Reformat Windows 7 (Was bought Vista) ComPaq

Well, my computer has recently been freaking out on me, it wasn't taking a charge, or it was hard to get it to start charging. Now that it's taking the charge, it randomly started freezing on me, and I have no idea why. I'm not a total noob with computers, but this is irritating me, the only way it's not freezing on me is by running in boot mode. I thought that the best idea would be to reformat, but being a ComPaq laptop, that's pretty hard. Because when I run the computer and press F11, it makes a buzzing noise, but starts normally. And being a ComPaq, it has no disks to come with it. I have my documents I need saved on a disk, and a list of programs I'll have to re-download, but that'll be fine. My first question is: Will I have to backup my drivers? My second question is: How can I fix this? Or could I override my Windows 7 with Linux, and then install Vista again as a secondary system on the computer?

If I can reinstall Vista, or reformat it back to Vista, then I know I can install Linux as an "add-on" on the computer, but I just need to at least fix this.
Thank you everyone. :)