In over my head - Toshiba issue

Having trouble with an old Toshiba...

History: My girlfriend's son was having issues with his laptop, he had tons of spyware, couple of decent viruses. It had been neglected for a long time. He wanted to play Wizard101, which is not too graphically intense from what I can tell (I'm not a techie), but it was very very laggy. I improved the performance by getting rid of a lot of the garbage, but it got back to being a bit slow, not as bad as the beginning, but a bit slow.

This is where I decided to get smart, big mistake...

I decided to put a fresh copy of Windows 7 on there. My first try, everything worked perfectly. But the kid did something really bad on it, installed something really dumb, and the computer just wouldn't do anything...

So we decided to try again, and the installation went fine. But the big problem is he took it before I was able to load the Toshiba specific drivers. It just had the Windows generic drivers. But he was able to do just about everything so I guess there was no rush. He wanted to play Minecraft, and we couldn't load it, it kept crashing. The errors had to do with the display drivers. Additionally, we tried to play a web based educational game, and the same issue happened. So I tried to install the Toshiba specific drivers, and we kept having the same issues.

Again, me being bright, I decided to go for the fresh install again, but now Windows wouldn't install. It would get to the final stages and say something to the effect of it missing components. I tried this with Windows 7 and Windows 8 clean installs from a USB. I was able to google the error, and the suggestion was to clean the disk using diskpart.

I do not have a lot of knowledge of diskpart, but I tried to do that, and it was taking forever. We had to leave. We left. When we came back, the computer was shut down.

That brings us to the current time...

I am trying to install Windows 8 via USB. I have a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6905. I have successfully installed OS via USB on several occasions. After installation issues, I googled the issue and was asked to use diskpart. I tried and after wiping the disk I'm now getting the final errors, whether I try to boot from the HDD or the USB stick:

"Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

For Realtek RTL8101E/8102E PCI-Ethernet Controller v1.07 (080320)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

This happens each time I try to boot from the HDD or the USB.

Things I've tried based on Google:

Entering Setup and setting back to defaults.

Entering Setup and changing SATA Controller Mode to 'Compatibility'

Please help!

 

Pull the power plug, the main battery, remove the cover over the hard drive and RAM, and pull the CR2032 battery in there. That should reset the system, then try again and see what happens. You can also try and do a Bios reset also and see if that fixes things.