Having problems recovering windows after a hard-drive crash.

[s3relic]

My Hard-drive recently crashed so I purchased a new one but I didn't have my recovery CD's so I went ahead and used my friends Windows 7 "ULTIMATE" disc not realizing that the product key I own is a Windows 7 "Home Premium" key.

Now Ultimate is installed on my machine and not authenticated so I purchased the recovery discs for Home Premium from the manufacturer's website but when I boot up the PC with the disc in the CD-ROM it just goes straight to windows and won't recognize or load the disc.

Any ideas?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Have you set the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive first---or, alternatively, do you have a menu available maybe by F8 during boot that will allow you to choose the DVD as the first boot device for this boot only?

I'm not sure if your recovery disks are CD or DVD, but I wouldn't expect a CD reader to read DVDs.

Are the recovery disks visible in Windows Explorer?