Help needed! Bad virus, formatted drive, need to get OS back, no OS partition.

[penticton]

Time sensitive! Help! Stuck! Had a bad virus, Toshiba Satellite laptop, was forced to completely format the drive thus eliminating the OS recovery install partition.
I am unable to proceed any further, I absolutely thought this computer would have had some sort of failsafe to NOT format the hidden OS recovery installation partition, but I'm not that lucky.
Is there some sort of bootable OS recovery I can download on my desktop computer and put it on a bootable USB stick?
I must find a way to get an OS back on this laptop, any help will be much appreciated!

Specs:
Toshiba Satellite L70-B -00Y
Model: PSKRLC-00Y00G

And as I said before, I have a USB stick and a second PC that I can download to.

Thankyou.

 

[Saga Lout]

For starters, no malware forces you to format a drive.

Go to Microsoft's site and download the ISO for the version of Windows you used to have. Use a utility named Rufus to make your USB stick bootable and to incorporate that ISO on to the stick. Them you can use your stick to install Windows and activation wlil be automatic.

I would recommend using a new hard disk if you want to have a chance to recover data from the old one once you have a system up and running.

 

[genthug]

I don't know what OS you were using, but:

https/www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

That is the bootable USB download for Win 10.

[strike]Also be aware that as you were using a laptop, you likely had an OEM version of Windows, and likely do not know what the activation code was. You could try to email Toshiba to see if you could recover that.[/strike]
Edit: but apparently you don't need to do that, oops.

 

[Saga Lout]

You're right - I've done dozens and te OEM tattoo is recognised and activation is autoatic.

I forgot to add that the BIOS will need to be set so that USB Legacy Support is enabled and the Boot Options will need to be set to put the hard disk as second to the USB device. Once the installation is in, that can be reversed.

 

[thebudman420]

This laptop must of had windows 8 preinstalled, at least that is what came up during a google. If you in a quick hurry linux on a usb flash drive for now. Not a gamer? ditch windows and all the viruses and just install it permanently. i recommend linux mint cinnamon. You can go redownload windows and your bios most likely has the stuff in it to pre-activate your windows 8. Not sure if the process is legal so i wont go into it. But technically he has already paid for it so he needs an oem copy or he needs to turn a retail into an oem copy or go find an oem copy for toshiba laptops. A cpl files added after you boot into the os will make the laptop pre-activate like it should after entering a cpl commands in the command prompt as administrator. This can be done without hacks or loaders since he previously had the os preinstalled in the computer. Turning retail into oem may not be legal so i won't give instructions on how to do that as i don't want to get banned.

 

[Saga Lout]

I agree with you about Mint but Serena is the latest flavour. I'm not sure many Windows users would find Crossfire and Wine up to the job of converting everything they need.

Reinstalling Windows in these circumstances is totally legitimate and activation is automatic.