Screwed my computer, need disk imgae.

[Maximoose]

So I screwed the information on my hard drive beyond repair, read what happened:

Spoiler

So I installed a linux operationg system and later removed it, but apparently it overwrote my HP bootloader and replaced it with a windows bootlaoder which it took with it when I uninstalled the linux OS, so now when I boot my computer the bootloader tells me it can't find anything to boot to and gives me a terminal to type in, and I can't make it boot into windows because there is no support whatsoever for my version of the bootloader. So I tried to fix the bootloader by reinstalling windows but it can't reinstall windows because the linux OS also played with my partitions on my hard drive and windows can't install to a certain type of partition, so this resulted in me using a bootable linux flash drive to back up all of my data to an external hard drive and formatting the partition but this didn't help.

So I can't just format the whole hard drive and install windows on it because of OEM stuff and I want a recovery partition, so is there any way I can get a .iso image from HP that I can write to my hard disk so when I reboot it after writing the image to the disk it just acts like I just recieved the computer brand new from HP (bsically the iso image they write to the disk when manufacturing the computer)? Or is it fine if I forget all of the OEM stuff and the recovery partition and just format and install windows to it and it will function well?

[REO51ST]

@Maximoose

Recovery Kit HP Spectre x360 - 13-4003dx (ENERGY STAR)

http://support.hp.com/us-en/mediaorder/HP-Spectre-13-x360-Convertible-PC-Series/7527520/model/779177...

REO

[Maximoose]

Is there a way I can do it without spending $40 on a disk? Maybe a download? And it's not just my os that is screwed, everything (including the bootlaoder) is screwed, will that disk fix it?

[REO51ST]

@Maximoose

If you need to install or reinstall Windows 8.1, you can use the tools on this page to create your own installation media using either a USB flash drive or a DVD.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8

REO

[Maximoose]

I have already tried reinstalling windows but the partitions are all messed up and I can't even do that.

[matteventu]

Messing up with partitions doesn't prevent the new installation from zero of Windows.

So there are two options:

- if you "just" messed up with partutions, you aren't able to install Windows because you lack the basic skills do to this, in this case just tell us "where" it doesn't let you install Windows, which errors you see, etc, and we'll try to help you

- if you have maybe done something "worse" than messing up with partitions, like corrupting BIOS or anything else, again you have to give us more details about where you find errors and what exactly prevents you from installing Windows

For reference: the official HP recovery images are crap and completely useless, the official Microsoft Windows media creation tools allows you to create a USB recovery drive that is more than enough to instaall Windows from a clean base (all the drivers will be anyway installed automatically via Windows Update).

[Maximoose · Accepted solution]

I fixed the problem by formatting the whole disk, the reason I couldn't install windows is because the WINDOWS partition was in a different format, I had to use the command prompt to change the partition type, and then I could install windows.