Interesting. The machine rebooted when you did that, so you were not in 8 at all. The HD activity was your system trying to find the Boot Sector.
It's looking like your MBR is fouled up, you can repair it using the latest version of Partition Wizard Home - But you have to run it from within Mini-XP on the Hiren's Boot Disk.
Put the disk in the drive, boot from it, and get into Mini-XP - Make sure you are connected to the Network and you have to install the Drivers and Networking components, just a couple of easy clicks on the Mini XP screen. Download the latest PW from Cnet, you can install it to Mini XP then run it - Locate your main System drive and right-click on the DRIVE, that would be the area on the total LEFT of the shown drive. You will see an entry that says "Fix MBR" - Do that.
Then you will have to find an 8 Install disk, I think you can use any 8 Install disk, boot from it, and run the Auto Repair. The elements of it are all common to all versions of 8 so it should fix your boot sequence. Or go to your friend and get his Install Disk, because you absolutely need to have it to do these kinds of repairs, you will not be able to do it from the Recovery Partition, all that will do is wipe your drive and reinstall everything including all of the Wild Tangent Games.