No Bootable Device -- insert boot disk and press any key - no matter what

[TWAIN]

A friend's computer problem has wasted a lot of my time.

The basics - Compaq Presario CQ62 laptop, Product #VX491AV.  Out of Warranty by a few months (or this could have been solved already).  The original hard drive (Hitachi 250GB) died.  Purchased a Hitachi 320GB drive to replace it.  I have not been able to get the system to see a bootable disk.  The hard drive utilities successfully complete all tests, so I know the system can see and work with the hard drive.

Following various other posts and suggestions,

I have reset the BIOS back to default. 

I have set it to boot from the optical drive first, then the hard drive.  That didn't make a difference.

I have started the computer without the drive, which confirms the BIOS is seeing that there is no drive.  Then after reattaching it I have been able to successfully scan the drive again without errors so the computer still sees the drive.

Had to replace the battery because that was making booting difficult (even plugged in it kept failing to complete even the cursory boot)

I have downloaded the HP utility to create the boot disk (the sp44645 image), but it still can't be seen.

I have downloaded the Hitachi utility to a CD ROM to see if the disk can be seen that way - no joy.

I ordered and am trying to run the official HP Recovery disks for my model.  They can't be seen either.

I have tried numerous hard drives and they all can be seen, except for the original, failed disk.  I haven't tried installing onto one of the other ones because they're smaller than the original disk and there's apparently some question as to whether that's a problem.  Heck, at this point I'd accept it if it found a boot device and did anything.

I keep coming back to the idea that the optical drive might be having problems but I don't have a way of testing it, really.  The drive spins, it seems to be trying to read the disks (varying lengths of time depending upon what disk I put in, light flashing), but I'm just not able to know if it's actually reading data.

I've seen a post talking about problems getting the optical drive to be a boot drive but I haven't found out the details on that.  If anyone can point me to that I'd appreciate it.  Is this a firmware issue (fw is F.0A)? 

Having replaced a hard drive and a battery and spent money on the recovery disks, I know I'm not going to be given the go-ahead on replacing a cd drive just on speculation.

I will try and figure out how to install using USB drives, but does anyone have any other suggestions about how I can fix this?

[CherylG]

Does sound as if the CD/DVD drive is struggling. Try booting from a USB flash drive to install.Look here for a Windows 7 HP sp1 iso. Be sure to choose the one matching original on laptop.Check the license key attached to bottom.

WINDOWS 7 USB/DVD TOOL

 If needed>>How to activate Windows 7 by phone.

[TWAIN]

The Windows loaded just fine using the flash drive.  With the system up and running, I tried reading DVD's and it was unable to do so, so this laptop had a bad battery, bad hard drive and a bad DVD drive.  Of course, the customer didn't know how screwed up his system was.

I've not been able to find, however, how to get the recovery disks onto flash drive(s) to be able to install from them.  Is there a way?

[CherylG]

Recovery Media can be ordered on USB from your models support page HERE Of course you may just want to download the drivers and available software and be done with it.

[TWAIN]

Thank you.  I got the drivers and I'll see about what else.  It's a shame HP's ordering department didn't know about the USB drive version - or at least when I mentioned questions about the DVD drive they should have thought that I might need the USB version.