Hi caylorsg,
Tech support is always free, even for out of warranty cases or even general enquires.
Are you sure you called the HP support line of your region.
If you are running windows 8 and want to do a factory reset, you will have to press F11 at the startup [first HP logo page].
After that you will have to select the option for reset/minimized image recovery.
This option would be inside the option Troubleshoot.