toshiba c50 check media fail no bootable device

quinnd6

My friend has a problem with a toshiba c50d-a138 satellite laptop.
It uses Windows 8.
When it is powered on it says "check media fail" twice and
"No bootable device please restart system".
The hard drive is being detected in the bios.
I booted to Ubuntu cd and the drive appears to be completely empty.
There's no partitions on it at all according to Ubuntu it is just an empty drive with 500gb free.
Would there be any way of recovering the Windows 8 boot partition so that I can boot it again or reset to factory defaults?
I've tried pressing 0 when it starts up and that does nothing it just brings me back to "check media fail" and "No bootable device"

5star02707

if there's no partition on it im afraid they;re all deleted. best way to do is just clean install another windows bootable usb drive or using a windows cd.

factory defaults are no longer in them (partition was deleted)

quinnd6

You were right about that.
I got Windows 8.1 x64 running on it.
Unfortunately Windows update won't update.
It gets caught in a loop checking for updates forever.
What's the solution to that one?
Nothing I try seems to work.

theteal

Did the licence validate ok? The first check for Windows update issues is to check your time and date are correct

I'm not sure I would trust that disk again. Maybe take the opportunity to upgrade to a SSD.

quinnd6

It activated fine.
I didn't have to enter a licence key it picked it up when I connected to the net.
I believe that's a feature of Windows 8.
It's not my choice to upgrade to an ssd.
It's not my laptop.
I don't believe the hard drive is the problem here.
Many people have had this problem where Windows 8 hangs checking for updates and never updates.
It's a common problem if you check the net.
Maybe it needs more time.
I don't know.
How long would it need to check for updates and come back with something after a new install?
I'm going to try 2 hours and see.

theteal

Sorry, I wasn't saying the disk was the cause of the update issue, just that I wouldn't trust a disk that had previously wiped itself.

Why not just let it search overnight? It'll either work or not, you won't be losing any time over it

quinnd6

Yes what you said didn't work it would have stayed checking for updates for eternity but anyway that's ok I managed to fix the problem.

5star02707

quinnd6 wrote: »

Yes what you said didn't work it would have stayed checking for updates for eternity but anyway that's ok I managed to fix the problem.

mind to share what you did? Haven't done it on windows 8 but in windows 7 whenever i do updates i select around 7-10 updates not all at once.

quinnd6

This is the video that worked for me linked at the bottom of my comment.
Firstly I recommend Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them.
That's what worked for me and the way I preferred doing it.
It may work without that but that's what worked for me.
What is not shown in the video is you need to disable your internet or the standalone installer will hang forever looking for updates.

So you run services.msc.
Disables Windows updates in local services.
Download the installer.
Disable internet connection very important.
Run the installer.
Wait for it to do its thing and follow the instructions.
I think I might have had to restart my pc after the update finished.
Enable your internet connection again obviously.
Then run windows updates and after about 10 minutes it should start updating.

Heres the link for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aW63KHgyrY

All the links for the standalone installers are in the video.
Heres the link for Windows 8.1 64 Bit Installer.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51209