Brink said:
Yes, the HP factory recovery disc is different that a retail Windows 7 installation disc. The recovery disc is basically just a clone of the HDD that can only be clean installed and activated on that specific computer.

It just depends if you actually created a system image or created a set of HP recovery discs.

Be sure to verify that you have a way to reinstall Vista first if needed incase you are unable to do a clean install with your upgrade copy of Windows 7, and end up having to install Vista first and upgrade to Windows 7.
The discs I have are for the HP recovery I think because it says I have already made them. I'm fairly certain I never created a system image when I received it. Since I did not create a system image and do not have an installation disc I really have no way to revert back to Vista unless using the HP recovery feature.

I was just going to back up the data and use the HP recovery discs but I wanted to get rid of any left over data from the current OS. The only other option I see is doing it from the upgrade disc to windows 7, like you suggested, if that works.