I feel ya bro. I spent 4 hours yesterday working on my youngest daughter’s Dell Inspiron...and, I had the boot disk. I was ready to take it to the shop when, after probably 25-30 restarts, it finally accepted the disc. After the diagnosis/repair function kicked in, it did a check disc and fixed it. Whew.
Going out to look for a backup drive this weekend...and considering a new laptop for the kid.
Good luck.
I have a 2104 AVG rescue disk . I wonder if that would work(if I could ever get to the screen to be able to use it)