Hi zxcvb3,
Welcome to the HP Forums!
I would like to take a moment and thank you for using the forum, it is a great place to find answers. For you to have the best experience in the HP forum, I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
I understand that you disconnected the external hard drive while starting your Spectre and now it is frozen on starting Windows.
Here is a YouTube Video that demonstrates how to install Ram. Please note how to remove the bottom off and disregard the remainder. How to open / change RAM HP Spectre
Once you have the bottom off you will need to check if it has a removable battery or not. As I do not have your specifics, I have not way to check.
Here is a document to assist you with Performing a Hard Reset or Forced Reset.
Be sure to disconnect any USB or external devices before trying the hard reset.
If this is unsuccessful, I would boot into Safe Mode and try a Repair. Entering Safe Mode
You can also run troubleshooting from here also.
At the command prompt type sfc /scannow and press enter.
This will scan for corrupted files and try to fix them.
If you are still unable to boot into Windows, I would try a restore.
While starting the notebook press F11 approximately once every second. This should launch the Recovery Manager
Under Immediate help. choose restore to previous date. Pick one that is before this happened.
If you have not successfully loaded Windows yet I would follow the previous option, only choose a recovery to bring it back to factory.
Please let me know the result.