New hard drive boot issues

[Tempus_Fugit]

Hello, Firstly my internal hard drive failed on me, I bought a new one and fitted it. I carried out a test and it passed. 

Now I'm completely stuck I had thought I could download a file called media creation tool on to a disc and start downloading Windows that way by pressing F10 and switching Legacy boot and Secure boot etc from this page: http://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c03653226#AbT2, it didn't work (as I had hoped it would/supposed to) I got near the end where I was supposed to insert the disc, after doing so a message came up saying that either there is no disc or the hard drive is no visible (something simlar anyway).  From then on when I have tried I had the message "exiting pxe rom" in white writing on a black background.

I have a few questions, any help would be much appreciated, I'm trying to save money from taking in my PC to a shop to get fixed, but I will do if it will all take too long or is too difficult.

1) I had updated to Win10 from Win8 last year but I havent any boot discs at all. Do I need to buy a HP recovery disc, or is there anything else that I can do to install Windows?

2) Do the boot discs need to be Windows 8 (my original version) or Windows 10 (what I upgraded to) followed by a product key or something.

3) should I just take it to PC world a fork of the £60 or so to get someone who isnt clueless.

Thank you for any help,

[erico · Accepted solution]

If you had Windows 10 installed and activated, the license activation is on the Microsoft Windows activation servers. 

That means when you reinstall the OS it is automatically activated when you go online.

As an example, this PC shows that is the case. See the following image.

You can download a Windows 10 ISO from the Microsoft website. Use a generic key to download it. 

Download Windows ISO

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Generic keys

https://www.google.nl/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=windows+10+generic+key&*

You should probably consider making a bootable USB Windows 10 installer. I use RUFUS to create a GTP bootable flashdrive. Create it. plug it into a UDSB port and press the power button. Immediately start tapping F9 to invoke the boot menu. Choose the UEFI USB flash drive. 

RUFUS

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

[mdklassen]

>  From then on when I have tried I had the message "exiting pxe rom" in white writing on a black background.

Your computer tries to "boot" from several devices:

* 3.5-inch diskette drive,

* CD/DVD optical drive,

* disk-drive,

* over the network, by communicating with a "boot-server".

In a "corporate" environment, there might be a "boot-server" on that network.

In a "home" network, there won't be one, 99.9999 % of the time.

That message is produced after your computer has tried, and failed, to boot from all the devices in the above list.

> exiting  PXE  ROM

There is ROM ("Read Only Memory") on the motherboard that tried to use the PXE ("Pre eXecution Environment") to control the download, over the network, of a bootable copy of Windows, and to boot from the download.

The "exiting" from PXE occurs  after no "boot-server" has been found on the local network.

[Tempus_Fugit]

Thank you very much erico for your help. I managed to get Windows10 installed successfully and in doing so saved me £45-60. Thank you again. Mdklassen, thank you as well.

[erico]

@Tempus_Fugit

You are very welcome!

                 🙂