Windows 8.1 won't boot.

[wando red]

Pleas tell exactly  how did you make the USB recovery?

Well, I have two of these computers so I copied the recovery partition to USB from the other computer.  Didn't work.  So, I tried the full 8.1 install USB from the link you provided.  It did the exact same thing.  So I put the Ubuntu USB in and didn't have any problems.  loads right up.  with the Ubuntu in I can see the recovery partitions but I don't know if I can do anything from there.

I will add that I disabled all other boot options to make sure that the USB was the only boot.

[wando red]

well I have tried everything I can think of to get windows back up and running.  I tried recovery, I tried a clean install of 8.1 and even windows 10 but I just cannot get it to begin the install process.  So I guess I will have to put Linux on it since that is the only thing that will boot.   Unless someone out there has any other suggestions I can try.

[Geek-9pm]

To do a clean install of Windows 8.1 you must have a Hard Drive  free of a crashed system. Otherwise Windows 8.1 tries to repair it and then quits when it can not. So you have to remove artifacts of a crashed system.
This has been documented.
On a forum:
http://www.eightforums.com/performance-maintenance/29803-disk-clean-up-windows-update-clean-up-stuck.html
From Microsoft:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/picking-up-the-pieces-after-a-computer-crash
From HP:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software/reinstalling-windows-8-after-hard-drive-crash/td-p/4255394

This is not needed if you use a new Hard Drive that has no system information.
When your Hard drive has vital information, do a clean install on a new drive. Later copy over your vital data to the new drive. Yes, there are other ways. But this more conservative way is safer. 

For more on this issue, search for:
Install Windows 8 after recovery failure

This one from Tom's Hardware looks good:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1780786/windows-total-system-failure.html

[Computer_Commando]

...part of the MS label is torn off and I don't know the product key. I downloaded a ProduKey retriever from NirSoft but I'm not sure if it will work on Windows 8.1...

No more PID labels.
http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to-retrieve-windows-8-oem-product-key-from-bios/

[SuperDave]

Thanks CC. I figured that out. On closer examination I discovered it wasn't torn off.

[wando red]

OK, so I took the hard drive out and the USB drives boot up.  So it was the hard drive the whole time.  I guess Linux booting was making me think the drive was OK.  But I ran a diagnostic with Ubuntu and the drive failed.  Thanks for your time and assistance guys.