Replace hard drive with Advanced Format sectors

Hi,

I've got a VPCCW27FX with Windows 7 and I'm having trouble replacing the hard drive. I'm replacing it because the old drive is failing. Sometimes it fails to boot, I repair bad sectors using the Seagate bootable disk checker, and then it boots. This has happened a few times.

Anyway, I bought a Seagate Momentus XT as a replacement. Using the VAIO recovery disks that I generated earlier, I tried a full system restore, which seemed to work until I got to the point where Windows is supposed to boot and then I got this error:

"Windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computers hardware."

And then this error:
"Windows could not complete the installation. To install windows on this computer, restart the installation."

The issue is described well here.

I believe the issue is that the hard drive uses 4K sectors (Advanced Format), which isn't supported by Windows 7 SP0, which is what the recovery disks use. Microsoft describes two methods of solution here, but neither method works for me. For Method 1, I don't get the "Load Driver" option while using the recovery disks. For Method 2, the BIOS for this laptop doesn't allow me to change the hard drive setting.

Sorry for the long winded description, but my short question is how can I use my new hard drive with this laptop?

I've seen people describe two solutions:
- Clone my old drive (which is still mostly working) onto my new drive. I'm not sure how to do this, and I don't think I have the software for it.
- Get Win7 SP1 install disks, do a clean install, and enter the product key that came with the laptop. I could probably find those install disks, but I don't have them now, and I've been told that using my existing product key could be problematic for a couple reasons.

Are those my only options, or is there something easier?

Thanks for the help (and for reading all this).

-Tom

p.s. Sorry if this is covered in another thread. The search feature kept complaining about invalid queries.

 

Any ideas?

The short story is that I'm having trouble using the recovery disks with a new hard drive. I believe the problem is that the new hard drive uses 4k sectors (advanced format drive), which isn't supported by Win7 SP0 on the recovery disks.

 

Try Windows 8 Release Preview.

You can download Windows 7 SP1 iso from digitalriver and use your key to activate it. If your old drive is still working, you can backup your existing key and restore it on your new drive, and then you won't need telephone activation.

You can search this site using Google using site:forum.notebookreview.com before your search phrase.

 

Sounds good. Thanks for the advice.