curious, after all the suggestions given to you by several people, can you tell us how did he "reinstalled everything "? Please reply, in case we might learn something we don't know!
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One more thing, you owe it to yourself to make sure whether your PC/laptop can boot from USB. Go to BIOS, and allow "enable legacy devices" (it may have a slightly different wording), then go to Bott options in the BIOS to give it the priority rank you want. Let us know if that option was available to you? If it is, you owe it to yourself to take advantage of it! (but then, you need to make sure no prankster will boot your PC from a bootable USB flashdrive and wreck havoc in it... it's for security that manufacturers usually set USB boot to "off") ).
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Lastly, to be "legal" you're supposed to use the OEM recovery disk for your PC/laptop, so you might want to see if the manufacturer has these available for purchase. Microsoft general rule was that these CD's be included in the original product delivery (some manufacturers got exceptions), but at least they should be available for the customer to buy. Although they are meant to boot and some do wipe everything, they usually allow repair, alternatively. A real good OS backup to have, for $10-$25.
