Recovering an HP Pavilion from scratch

[SleepyTech]

I'm trying to recover a friend's HP laptop.

It seems that the partition information on the system disk was compromised, by a virus or some other unfortunate circumstance, and I'm unable to 'recover' it for her. I've been trying to set her laptop back up for her, but apparently the PC didn't come with recovery discs, just a recovery partition on the hard drive (which is now made inacessible/zeroed). Simplest solution would be to either re-image the machine or start from scratch with a clean install, but apparently it didn't come with a product key either (are they factory activated?) so I can't reinstall it as I do not have windows 8 installation discs or a valid windows 8 key to download an iso from MicroSoft with.

Does anyone have a solution other than ordering new setup discs from HP?

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@SleepyTech

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

As you are apparently unaware, ALL HP PCs come with the Windows product key embedded into the UEFI firmware of the motherboard -- and for that, it is not printed on the COA sticker anymore.

Anyone with a valid Win8 product key could download the Win8 install ISO from Microsoft and with that, you can make install media.

But ... what you really need is HP Recovery Media, as that will restore not only the proper version of the OS, but also the HP OEM drivers and utilities.  That is really the BEST way to "recover the HP from scratch".

[SleepyTech]

No I was not aware of that, this end of IT is no longer my forte. Thank you very much for the heads up!

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@WAWood wrote:

@SleepyTech

As you are apparently unaware, ALL HP PCs come with the Windows product key embedded into the UEFI firmware of the motherboard -- and for that, it is not printed on the COA sticker anymore.