AI Recovery system keeps restarting itself, can't restore OS image.

Nevermind all this, bigger problem, see below. I swapped out the HDD on an N43JM with a 120GB Patriot Inferno SSD (BIOS sees it), put in the recovery DVDs made right after Windows finished setting up, and they restored the hidden service partition (checked with the aid of a Windows 7 boot disc for a different license I have). Now I'm trying to follow the manual's instructions, I press F9 during boot-up, select Windows Setup, then a Loading Windows screen appears, followed by the same grey-white desktop that AI Recovery showed when I was making the restore DVDs, but as soon as the loading circle just off the cursor disappears the laptop resets itself and goes right back to boot, after which I get a standard "Missing Operating System" message.

What's going on, this thing's seriously starting to give me a headache? Has anyone encountered this, is there any way to fix it? Alternatively, if there is no way to fix it, is there any other way that I can restore the OS image off the old HDD back to this new drive?

Edit: I've had another look at that hidden partition through the Windows 7 Repair tools on the installation disc, Boot (X:), and it features the following:
Program Files (229 KB)
sources (37.2 MB)
Users (1.33 MB)
Windows (977 MB)
setup.exe (104 KB)

Oddly enough, despite its contents, the partition reports having 2.43 MB occupied out of a total 33.7 MB size. I don't know if this is relevant.

 

Okay, nevermind the above, more serious problem and this time I'm completely stumped - got a clean installer of Win7 and tried to do that, but it won't see the SSD. BIOS sees it, 120 GB Patriot Inferno, I've stuck it in an external rack and hooked it up to my desktop, it saw it and I did a quick NTFS format, the Windows 7 installer just won't see it, despite the fact that it still sees both the hidden Boot X: partition and the standard C: partition if I go through the Repair option and click to Load Drivers.

This is completely absurd, what's going on? There was no driver in the box and surely Win7 should already have anything required, how can I get it to see the drive?

 

It's fixed, creating a new partition table sorted it. For anyone curious, it might be that using the AI Recovery DVDs to create a service partition might've caused all these problems, possibly breaking the restore procedure when ran and screwing the boot record to prevent Windows from seeing the drive as possible to install on. Or whatever, at this point I'm not in the mood to try and replicate the problem to figure it all out.

Anyhow, works now, please feel free to close the thread.

 

Can't use recovery disks for any disk other than same size of original disk. There is a convoluted way around this but it's much easier to clone from original to new drive or do fresh install.

I post this in case anyone else is trying to do such a swap.

Cheers,