VPCS12V9E Recovery - Is AHCI the problem? How to disable?

[a1andean]

I have a Vaio VPCS12v9E (Windows 7) which was showing signs of hard drive failuew (including SMART reporting a problem).  I created a set of recovery disks and bought a new hard drive - WD Scorpio Blue WDBABC3200ANC-ERSN.

After fitting the new drive I proceeded to run the Recovery Disks.  The recovery appeared to be going well until the time came to do the final part.

The screen showed 'Setup is Starting Services' immediately followed by an error messagem headed up 'Install Windows' and stating: 'Windows could not complete the installation.  To install Windows on this computer, restart the installtion'

I believe this error is caused by the SATA cnfiguration being set to AHCI.  However I can find no option in the BUIS setup to change this setting.

Apologies if this has been raised before but I did do a search but did not discover the answer.

TIA

[a1andean]

An update .....

Maybe it is not a SATA config problem ......

I installed Windows 7 c64 from a generic Microsoft OEM disk last night after posting the above and that has installed ok.  Updating the drivers at the moment.

So why do the recovery disks not work?