Windows 7 Professional now identifies as Vista

You restored a Vista Image, from Storagecraft, not a win7 Image which was installed when you used the makers recovery disks

Use the PC makers recovery dvd's to clean install whatever version of win is on those recovery disks

No, the laptop came with Windows 7 and the Recovery Disks were made from the laptop just after it was purchased. Those were the disks I used. The image I restored was a backup take from the laptop one week prior to the issue with the hard drive.

When I look at the properties under "Computer", it says Windows 7.

It simply has the Vista startup, which is something that just occurred after the restore, or perhaps after the video driver update, and the way the Linux installer identified the volume. So, I'm quite certain I'm running Windows 7 and not Vista. 

I'm having difficulty remembering what the Vista start-up screen was :(

Are you saying that when you boot the PC the screen shows 'starting Vista'?

It's this "plain jane" boot screen. It's been referred to as the Vista progress screen by some online.

I have the exact same Windows 7 screen and no Windows 7 Logo.

Cheers.

The only thing missing is the Windows 7 logo. Unless you have other issues, I would not worry about it.. :-)

Well, it isn't just the logo, it's the animation as well. I understand your perspective, "why worry". Right?

It's because this was a restore after the Windows partition was erased. and SOMETHING CHANGED. This wasn't the way the system was before the failure. So, it's not the way it was in the image, yet, something change.

My concern other than for the sake of consistency and the way things are "supposed to be", is that perhaps other things are also not the way they are supposed to be. Besides, I prefer the other boot screen. In addition, the boot loader has values that are not correct, like the description. Here is the output from the bcdedit command in admin mode. The description is "Microsoft Windows Vista" Why would that be on a Windows 7 system and is this then the bootloader that was on the system before or was it changed. If so, when and how? The date stamp is June 16, 2014, so it would seem not to have been changed or modified, perhap. Then again if it was a boot loader from the recovery environment perhaps, that might explain it.

It's all about consistency, what changed and why.

Has it always been that way on your machine, or did it change at some point?

What does your boot loader look like? I used the command bcdedit at a command prompt in administrator mode to get my output. I'd be interested.

I checked another windows system at the house and the boot loader says "Windows 7" in the description. There are also some other parameters that aren't in the boot loader on my machine.

A question..

Used the Manufacturers Recovery CDs to restore the disk partitions and the factory install.

What operating system did the manufacturer disks restore?

Restored an image of the Windows partition from backup using Storagecraft. No other options were used when the partition was "finished" only to activate the partition.

This is probably where your present problems started, especially if you were restoring over a new Vista installation.

As said, if everything is working now, leave well alone..

I checked another windows system at the house and the boot loader says "Windows 7" in the description. There are also some other parameters that aren't in the boot loader on my machine.

Your description of the other machine's information fits mine; windows 7 in mine and other information that is not in yours.

Cheers.