Recovery media not working

[Sean_34]

So, my father's Toshiba Satellite C55 hasn't been able to make it to the desktop. The startup repair, system restore and image recovery from the troubleshooting menu don't work. That only left me the option to use recovery media; I used my mother's laptop to create said USB recovery media (with all system files backed up) and set my dad's laptop to boot from that USB.

2 and a half hours later, it was at 3% until it ran into a problem and I started it over. I changed USB slots and it was on course to do the same thing.

What can I do now?

 

[captaincharisma]

what version of windows does the laptop have? windows 8 or 10?

 

[Sean_34]

Both the faulty laptop and the laptop I used to create the recovery media run Windows 10

 

[captaincharisma]

i would try the recovery media install again and see what happens. if it still gets stuck or does not install then use the media creation tool to create a windows 10 install disk. if a plain copy of windows 10 doesn't make it through an install then there is a hardware problem with the laptop

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

 

[Sean_34]

I think I will try downloading the media creation tool and try the clean Windows install. But I want to ask about one more thing. I'm using the command prompt for advanced troubleshooting and I've noticed a couple things. First off, if I take out the recovery media USB, (with the SSD set as the boot drive) I get:

"Reboot and select proper boot drive or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"

Which I suppose implies there is no bootable Windows file on the SSD anymore, faulty or not. Maybe the 3% and 2.5 hours wiped the SSD in prep for recovery??? Alright, so I plug the recovery USB back in so that I can get to the troubleshooting menu and access the command line. This is my first experience using command line outside Windows to troubleshoot, so I don't know what to make of all the information.

For one, cmd always starts on "X:\windows\system32>". I change to "C:" but when I type "cd Windows\system32\", (or even just cd windows\) and it says it can't find the path. Anyway, I use diskpart and "select disk 0", which has to be the laptop SSD and when I "detail disk" I see "boot disk: no" halfway down. It also says there are no volumes and when I "list partitions" there are none.

So, the OS drive has no volumes or partitions, isn't visible to be booted by the UEFI and can't be repaired, recovered or rolled back an update or any other TS'ing menu option. Is it safe to say that I just need to make that Win10 install drive and if that doesn't work, the SSD just can't read or write and needs to be replaced?

Can someone confirm my rookie hypothesis? Or let me know of any other commands I can use to troubleshoot. If I do make this Win10 install, do I have to create a new partition in the cmd prompt or will the install file do that?

Thanks for the help.

 

[captaincharisma]

I think I will try downloading the media creation tool and try the clean Windows install. But I want to ask about one more thing. I'm using the command prompt for advanced troubleshooting and I've noticed a couple things. First off, if I take out the recovery media USB, (with the SSD set as the boot drive) I get:

"Reboot and select proper boot drive or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"

Which I suppose implies there is no bootable Windows file on the SSD anymore, faulty or not. Maybe the 3% and 2.5 hours wiped the SSD in prep for recovery??? Alright, so I plug the recovery USB back in so that I can get to the troubleshooting menu and access the command line. This is my first experience using command line outside Windows to troubleshoot, so I don't know what to make of all the information.

For one, cmd always starts on "X:\windows\system32>". I change to "C:" but when I type "cd Windows\system32\", (or even just cd windows\) and it says it can't find the path. Anyway, I use diskpart and "select disk 0", which has to be the laptop SSD and when I "detail disk" I see "boot disk: no" halfway down. It also says there are no volumes and when I "list partitions" there are none.

So, the OS drive has no volumes or partitions, isn't visible to be booted by the UEFI and can't be repaired, recovered or rolled back an update or any other TS'ing menu option. Is it safe to say that I just need to make that Win10 install drive and if that doesn't work, the SSD just can't read or write and needs to be replaced?

Can someone confirm my rookie hypothesis? Or let me know of any other commands I can use to troubleshoot. If I do make this Win10 install, do I have to create a new partition in the cmd prompt or will the install file do that?

Thanks for the help.

it sounds like the recovery media you used before was able to do a quick or partial format which removed access to the old windows install but to be sure check the BIOS to see if the drive is still being detected

 

[Sean_34]

it sounds like the recovery media you used before was able to do a quick or partial format which removed access to the old windows install but to be sure check the BIOS to see if the drive is still being detected

It is being detected; the Toshiba mq01abf050 500gb drive is there when I check the Toshiba UEFI and in the Diskpart "detail disk".

Currently, i'm trying to do that clean install, but the drive needs to be converted to GPT from MBR, but when I "covert GPT" in Diskpart, it says,

"Virtual Disk Service Error: the specified disk is not converable. CDROMs and DVDs are examples of disks that are not convertable."

I'm using this thread and SkyNetRising's answer and it is "Create partition EFI size=260" that tells me the drive has to be GPT. I've tried converting both the disk and the primary 300mb partition to GPT and both times I get the above virtual disk error.