My System:

Here's the quick run down of the situation, thanks in advance for any help or insight.

1.5 year old HP Pavilion dv7-1285dx.
HDD starts clicking a bit, then the computer stops booting with:

No bootable device - insert boot disk and hit any key.

So I remove the drive, and put in a fresh (completely new) drive.
I order the recovery cd from HP's (horrible) tech support.

Computer will NOT boot off of the recovery CD: the cd drive spins up to high speed and just stays there, with a black screen and blinking cursor.
That is the behavior for disk 1 of the recovery CDs.
Any other disk in the drive gives the no bootable device message.
(I made sure the CD drive was number 1 in the boot order in BIOS).

I installed SpinRite's bootable os to a USB flash drive.
The computer still gives the no bootable device msg (I made sure the USB drive was 1st in the BIOS boot order).

Also, I put what I believed to be the dead, original HDD from that system into an enclosure and attached it via USB/eSATA to another system, and it has been working fine (I pulled all my important files off it).

I am thinking about replacing the motherboard, but someone told me since I get to the HP logo and can access BIOS its probably not that.

Ideas???