Where to download Windows 8.1 ISO to create recovery drive?

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Another approach, is to set the drive letter of the recovery partition to what it was when you bought the computer. I don't know how to do this under Windows 8. On XP I used a program called partition magic and used to cut and carve partitions all over the place and allocate whatever drive letters I liked; I'd also got it to multiboot to three independent installations of XP on the same computer. None of that helps you though. What is that area showing up as drive F on your computer? Is it part of windows or part of the Ubuntu installation?

You can sometimes get a new install disk from the manufacturer.

The best for this that I have run across is Dell. They'll send a disk overnight long after your warranty has expired. Even after the operating system is no longer supported. That's the primary reason I recommend buying a Dell computer instead of one from most other manufacturers.

At least now I'm using Kubuntu I'm not reliant on any manufacturers. I can just download it and install it and not have any license issues.

I use SuSE Linux for my workstations and OpenBSD for servers. I do have a windows machine but it still runs Windows 2000. It doesn't get used much.

The result is that if I get a computer with Windows installed, my first step is to replace it with something else.

So if I buy a computer for myself, I really don't care which manufacturer is nice about sending installation CDs and which aren't. But for friends, neighbors, and customers, I recommend to those who use windows that they only buy computers from Dell.

I've seen too many perfectly good computers get thrown away simply because they needed to reinstall Windows.

I'm not entirely sure what the drive letter was originally but I think I can figure it out. And the F drive is part of the Ubuntu partitions, yes; there are 3 that I made: root, home and swap. The F drive is the root partition, 20000 bytes. To be honest I'm not sure why it even has a letter, most of the others don't. And I am afraid to go messing with the partitions, I'm not eager to have a repeat of last time.

Could I just manually copy the whole recovery partition to an external device and then make it bootable that way? Obviously it's going to be a hassle getting Windows to do it for me, and if I can just do it that way it would be a much simpler fix, as I could just reboot into the device and I wouldn't even need to take the risk of deleting the Ubuntu partitions, the recovery process would do that for me and reinstall the Windows configuration.

Bear in mind that windows takes the files in the recovery partition and creates a bootable USB with them; it doesn't just copy the files to the USB stick. I don't know how to make the USB stick bootable with those files.

I've got a feeling that Windows isn't supposed to be able to see that Linux partition and that it has mistakenly associated letter F with it. I suspect that your recovery partition is supposed to be drive F: If I were you I'd see if I can get that drive letter associated with the recovery partition, but I don't know how to do that on Windows 8.1

I agree, I think F: is supposed to be the recovery drive. Problem is, because the filesystem is ext4 on the F drive I can't change it, at least not from Windows. I think I will reboot and try to change it in Ubuntu.

Edit: What if I use MiniTool Partition Wizard and create a copy of it to my external HD, then delete the F drive and then replace it with the copy without assigning a letter? I think I will try that, and then see if changing the Recovery partition to F: will make it able to create a recovery drive. If not I guess I'll just undo it.

Let us know how you get on.

I think it's supposed to be D: actually. None of the partitions have that path letter, yet I can't select it as an option. I went to the command prompt and typed D: and it said "this device is not ready". I have no idea what to do to fix it at this point.

Isn't D: your CD drive; assuming you have one.

Oh. Well I cannot figure it out, no matter what I do it refuses to recognize it. In the Windows Disk Management, the only partition that even has a label is C:, all the others are blank, and if I right click the recovery drive I don't get any options, just "Help". I am starting to get pretty annoyed with this.

My friend Holmes.

Why don't you go to college for computers?

Or...you could develop a client-base by fixing other people's computers.

...

What I said was for windows 7 not 8.1

Last edited by MacGyverAspie on 04 Sep 2014, 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

That is something I am considering. I would love fixing them for people especially, I just don't know how I would start off doing that. Most employers want people who have the college experience. I only have whatever random knowledge I've been able to learn myself from years of playing around with settings and fixing problems on our home computer (which unfortunately I only got 45 minutes a day on the computer if I was lucky, so I do feel like I am behind in my computer knowledge).

I do enjoy helping people with their computer problems a lot, probably partially due to the fact that their problems are almost always simple fixes and are a relief from the kind of ridiculous things I get myself into on my own, like this for example Also I just like fixing things, and if it's for someone else then that's a bonus. My mom also said something about helping me and my brother with college once I get there. I'd probably just do some stuff at a community college at first. I do plan on going back to BYU eventually, just probably not for a while.

But I did get it fixed, I figured out that pressing f12 during startup allows me to choose a boot device (which would have been REALLY nice to know a while ago, that's what I wanted to know all along but I didn't find anything about it and so I assumed it didn't have that option). I ended up just re-installing Ubuntu again to allow me to boot into Windows. I want to uninstall Ubuntu, back up my Windows files and then use a recovery disk and just do a clean install of Windows as I've been having problems with it. But it looks like I will have to call Toshiba and get them to send me a disk for that. I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy, but they ended up charging me nothing as I still figured out most of the stuff before they did while we were working on it, most of the time they were actually helping other people. To be fair to them, it's my machine and I knew the problem, but I'm glad they showed me what f12 did at least.

Still, the recovery partition must be corrupted, it freezes or reboots if I try to use any sort of recovery utility. So that's why I need to just re-install Windows entirely.