How can I reinstall Windows 7 on a laptop without the drivers CD?

This is normal. What you are looking for (a nice, packaged driver set with all the drivers for your laptop) does not really exist. This is generally something you only see with business-class laptops from the tier-1 vendors like HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Unfortunately, you're going to have to download the drivers one-by-one.

The best course of action here would be to install a vanilla copy of Windows 7. Once the install finishes, open up Device Manager to see which specific devices you need drivers for. Then you should download those drivers directly from the hardware manufacturer's web site (you may need to use a USB flash drive on another computer if you don't have network/wifi drivers).

Often a device will show up with either a generic name (e.g. "PCI Serial Port") without any identifying marks, or simply "Unknown Device". Here's how to identify them and get the drivers:

1. Double-click the driver in Device Manager and go to the Details tab.
2. Select "Hardware IDs in the Property dropdown. In the Value box, you will see the device's full PCI ID string in the form of PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3D&SUBSYS_04AD1028&REV_04. The parts of the string are separated by the ampersand (&) character. Make a note of the VEN_ and DEV_ portions of the string. The VEN_ portion is the device manufacturer, and the DEV_ portion is the model.

3. Go to the PCI Database website and input either the Vendor ID or Device ID (numeric portion only) in the boxes and hit Search. NOTE you can only search for one or the other, not both. In the example above, the 1C3D corresponds to "Intel(R) Active Management Technology - SOL"

4. Once you know the vendor and the model you're looking for, you can usually go directly to the hardware manufacturer's web site (in this case, Intel and search for the driver there.

There are two things you should definitely be aware of when doing this process:

• Firstly, some vendors do not publish drivers on their own web site. This is particularly true of Atheros (some WiFi cards) and a lot of audio drivers. In these cases, you will have to find the driver on Acer's web site. There's just no way around it.
• Secondly, be VERY careful when Googling for drivers. Trust only the manufacturer's own web site or the laptop maker. Searching for drivers on the internet gets you viruses and spyware faster than searching for porn (or free screensavers).