Well I totally screwed myself (timewise).
I thought I'll setup ubuntu and dual boot so I could test the protoshares thing in Linux. I downloaded the latest ubuntu and put it on my USB drive and when I was trying to boot into the USB drive it required several tries with hanging and blank screens etc. I should have took that as a warning and stopped but I tried a few times and finally it succeeded and I was able to install it. It's been a little while since I've dual booted so I wasn't thinking too hard about it and setup ubuntu. Well, the boot system changed my 8.1 so it doesn't even ask which OS you want to boot into and I can't even boot back into ubuntu because it just hangs. I tried reinstalling ubuntu to no avail.
Finally I realized that my only copies of windows are on my desktop HDD and I deleted my 8.1 usb bootable drive to install ubuntu. I found an old 8 disk but trying to "repair" it said something about the files being locked. My only serial number I could scrounge up was 8.1 and that won't work on the 8 disk.
My windows serials are also only on my HDD but luckily after quite a while I was able to find one. Getting the .iso image takes forever even directly from MS it's coming at like 0.5 Mb/s so it's not even near my internet speed for whatever reason.
Luckily I've backed my wallets etc. regularly so the only thing lost in the end is time but it sure has complicated things. After spending a couple days tinkering with a new MB which was apparently DOA and now this I'll be happy to get everything back up and just let it run. Then again I'm sure I'll get bored and start tinkering again soon.
Once I get everything running I'll try install it again, I've read that certain USB drives have issues etc. but this one works with Windows. This time I'll disconnect my other drives so it can't mess with the boot tables, and then I can just choose the HDD to boot from if I want to switch (what I have usually done). What was going to be an hour little test run turned into a 24hr ordeal.
Backup everything is the morale here. (including windows disks, serials, wallets, etc.)
I was planning for a fresh reinstall anyway, I just would have preferred to be ready to do it vs. almost having huge issues getting the PC back up and running.