Hello, I hope someone can help us.
I purchased my HP computer from hpshopping.com in Feb 2009. It's an HP Pavilion a6745f Desktop PC. It had Windows XP (professional, I think) 64bit on it. It is outdated, I realize, but has served us well these past few years and was hoping to pass on to my daughter when we upgrade soon.
A couple of months ago my husband learned about Ubuntu OS and wanted to "try it out" as you should be able to do, it provides the option to use it temporarily while still leaving Windows on your PC. Welllll... not sure how he goofed, but he did. We soon realized Ubuntu wasn't for us and we want Windows back, but it seems he accidentally totally deleted it from the computer. Restore/recovery methods (of which we've tried SEVERAL) do not work as they require Windows to be on there somewhere and they help bring it back, but we have no OS at all on the computer now (just using the "trial" of Ubuntu to be able to get online and do basic things). We put out a call to friends to see if anyone has WIndows software we can use but they all keep offering recovery disks and those are insufficient, it seems we need the whole thing. Obviously i don't want to buy it and don't think I should have to... is there any way to get Windows XP back since I bought the computer from HP directly and registered it and everything? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!!!!