Reinstall OS to Laptop on new Harddrive

[Dino77]

I am working on my daughter's laptop. After a reboot, the system stated that "Operating System Not Found." I've removed and reseated the HDD and the RAM, still getting same message. The HDD does show up in BIOS, but loading optimized defaults does nothing to fix the error. So I decided remove the HDD and place it in my desktop so I could check the disk for errors. I've checked it with 3 different utilities, (Acronis, Crystal DIsk, and Hitachi) and have determined that the HDD is soon to be toast. (error 197: 0xC5: Current Pending Sector Count) On her laptop I can access recovery and the BIOS, but recovery doesn't do anything, without an Win8.1 Install disk, which I don't have. (File Data Backup has been done)

Finally, my question is, after buying a new hard drive, how do I return the laptop to it's original state on a new drive? I'm assuming cloning would bring the bad sectors along to the new drive. So I need to install the original OS without the help of the original HDD I'm assuming.

I know this is long winded and rambling, but I'm trying to be detailed, so I can solve this riddle.

 

[popatim]

Contact the manufacturer of the laptop to purchase your factory restore disks. You should have been prompted to burn these during the new user setup when you first got the laptop, in case this jogs her memory and she has them somewhere...

 

[Dino77]

Contact the manufacturer of the laptop to purchase your factory restore disks. You should have been prompted to burn these during the new user setup when you first got the laptop, in case this jogs her memory and she has them somewhere...

If I somehow can get the laptop to boot, would it be possible to create a recovery disk then, or would it be possibly corrupted?
Also, I have a generic Windows 8 recovery disk from my desktop, would that work to repair the installation so I can create a recovery disk? I don't think I created the disks initially. I know I'm horrible, LOL.

 

[popatim]

Yes that would work I think
or
You might be able to press f11 or f12 to access the manufacturers restore or recovery partition and do it from their.

Not sure without knowing which Make & Model laptop this is.

 

[Dino77]

Yes that would work I think
or
You might be able to press f11 or f12 to access the manufacturers restore or recovery partition and do it from their.

Not sure without knowing which Make & Model laptop this is.

The laptop is a Sony Vaio/ Model Number SVE14A290X

Update: I contacted Sony and asked about the recovery disks, they have them for 76.15, which is outrageous in my opinion, plus they are on backorder. I was able to do a restore to factory conditions and it completed, but once the laptop rebooted it still stated "Operating System Not Found".

Two more questions:
1. Can I copy the recovery partition to a disk, or usb and use it that way to install to the new HD.
2. If I installed a fresh version of Windows 8 and downloaded the drivers from Sony Support, would the old Windows License Key from the laptop work? Who needs all that Vaio Care crap anyway? LOL


BTW.. Thanks for all your help and quick responses. Any help I get is much appreciated.

 

[Dino77]

It appears that the recovery partition is unaffected, could I mount that in a hard drive usb enclosure, and use that to run recovery to a new hard drive?

Alternately, could I just clone the recovery partition to the new hard drive?