new HD, reloaded recovery disks, Startup repair offline?

Hi all.

Alienware m17xr3, the hard drive died.

Got a new hard drive, booted from the recovery dvds

This seems to work, reads both dvds, gets to 100%, ejects dvd and I click reboot.

I can see a bsod for a split second, then it launched startup repair which fails every time with the following

Problem signature: Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: 21200078
Problem Signature 05: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 06: 5
Problem Signature 07: Failure During Setup
Problem Signature 08: 6
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033"

I have tried various things (reformatted and re-installed dvds numerous times)

Have gone into a command prompt

bootrec.exe /FixMbr
bootrec.exe /FixBoot

both completed successfully

bootrec.exe /RebuildBCD

Successfully scanned windows installations
Total Identified windows installations 0:
The operation completed successfully

So for some reason it's not finding any windows.

E appears to be the windows partition, files all seem top be there.

Have gone into diskpartition and made the E partition active, still no windows found.

List Partition
Partition 1 OEM 1835MB (31KB offset)
Partition 2 Primary 18 GB (1836 MB offset)
*Partition 3 Primary 911 GB (20 GB offset)

There's no system restore to restore from due to it being a new drive.

And I am pretty stuck at the moment. The only thing I can think of is installing from an actual windows 7 disk, but not sure how that would work when I try to activate it using the product code on the bottom of the laptop which I presume is tied to dells install in some way?

Have also ran Dells system diagnostics at some point sand everything past fine.

Any suggestions most welcome.

Many thanks

I have got an actual windows 7 install dvd, it's worked fine doing this, now just need to get the drivers :)

going to be a long day

Follow the steps if you want to get and keep a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

You only need your network driver in backup in case it isn't provided during install, to get online to run all Important and Optional Windows Updates until there are no more Updates offered when you Check for Updates after each restart.

Then check in Device Manager for any missing drivers to import from the Dell Support Download webpage for your Service tag.