For now im actually using a 640GB drive i had lying around to try things out without compromising the data or anything on the 1tb drive.
The bios doesnt have secure boot or anything related. However i did notice that the original drive booted in IDE mode, where AHCI is available. i tried flipping it back and forth to see if it would boot but no dice. It gets to the windows 7 splash screen and reboots. Thats why i thought it was a IDE/AHCI mode issue.
This is where i tried finding a BIOS update and not only couldnt find the page from HP, but no bios updates what so ever. It amazes me how off the shelf PC's dont have bios updates.
GOing to attempt to clone the original drive, recover it using the built in recovery and see if that works.