Help: Windows cannot restore a system image to a computer with different firmware

Question

I want to recover a complete image of a Windows 7 operating system I have backed up to my other server. But I am getting the error "Windows cannot restore a system image to a computer with different firmware. The System Image was created by a computer using BIOS and this computer is using EFI"
The image was definitely taken from this machine - the firmware has not changed!
What do I need to do to restore the image?
Background Story ..
I bought a new HP 255 laptop per-installed with Windows 7 without Operating Systems instal disks (I will NEVER be stupid enough to do that again!).
I took a complete image of the systems, as suggested so that I was well backed up.
However, my machine corrupted its operating systems with a few weeks. The boot recovery CD did not work (would not boot). So in desperation, and because time was short I went out and bought another, legitimate copy of Windows 7 DVD with a license key (So now I have 2, legitimate copies of the operating system!).
I installed the new copy of Windows 7 - but it was dreadful, because many drivers were missing. Mostly the missing drivers were not available on the HP support site for this machine. ALso, boot up was increadibly slow compared to the original OS installation.
So I created a new boot recovery disk from the new version of Windows, and tried to restore using that. New boot disk loads ok, I can find the old image on my network (after loading a few network drivers). But I won't instal the image - giving the above error message.
I tried deleting the EFI partition from the disk (using GPARTED to reformat that partition). That killed the Windows 7 on the machine - but still gives the same error message when I try to re-image the machine.
I have tried going into the BIOS settings .. HP 255 has a "Legacy Mode" - which I have enabled, but this makes no difference at all!
I think that the kind of solutions I am looking for might be:
1. There is a clever way of disabling EFI on my 255 so that it looks like a legacy BIOS machine, or
2. This EFI this is wired into my new boot recovery disk - and there is a way of creating a boot recovery disk that does not use EFI
This has taken me about 2 weeks so far,please help with any suggestions!

Answer 1

DonOxley wrote:
Erico,
I suspect that "MSDOS" is what the Gparted tool calls "MBR" for a partition table, as explained here:
http://superuser.com/questions/700770/mbr-equals-msdos-for-gparted
I think that you are suggesting I give up on trying to recover the image I have stored on my server and just to instal Windows 7 from my new copy. There are two problems with this.
1. After having systematically downloaded all of the drivers from the HP 255 notebook support page, I am still seeing missing drivers listed. Install the AMD graphics softpaq driver first. It also contains the chipset drivers.
2. The machine is taking a hugely long time to boot up, and seems much slower with this version. Maybe that is a product of using "EFI" rather than "bios" - I don't know.
My assumption is that HP had some special set-up option with their version of Windows which makes the machine more performant. It does not seem to be a coincidence that the image they deliver the machine with is not quite compatible with a 'normal' Windows 7 instal.
So my original question stands: How do I recover the image that I saved away (as per instructed) when I first bough the machine?
You still have not said what you used to create the system image. What is the "image" file's extension?
You are mistaken in your comparison. MSDOS is an operating sytem MBR is a partitioning scheme.  that is comparing apples to oranges. 
The article is making an oblique reference in that using GPARTED is more or less equated to using the diskpart utility at the command line. Everything done at the comand line is essentially  done by use of MSDOS commands. GPARTED does the same thing with LINUX commands via a graphical interface so you don't have to type in the commands in a  Linux console.
Do you mean making a backup? a backup is not a clone which can be reproduced on different hardware. The SSD disk replacement does make the hardware differ from the original configuration.
Follow the instaructions on the following tutorial to make your disk a GPT type before installing.
http://www.disk-partition.com/articles/mbr-partition-table-to-gpt.html
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