I have a Crashed HD and want to restore Win 7 to my new one.

I've been on here reading lots of posts for a few days and haven't quite found what I'm looking for so I'm posting in hopes of finding a solution.

I have a year and a half old HP Notebook, out of warranty, with an OEM Win 7 (I think 32 bit).
I have the Key off the bottom of the machine.
I did not make back-ups or any Repair or Recovery Disks

About a week a ago my HD crashed and wouldn't boot to anything but the windows logo. I ran all diagnostics available in the BIOS and it determined that the HD was bad. I tried Recovering with the internal Recovery drive/partition and now when I boot I get a screen asking me to Repair Windows or Start normally. If I choose Repair, it goes to a screen with a blue background and white light rays coming in from the top. For a second a window pops up and disappears (It looks like a command line window) and then nothing else happens. There is a functioning mouse arrow on screen, but nothing else and nothing seems to be happening. I've let this sit for hours just in case and nothing happens. If I choose Start normally, it goes to the Win logo screen and tries to start up and within 5 min it goes to the "blue and white light ray screen".

I have assumed that this drive is no longer going to work and have obtained a brand new drive, exactly the same as the original. Now I need to find a way to install this and get it up and running with Win 7. ( I am aware that I can order Recovery Disks from HP and get this done quickly, but right now I can't afford it, and let's just go from there.)

A friend has set me up with a Linux OS (Ubuntu) pendrive to be able to boot my machine. Ubuntu sees the "System" partition and the "HP_Tools" partition and can access then fine. It also sees the main drive partition, but cannot access it at all. It does not seem to see the "Recovery" partition. (I could just go with Ubuntu and be done with it, but I still want to try to reclaim Windows if I can)

I've loaded a Data Recovery program called TestDisk and with it I can see and seemingly have access to all of the original drive, but even using the repair and recover functions it comes with, the original still won't boot any further than before.

I have a external 100GB drive I use to back-up data on occasion, and I've transfered all of my data there, and with what I previously had on it I have about 30GB available.

Given this, is there a way I might be able to pull my Recovery Disk off my old drive, or even all of Windows, and put it onto the new drive?

I'm of course open to other suggestions, but keep have limited space to put any new software needed to do things like imaging or other repairing and I currently only have the Linux OS.

Thanks for your time.

Hello SHazle, welcome to Seven Forums!


There's information at the links below, I'm not sure if that's for the model type HP lappy you have but it will give you some ideas.

Also have a look at this link below for some ideas and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

+1 for BFK's advice. I dislike HP's partition setup. Try to get your hands on the W7 install DVD and use your legal COA for activation.
Nice little youtube clip.

How to make HP Recovery DVD disks:
Recover Windows Vista Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

How to make HP Recovery USB disk:
Creating a Recovery Disk on a USB Flash Disk HP Pavilion dv6700z CTO Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

or
You can Order HP Recovery Disks from here:
Compaq Mini CQ10-500 PC series -  HP Notebook PCs - Order Recovery Discs for Windows 7, Vista, or XP - c00810334 - HP Business Support Center