This guide is about HP recovery disks for the following versions of Windows: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. Hp Oem Windows 8 Pro Restore Recovery Disc X64 Vs X86 Software If I'm out of luck, I guess I'll just go with Ubuntu until I decide that I need a new PC. So my question is: is there a way to get windows back onto my HDD (legally, of course), without having to pay for this? I did have, and my BIOS can confirm that I did have windows, well, my product key can as well. I think that it's BS that they are making me pay for something that I basically paid for when I bought the laptop. That's basically half of what it would cost if I were to buy windows 8.1 off of the Microsoft website. Contacted HP, they said I need to pay $50 for recovery discs. When I bought the PC windows 8 was preinstalled on my computer, so there wasn't a product key or recovery discs, so the product key I used was taken from my BIOS.Ĭontacted Microsoft, they told me to contact HP.
I was able to get windows (unactivated) on the pc and when I tried to activate it, it I got an error saying that ' this product key cannot be used to activate a retail version of windows.' I recently broke my HDD, replaced it, and tried to install windows.
