One of the most common causes of this problem (that I have seen) is that most new hard drives being sold now are Advanced Format which trips up Vista and often Windows 7 Recovery Discs. If she can get a hdd not AF she should have better luck.
Sometimes it works to prep a new hdd with Cyberlink Utility cd first. Download and Save the file. Once download is complete, put a blank cd in your drive and click the downloaded file to create a boot cd. Boot with this cd and wait until you get a green check mark indicating hdd is ready. Remove the cd , insert first Recovery Disk and restart the laptop.
http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software11/COL32372/pv-80183-1/sp44645.exe