HP VISTA RESTORE ONTO A NEW HDD, "THIS PC IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE SYSTEM RECOVERY DISCS Options

[timko]

Hello,

I just bought an hp quad core 2.4 HP Pavillion model 9040. The (2) 3209GB HDDs that were in it were removed by the seller. I installed an exact replacement drive from my other HP 8150. The E: drive that was in the 8150 had never been written to. I have been filling up the C: drive for the last 2 years. So, I just removed the E: drive and put it into the 9040. I didnt format it or anything - just put it in. I bought the Recovery CDs from HP. I went into the bios and made the CD the first boot device. And, I attached power/keyboard/mouse/monitor and powered it up. (this is the short version). Well, it does find the CD and it seems to be loading and then comes up with an error - This PC is not supported by the System Recovery discs. You will not be able to recover the system with these discs.

I got onto hp chat. The support guy had me <power up> and hit <cntrl backspace> to return to factory settings. And, ... it gave me the same error message.

HE said the DMI chip on the hard drive is not detecting the DMI chip on the recovery discs which means I need a new HDD.

Any suggestions. It just seems weird since the 320Gig drive I'm using came out of an HP and is the exact same model number and type. Maybe I should reformat it???

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks a lot.