After doing a system recovery (at HP"s suggestion) I am living in a PC nightmare. I am getting errors telling me I HAVE CRITICAL error, instructing me to go to www.updatepatch.com...or www reg-recovery (something like that). When I went to web site it said I had to purchase the download. (PC not under contract (purchased 2 years ago). I purchased and am still getting the error. I cannot even get online help support through HP because my system will not allow me to. Errors out.

Those errors were malicious pop-ups as seen here:

http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=60713

I would suggest re-running your HP Recovery & Immeadiatly apply SP2 from Windows Update & all subsequent critical updates.