Need a driver solution for "Custom" setup

I have a hp pavillion 17-e119wm that i am setting up for a friend of mine to be used at work. for whatever reason i cant remeber i "recomended" this model to him i think we had trouble finding a 17 win7 pro 64bit laptop in our price range. we are technicians at a gm dealership. g.m. recomends we use win 7 pro 64.for some reason i cannot fathom i figured that win 8 drivers would work on 7 without a problem . seems thats not the case. i have done setups like this before and have had few problems. so it seems i got this guy up and running and it works great. i was able to canibalize drivers from like models with like parts and got everything working;as far as i can tell; and one last detail is bothering me. the quick launch buttons at the top i cannot find a driver for. it seems ALL the laptops with similar keyboard lay outs ship with win 8. i remeber finding backwards compatible drivers was much easier. i didnt realize the grip win8 had put on the market . its not a big deal but is there a way i can "force" a windows 8 driver to work???? i realize this is a dumb situation created by sloth and cheapness but i would appreciate some ideas.