Very unusual behaviour of Satellite L750D-14R

Question

One of my kids has a Satellite L750D-14R laptop and a couple of weeks ago were complaining that the laptop was running slowly. It *was* running slowly - it took 10 to 15 actual minutes just to load minecraft, and then the game was unplayable because it was so slow. It already had 6gb of RAM. To try to fix it, I reinstalled Windows 8 (when we purchased it, it came with windows 7, and I upgraded it to Windows 8.1), did all the system updates, then did the windows 8.1 update.
It seemed to be ok at this point, faster. But it started to blue-screen regularly, like every time it was used. I tried another reinstall, this time installing Windows 8.1 directly. I did all the system updates etc, and it started to blue screen again. By this time I'd already spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix it. This time I went for the full-on nuclear option and completely formatted the drive including removing all the partitions. There were 3 partitions, a very small recovery partition, and the system and data partitions. I figured I wouldn't need recovery - if there were problems I could format and reinstall again. So I blew away all of the partitions and consolidated them into a single partition on the drive.
Now the laptop is completely unusable. With the original Toshiba HDD (freshly formatted) installed the laptop just boots directly to a blue screen that says:
"Recovery, your PC needs to be repaired. The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors. File: \WINDOWS\System32\winload.exe
Error code: 0xc000000f
You'll need to use the recovery tools on your installation media. If you don't have the installation media contact your system administrator of manufacturer.
Press enter to try again
Press F8 for start up settings"
Pressing enter or F8 just makes the screen flicker for less than a second, then it goes back to the same message again. It doesn't try to boot, it doesn't show the BIOS or any normal start-up messages, or the Toshiba logo or anything.
With a brand new, freshly formatted HDD, the laptop does nothing when I switch it on - completely black screen just with a flashing cursor at the top left of the screen. It doesn't boot to BIOS, there are no system messages or logos, I can't type at the cursor, it just sits there blinking indefinitely.
It's like there was something on the 'recovery' partition that stops users from upgrading the HDD or something - any drive that doesn't have this 'special' recovery partition won't work, thus ensuring that consumers buy a new laptop when it grinds to a halt instead of upgrading. This may seem cynical, but I've seen similar hardware anti-upgrade solutions in the past - Compaq PCs used to have special plastic notches molded onto optical drives so that the drives could only be used in Compaq chassis.
Just to put this into context, I'm not a certified or qualified computer scientist or anything, *but* I was a desktop support engineer for a very large company for a long time a few years ago. I've built, repaired and upgraded hundreds of computers over a period of around 20 years, and in all that time, I've never seen a problem like this. What I mean is, I'm not a total computer novice! Usually a full format and reinstall fixes anything but broken hardware, and this doesn't feel like a broken hardware problem.
The laptop is between 1 and 2 years old. I'm pretty sure laptops should last longer than this. I don't really want to bin it yet. Is there anything I can do? Can I recreate this special anti-upgrade partition somehow?

Answer 1

Originally Posted by JoeLouis
According to you message, you were able to reinstall Win 8 on this HDD
Well, I was able to reinstall Windows 8 and 8.1 on the original Toshiba HDD, before I repartioned the drive. I've not been able to install anything on the new HDD, it doesn't give me the option to boot from disk (in order to install windows), or any other option at all.
Originally Posted by JoeLouis
Well, if you need such disk, you could still order the medium from Toshiba Arvato serice.
Perfect, I didn't know this could be ordered by itself, I will try this. Although, the laptop won't let me boot from any normal CD/DVD - how will I use this recovery disc?
Thanks for the advice Joe