FUBAR & I'm up the creek, I don't know if I have a paddle!

I have another machine that is a 12 year old HP, I'll try burning a DVD with the Western Digital driver.
I'm guessing that that's the driver that W-7 Pro needs.

Always delete all partitions to get the cleanest install.

Everything else is here to get and keep a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. These steps compile everything that has worked best in tens of thousands of installs we've directly helped with here.

Never use a driver program. Win7 is a driver-complete OS with the only steps needed for drivers printed in red in the tutorial so they can't be missed.

I've run into a problem: I downloaded the Western Digital driver to a thumb-drive but when I tell the W-7 installation procedure to find the driver on the thumb drive, and "DriverRestore.exe" from Western Digital appears on the file directory, I select the file, and press "Open", the installation procedure responds with "The specified location doesn't contain any information about your hardware"
But I'm sure that file is for the correct Hard Drive.

Gregrocker: You did an awesome job! I'm afraid that IBM and HP are so protective and proprietary about their products that they make it really gnarly to do anything yourself. I learned from an IBM Lenovo Forum that a Restore Disk is needed, which can be had for a mere $50.00! That is still less expensive than a new machine or a taking the sick machine into a shop. I learned a great deal from you, and that tutorial on a clean install of the O/S was great. Thank you.

I've seen no problems with Clean Reinstalling any Lenovo or HP. If you have any issues just start a new thread in Installation section or ask in tutorial comments.

Chaim613 said:

I have another machine that is a 12 year old HP, I'll try burning a DVD with the Western Digital driver.
I'm guessing that that's the driver that W-7 Pro needs.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Are you confusing Western Digital "driver" with Western Digital Data Lifeguard utility?

Did you run the Western Digital Data Lifeguard utility to full erase or low level format your hdd?

If you have another system that can burn a DVD/CD, you should download the DOS version of the Western Digital Data Lifeguard utility, burn the program to a disc, then use that disc to boot your Lenovo to full erase or low level format your Western Digital 500GB hdd. This operation will remove all the partitions, test all the drive sectors and replace the bad sectors if need be. You should end up with an hdd in the raw.

Then you can insert your Win 7 DVD and do a clean install to the properly prepared hdd, but I have a few questions before you do the install, because there are some options you may want to consider, before you do the clean install of Win 7.

Please answer all the questions and ask any questions if anything is not clear.

Regards

Lets not complicate this too much. I don't see anything that indicates any more is needed than the installer and steps provided in Clean Reinstall tutorial I linked.

So please focus your attention on those steps to ask back any questions you have to complete them so you get the same perfect install that tens of thousands of others have from that tutorial without a single complaint yet.