My apologies for not getting back to this earlier. Once I got a brain flash that I could burn the drivers to a CD (a solution also recommended by a couple folks here also), I did so and was able to get everything working except the Webcam. I have been working on getting the machine ready for my daughter since then. So, my thanks to all who helped here. I will open a new thread re: the Webcam. jetjock
u silly rabbits!.. boot linux live USB made wth YUMI usb tool and plug in cable or use wifi to dload to win 7 hdd. reboot to win and install
Unless you formatted the drive to install win 8 (which is stupid) all your drivers are still there, in the windows.old folder. Just search for them in windows.old\windows\system32\driverstore and all your beloved drivers will be back in matter of 5 minutes.
I use another computer and download the drivers to a flash drive and use that flash drive to install them. Edit to add : Oops, sorry. Didn't realize this has already been solved.