Cheers!

I have NTFS recovery software and I was able to get his personal data off the banjaxed HDD but to recover the Lappy to factory settings I'm not sure how to go about it!

What exactly does GParted Live do?

I might try creating a recovery USB on another HP laptop to see what files are created and the folder layout and then try to manually copy the same files from the fecked HDD and see if I can manually create one if possible...