I recently purchased a refurbished and "de-branded" HP computer, the model number from the refurbisher is TS-4511-7P-W8EN, purchased from NewEgg. It appears to be a Pavillion 1145f, but only has 4GB installed (the 1145f specs say 6GB). Otherwise everything matches. My problem is that I accidentally erased the hard drive. It came with Windows 8 and I can't restore. I contacted the refurbisher's customer service and they say it was sold with the HP license so I have to order recovery media from HP. The problem is I don't have the exact HP model and product number, or serial number! I have an evaluation copy of Windows 8 running on it now, but that expires after 90 days. MS won't upgrade Windows 8 to 8.1 with the product key because it's an OEM product key and they will only allow upgrading from a store-boxed version -- the OEM has to support/upgrade the OEM version.
Is there any way to find the exact HP sepcs/numbers? The Product Name, SKU, and Chassis Serial Number are blank in the BIOS -- I did think to check that!
Oh, how did I accidentally erase the HD? I added a new partition for dual booting Linux. When installing I thought I selected the new partition, but the entire HD was formatted instead. Linux (Mint 16, an Ubuntu derivative) doesn't know how to handle the new boot method used by Win 7 and 8. I'm reasonably experienced with XP and Vista, this was my first Windows 8 machine. I didn't know booting was handled differently until now... Now I've researched the issue and know what the problem is, but still want Windows 8 back!