Sony Vaio Care program /reinstalling windows 7 not working

I am currently working on a friends Sony Vaio laptop VPCC series and have encountered the following problems.

Upon booting message states:"imminent Hard Disk Failure" back up all you data. I did this. I then attempted making recovery disks...would not go beyond 44% on Disk 1. Recovery programs tells me that 3 disks will be required.

Replaced HDD with a new drive of like quality...was able to enter BIOS using F2 key...pressed "boot from Optical Drive". Inserted a new OEM copy of Win7...was able to get beyond the first few questions of installing the new OS, 1. Country, 2. Language, 3. Keyboard...pressed "Next", the machine began scanning...then "unable to install on this disk...Unallocated space, etc. Tried formatting HDD...would not create a partition. I feel that the problem lies in the MFR proprietary options that are not allowing me to install my fresh copy of Windows 7 OS.

The installed Sony Vaio Care program will not even let me create recovery disks. Any ideas out there, besides telling my buddy to relegate this Laptop to the paper weight category and never buy Sony again!

Don't mean to be a Sony basher...but after several hours with negative results, i have lost my patience with this machine. The machine is only 2 yrs old...and the HDD is about to crash...can't believe it.

The VAIO laptop came with win7 installed.

You don't need to buy a new copy of Win7, just use the installer for the licensed version and activate with the Product Key on COA sticker.

The latest official installer and everything else needed to get and keep a perfect install are all in Clean Reinstall Windows 7

In most cases you can not use the Sony Recovery Disks on a HDD that has not been supplied by Sony themselves... You either see the results you are seeing now or if you try and force an drive image / clone it will just BSOD on you after the POST... your only option is to do what gregrocker said above, you can download any drivers you may need from the Sony site mostly the Graphics card driver and the Event system and associated drivers if you want all of the special keys to work again... another thing to note is if you replace the HDD with a faster one there is a good chance your going to need to download the latest high speed SATA drivers from Intel, however normally the drive should work without them so you can install them once you have the operating system up and running.

It explains how drivers are handled in Win7 in Clean Reinstall Windows 7.

Be sure to read the Special Note for Sony Vaio owners at the end.