Possible to get older versions?

Hi folks,

Bit of a weird ask, but hopefully I'm in the right place.

A friend of mine had their hard drive fail and brought the laptop to me for repair. It's some kind of special starwars-themed HP. The drive was completely gone, no possibility for recovery. I dropped in a new drive and re-loaded windows from media I had on hand(I do PC repair as a side business), confirmed all the drivers were there, then gave the laptop back. Simple job.

Apparently, this particular machine had come with a bunch of special themes, sounds, apps, etc from HP. The friend was able to re-download all that, but sometime between when they bought the laptop and when I fixed it, Microsoft went and broke compatibility with the star wars software.

Now my friend would be perfectly happy to run an older version of windows and have their cool themes than be on the latest and greatest, so I'm at least willing to look into it. From what we've been able to discern, we need somewhere around Windows 10 version 1511 for the specialized apps and themes to work.

Is it possible to find install media for this?

To be clear: I AM NOT asking for "warz" or any cracks or anything illegal. I have a fully legitimate windows product key ready and waiting for the install. I just need to find the right install version to make this thing sing again.

Any help would be appreciated.

The unit is a "Star Wars Special Edition Notebook - 15-an050nr" made by HP.

Thanks!

hunterjwizzard said:

...we need somewhere around Windows 10 version 1511 for the specialized apps and themes to work.
Is it possible to find install media for this?

+1 for @Try3's recommendation of the Heidoc tool. All the links it generates are for direct downloads from the Microsoft servers, except the ones for Dell ISO which are direct from Dell.

There's one trick you need to know though, otherwise you'll never scroll down to the bottom of that 'Select edition' list. There's no scroll bar on the side of that list. The only way I know to navigate it is to use the up/down keys on your keyboard.

hunterjwizzard said:

It's some kind of special starwars-themed HP. The drive was completely gone, no possibility for recovery....

Now my friend would be perfectly happy to run an older version of windows and have their cool themes than be on the latest and greatest, so I'm at least willing to look into it. From what we've been able to discern, we need somewhere around Windows 10 version 1511 for the specialized apps and themes to work.

There is one other possibility (well, two if you count trying to buy an ISO from HP).

But it requires you to find someone who has a working "Star Wars Special Edition Notebook - 15-an050nr" and is willing to help. You borrow it, plug in a USB and make a Recovery Drive that includes system files. A recovery drive made on any OEM pre-installed Windows 10 will not only include the Windows OS, but will also contain all the OEM customisations, apps and drivers. This is why OEMs don't routinely supply a factory reset disk these days. Anyone can make their own.

Boot from the Recovery drive and install Windows, it will be 'factory reset' back to how it came out of the box.

Create Recovery Drive in Windows 10

Awesome! Thanks guys!

Really glad this has gotten a lot easier. Was having flashbacks to when I was a full-time tech in the windows XP days. I think I at one point counted 14 distinct versions of windows, and no way to get ISOs short of shady warez sites. Painful.

That should do it, I'll be making good use of that tool myself.

Much appreciated!