.  At this point, you're probably going to have to run the system restore disc to get it running the way it should. The Knoppix CD will give you a functioning operating system in the mean time, that way you can copy your files off of that computer before you nuke it with the system restore disc.

Thanks bro you've been a great help! That's really all I cared about was retrieving my files, then I won't care at all if I have to do a complete format. I'm maybe 3/4 of the way thru the download on my wife's 'puter, then I'll burn it and give it a shot. Thanks again!
Lee