Sigh... good news bad news. 

Bad news was, I was unable to get stuff off the drives.  The situation just wasn't possible, so I had to trust that the backup made by Compaq (whom I'm a tad upset with) would work.  Note to self NEVER buy a computer again without an official copy of the operating system, and not this crappy "Restore Disk" stuff.  Secondly, it's a "Drive Specific" restore disk.  So it HAD to go on top of all my data.  So my plan was shot to hell  .I lost a few programs, the worst loss found so far has been Poser 4 which I don't have the disk for anymore,   Also my web development programs of Dreamweaver and Fireworks

Good news.  The restore backup worked.... mostly.  I have all my models, files and textures!!!!!  Those were all compressed and saved.  Now barring any problems, I can use them again when I reinstall Bryce (since that got deleted but I have the disk... somewhere)  Next, the damage from AOHell is gone and I can reinstall software.  I feel so much better again.

Bonus!!!  As a test of moving software, I moved all my adobe software AND Quark off the formatted drive before it happened and they are doing fine so far.

So now it's a task of resetting things and putting back the way I like them.

Thanks all for the sage advice, I wish I could have used it, but Compaq thwarted us all... but I got lucky.  You guys have been a great help and support to me this last week.  Hopefully I will be able to do artwork again very soon.  (of course this is also contingent on a new job too.)

Thanks once again people!