Hi. Going back to your original situation. I realize from what you said it is hard to know exactly what is going on without some tool to display your partition table and other important things to possibly see what may have happened to everything on your disk.
So, I would like to ask you a few questions about what you wrote...
I had a sudden mental malfunction last week and installed Windows 8 preview without reading trough the part that you cannot get rid of it.
I'm not sure what you mean you can't get rid of it, exactly. You can always get rid of it, it just might make your partition scheme different than it was and install new system files (the files that boot Windows).
I got HP pavilion g6, don't know what version of Windows 7 I had, but anyways I backed up all my files on another computer and tried to use HP system recovery to reset it to factory state, but instead managed to reset Windows 8 and wiped the remains of Windows 7.
Could you clarify what you mean you reset Windows 8 and wiped Windows 7? From my experience with recovery partitions on Dells and Acers computers, the whole process is automatic. Are you saying the automatic process failed, perhaps due to the repartitioned disk when Windows 8 was installed?
Tried again with F11 during start up, that doesn't work. So I found that another solution would be to use EasyBCD on some files located at recovery drive, except it appears to be empty, although it is supposed to contain 13GB of something.
Can you post a link to this solution? Furthermore when you say it appears to be empty, how exactly are you seeing this if your Windows is corrupt? Again, thanks for the clarification.
So I found that yet another solution would be to set recovery drive as active. That resulted in the computer not being able to find OS.
How exactly did you change the partition to active if you can't boot to Windows? Again, can you post the link to the solution? This could possibly work if you not only set it as active, but change the partition type to the correct one so it will boot. In other words, it might in fact be a FAT32 partition, but it has been changed by HP to a different type in order to "hide" it. At least on other PCs I have seen, this is the method used. Like in the case of older Dells, the partition might be FAT16, but they change it to a type called DE. The way the recovery works on the older Dells is you hit Alt+F11, then the recovery program changes the partition type from DE to FAT16, sets the partition active, then boots the recovery system (it is FreeDOS IIRC).
So I burned system rescue cd to USB drive and used Super Grub to find that I supposedly have two Windows Vistas - number one is corrupt (so I suppose could be remains of Windows 7) number two is Windows 8. And when I start computer it boots the corrupt one. So I got two issues here - is there some way to make it boot Windows 8 without having to use linux for workaround? Secondly, more importantly, neosmart sells Windows 7 recovery cd, but it says it won't install new Windows, so will it work if recovery files are, indeed, corrupt?
Yeah, so the Super Grub disk calls everything Vista and higher Vista, don't worry about that. Since you say you installed Windows 8, yes you might be able to make it work again. You can download the ISO for Windows 8 Consumer Preview instead of the Startup pack, burn it, then use it exactly the way you would a Windows 7 recovery disk mentioned on the Neosmart wiki. I'm not saying use it to recover the install of Windows by installing Windows, I'm saying you can use it to access the recovery tools. Again, I'm not sure what you meant by Windows 8 is reset, but if it is there and intact, the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) used from a Windows 8 Consumer Preview DVD will give you access to all the tools you need to list volumes, change partition flags, rebuild BCDs, reinstall MBR and VBRs. So, yes, try to use the wiki page that tells you how to fix an non-booting system, then once you are back in Windows 8 you will be able to hopefully have GUI tools to check out the rest of your disk if you are uncomfortable using the command line partition editor, diskpart.
Well, I hope this helps further the discussion so you get back to a working computer. I hope this wasn't too long-winded.
breaker
Addendum:
I know, but the stuff is labeled differently on Linux and I couldn't find anything. Though, since I was lookingfor something else, I could try this again, when I get about buying blank DVDs. My note on not wanting to mess up anything was just a general notion, not relevant to this.
In the meantime - reinstalling Windows 8 has wiped the HP recovery manager application and the version I downloaded from HP website won't work - it has compatibility issues and I am not sure if it is right for my laptop model (the HP website doesn't list it anywhere, I downloaded the one supposed to be for Notebooks), so I cannot make recovery discs the usual way. Is there any other way to do it?
Oh I see now. You reinstalled Windows 8 and are now running from it, correct? I think there is an HP CD-ROM boot disk that lets you run the HP recovery manager at boot, no?
Also, you can try to install the HP recovery manager using compatibility mode for Windows 7, and make sure you run the installer as administrator just in case.
Also, if you are in fact in Windows 8, maybe now you can post a screen shot of your disk managment screen. From the Windows 8 desktop hover over the extreme leftmost corner of the screen, right-click, then select Disk Management.
I'm curious now, I suppose.
Also, on many newer computers, the recovery partition is in a part of the disk created by low-level tools making it invisible to almost any OS aside from aforementioned tools. This is known as the Host Protected Area, or HPA. If it is in a HPA, you won't see it listed at all in your Disk Management, or even in Linux.
breaker