TM2 unable to restore Windows 7 after Windows 8 Release Preview - have restore DVDs, still fails.

Question

Hello!  I've pretty much run out of idea's on how to troubleshoot this so I'll do a summary of what I changed with the machine and then troubleshooting details further on.  The particular hp touchsmart notebook I have is a TM2 1079cl,  Product Number: WA812UA#ABA.  I've only had it for the length of 2012, I purchased it used from another person about 1 year ago now specifically to toy with Windows 8 before it's release.  As far as the hardwares actual age I can tell from the warrenty information that it was manufactured in late 2009, it states the warranty period was from January 2010 to Jan 2011.
Alright, so my history with the OS changes goes:
-> Purchased this TM2 in early 2012, ran the recovery partition to wipe it clean of the previous owners use and it ran through installation perfectly fine, then on a clean Windows 7 as if it were new.  I'd also made use of a bootable Acronis True Image 2010 disk to make a hard disk image of the three other partitions for recovery (though I did not include the freshly installed windows 7 partition, figured it wouldn't matter if recovery could do it's thing right?)
-> Some days later I loaded the second of the three preview releases for Windows 8 onto it (Customer Preview build I believe).   All worked fine and it dual booted between the two without issue, afaik the only real changes it made amounted to converting the primary partition Windows 7 was installed on to an extended partition and splitting the existing Windows 7 partition equally 50/50 inside that extended partition.  It had also overriden the boot manager / bootloader that was there before but again not surprised.
-> When Release Preview build came out over summer I did an update from inside windows 8 and all seemed fine still.  The change between the two preview builds did develop an issue where I couldn't shut windows 8 down without a handful of error boxes poping up but I'm pretty sure that was unrelated.
-> More recently about thanksgiving time I decided to give the laptop to a family member with a archiac desktop that's got issues and general old factor that makes it not worth updating.   This person is pretty adverse to change so that whole "Win8-vs-what people are used to" thing comes into play.   I decided to wipe the TM2 clean back to the OS it shipped with.    Here's where I'm now stuck:
=> Before doing anything I made another True Image of the HDD as a just incase, glad I did.
=> Tried F11 to load the recovery partition only to find that because of the bootloader being tampered with by Windows 8 it doesn't actually go to the HP recovery partition anymore despite still being on the hard drive.
=> Grabbed the hard disk image from the beginning of the year with the recovery partition on it before windows 8 touched the machine, wiped the hdd completely clean, restored the disk image.   I could now get into HP recovery fine but....
=> I got a dialog error right off the bat saying that the recovery partition could not install and instructing me to insert disc 1 of the recovery software.  Well I never made the dvd's myself with the one-time use burning feature when it worked so that's out and I had not bought the discs from HP's support site.   At this point I'm puzzled though why the recovery partition can't install despite the computer loading up into recovery just fine.  For example command prompt in the Windows PE environment is functional and all files seem to be present.   Maybe some verification that the recovery partition isn't pirated might have been triggered by hard disk imaging, i'm really not sure?
=> I then made used of the HDD image I'd just created before trying this and restored the other copy of the drive (Win8 tampered bootloader, Win8 release preview, win7, the inaccessible recovery partition and all).   Windows 7 and 8-RP could still boot.   Googled around a bit about the recovery partition key (F11) getting messed up by Windows 8 and came to find I only needed to set recovery as the "Active" partition to get it to start.  Sure enough that got it to start but I'm running into the same issue where the actual recovery partition loads up but now refuses to begin the restore process without HP dvd's.  Since I know for certain this worked months ago I guess once again since I ended up restoring that version of the recovery partition it may have also declared itself tampered with... great.
=> Contemplated what to do for a bit and then finally just ordered the DVD's from HP in December, I specifically got the recovery DVD's for my model and they did come from HP directly, not second hand from ebay or another person.  Wasn't really that bad, $16, very reasonable price.  Should be set right, legit OEM DVD's to use?  Nope....
=> The DVD's came.  Two discs for main recovery and a third for applications and drivers.   Boot off disc one and it states it's formatting the drive how it wants (good, i'm liking this so far), copies all of the contents of the three discs to the hdd and begins it's reboot and install cycle.    Reboots a handful of times, you can tell it gets well past copying the contents of any of the discs and into installing windows.  You see the Windows 7 boot logo a few times and even the standard "preparing your things" background that's similar to the Windows 7 login screen.  The screen definitely gets as far as installing the proper graphics driver (and others I assume at that time) as the resolution changes to native for the TM2's LCD near the end.
=>  Suddenly on the 3rd or 4th (I think) reboot of installing windows it starts for a moment then says shutting down, it reboots and it's back in the windows PE environment of recovery setup again (this time coming from the hard drive, not the DVDs) and says it's failed to restore and offers to start everything over from the very beginning.
That's where I'm stuck.  The Recovery Partition died on me post-Windows 8 and the offical HP recovery DVD's are failing me (and oddly they're failing me seemingly in the very last steps of windows 7 restore, well after the DVD's themselves are no longer being read from).
>> Question 1:  Does the HP recovery partition "self destruct" if it gets imaged by hard drive imaging software and restored?  I can confirm mine worked fine once and then dead after going through Acronis True Image.  Another possibility is maybe there's some ID's or tattooing of the hard drive or specific partitions that was lost when Windows 8 put it's newer bootloader into the machine or lost from Acronis?  This is still the oem hdd that came with the computer, it has not been switched out.
>> Question 2:  Are there any known problems with the official Windows 7 recovery DVD's for a late 2009 TM2 1079cl?  I'm also aware of the Cyberlink recovery software patch / pre-install disc and tried this with results that were no different to without it.  That said my machine does have the Cyberlink version of the recovery software, I read there's something like 3 different companies software for recovery depending on time period the laptop was made and sold.
Reference: [ http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloa​dIndex?cc=us&lc=en&softwareitem=pv-80183-1 ]
>> Question 3:  Plainly put, what now?  Anything else to try or do I need to go find an RTM windows 7 disc and scrounge all the driver zips together?  (Very much hoping to avoid that, I'm actually pretty curious to really understand what happened here and while that'll work it would answer nothing.  hehe).
Maybe related things as well:  Some searches led me to believe having the WLAN switch off at the start of recovery causes driver installation to flip out (and indeed win7 seems to drop dead during the last steps of driver install) however it's not possible it would seem to turn the WLAN card "on" before this point.  Switch won't bring it to enabled state anyways.   As I mentioned above the Cyberlink recovery software patch has no effect on things.   No parts have ever been changed in this machine, original hdd, wlan card, ram modules, ect.   I doubt the motherboard bios / firmware has ever been updated, machine states it's revision F.02.
I have at my disposal:
* A lot of time, actually, hense why I really want to know what happened and not use the Win7 RTM disc.
* hdd image of HP recovery before Win8 touched the machine.
* hdd image of recovery after Win8 and a kinda buggy but still bootable Win8-RP.
* The correct HP-made recovery DVD's for my laptop, ordered recently (December 2012).
* Confident enough to toy with partition editing tools should it be a suggestion, never really used much outside of gparted on linux live discs however.  Considering the current state of the machine there's nothing to risk losing anymore though.
Sorry for the text wall!  I like being very detailed!
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Answer 1

I have the tm2 and have not experience an issue with the recovery and wifi being off, but it certainly is in the realm of possibility.  I just had not encountered it on my own tm2, so I subconsciously dismissed it or just didn't think of it as a result. 
Thank you for sharing your solution with the community. 
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