Thank you for the time you took to respond, however about 2 hours after i posted, i found the problem. The new HD I installed was a 500 gb, but the one I replaced was a 640 gb. That was the issue. At least with win 7, when using recovery discs, you can only restore to a HD that is of equal or larger capacity than the one in use when you created the discs. Oddly, the first time i put in the restore discs, it said nothing about it, but the second time I tried it, it immediately said the new HD is smaller than the original HD so it won't work. Today I exchanged the 500 gb drive with a 1 TB drive, installed it, and it is now progressing nicely thru the process as expected, restoring my laptop to factory fresh condition. Once again, thank you for trying to help me.