Had a Compaq Pesario S5322cc with a bad hard drive. Cloned the old-to-new drive with Acronis 9 no problem. Found out that the new drive was infested with viruses / trojans and spyware. (You're thinking.."why didn't he CLEAN if first before cloning the drive?"...) Well... that drive was just about dead so I had to take anything I could get Anyway, I tried to do a System Restore from both the restore PARTITION and the CD set that had been made long before the hdd went bad. Neither worked. I got an error MESSAGE after trying the restore partition stating that there was a "configuration error" and support needed to be contacted. When trying the restore cd's they said that this was not the right set for this particular computer. Called Compaq and the tech said that the BIOS needed to be flashed. Also said that sometimes the cloning software will not permit completing the recovery.
I tried 2 different drives both with the same problem.

Not-So-Bestbuy wants $69 to diagnose the problem and then another $30 to FLASH the BIOS.

Has anyone ever come ACROSS something like this?

Alan <><