Travelmate 7750G-6494 Why does Acer recovery disk get same error code 0x241new SSD on original HDD?

Correction, I meant Travelmate, not "Thinkpad"; it should have read, "So I need to know whether the problem was caused on both drives by a bug in the disk set, or if there's some kind of hardware problem on the Travelmate that caused that error message after running the disk set on the HDD and again after running the disk set on the new SSD."

Re "it sounds like the failure happened at different places during the installation" — Do you mean that when running the disc set on the HDD I selected option 1, to change only the C drive back to the way it was when it left the factory, but when I ran it on the SSD I selected option 3, which sets both the C drive and the XP Virtual Machine back to the way they were when they left the factory?

Re "but I'd expect it to perform the same on either drive" — In both cases, running the disk set on the HDD or SSD resulted in the same "Error code = 0x241" saying, "A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be" [I Googled that sentence a short while ago and found, on forums.virtualbox.org, that what follows "or that might be" is "malicious software from an unknown source."]

There was no hardware change before running the Acer disk set on the HDD, and the only hardware change before running it on the SSD was replacing the HDD with the new SSD. On both the HDD and the SSD, the "recent software change" was running the Acer recovery disk set. Acer shipped that disk set to me in 2012, so you may be right that it could be "data corruption due to the age of the discs." If the error code was caused by a problem with the disk set, such as corruption due to age, I'll buy Windows 10 and pay a technician $110 plus sales tax to remove the hidden partition from the SSD, reformat the C drive (to remove all the Windows 7 and Acer files installed by the disk set), install Windows 10, and get Windows 10 working correctly on the Travelmate. Before incurring the purchase price and installation expense, can we rule out any possibility that the reason for the error code was a hardware problem in the Travelmate that will cause an error code as well after installation of Windows 10?

The Travelmate screen is 17¼ inches, and I work on it with an external monitor as well. The next computer I buy will be much smaller, lighter, and truly portable, and will be Windows 11. So if the Windows 11 computer were to replace that Travelmate, instead of being in addition to it, the screen will be much smaller, and I would therefore buy a second external monitor. And buy a numeric keypad too if the Windows 11 computer, to be as small and light as I would like, doesn't have one. Also, I'm confident that my software will run well on Windows 10 in compatibility mode, but don't know if all will run well on Windows 11. It's worth the $110 plus the purchase cost of Windows 10 to me, to keep the Travelmate, even if I buy another computer. Unless the problem was hardware related, such that installing Windows 10 too would cause that error code. Since that error code occurred only after running that Acer disk set on the HDD and also on the new SSD, it wasn't due to a defect in the drive.

Hence the question. Is there any hardware in the Travelmate 7750G, other than an HDD or SSD, that could cause "Error code = 0x241…A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged" from installing a version of Windows?

Is that possible, to install it to see if that works before purchasing it? How would I get it before purchasing it?