The aftermath of a Laptop Suicide

[stlberry]

My laptop recently killed itself. A friend of a friend installed a new hard drive, but I'm having problems. It seems that some of the programs that originally came with the computer aren't installed and apparently I need them for other things to work properly, like video stuff so my scrolling won't annoy the hell out of me, and other stuff I'd just like to have back.

So, my question is, now that I've reinstalled all of the programs that I bought on the side and updated everything, do I need to finish restoring my old system?

Will I lose everything I've done so far?

Do I just stick the disks in and hope it turns out okay?

I'm a little lost, and I'm sure it's really not that hard.

Thanks in advance!

 

[NoTime]

Chances are what you are missing is the machine hardware drivers.

You may have them on a disk that came with the machine.

Or you can usually download them with install instructions from the manufactures website.

The machine specific drivers are separate from the OS.
So you shouldn't need to overwrite your current OS.

Installing the drivers over the generic drivers that come with the OS box can be a headache.