OK, so I checked and I didn't have an old SATA SSD as I'd thought. Obviously, I'd used all of my old stock in one old desktop or laptop or another and now I'm cleaned out. I did, however, have an old WD 120GB 2.5" hard drive that I'd purchased a decade or so ago, for my daughter's old XBox 360, but was never used for that purpose. Actually, it's only been powered on a very few times to move large files from one computer to another in a pinch using a USB SATA cable. I figured that it should probably still be good. Using that, I was able to reinstall Windows 10 and get this laptop going again. While it did seem like installing via USB was horribly slow, it did work and the laptop is working well now. While the drive isn't large enough to really make this laptop usable for much of anything, it does help me prove that everything else seems to be working just fine, making me feel much better about just ordering a 1TB SSD to replace the original failed Toshiba HDD. I think I'm back in business and can get this laptop going well for my brother-in-law now, assuming he still wants it back. If not, I may have inherited a nice old Dell laptop that just needs an SSD and a little cleanup and TLC. Thanks.  
I'm sort of the tech support guy for my family when things get more involved than just the basic stuff. My brother-in-law asked me to try and revive his old Dell Inspiron 5559. It is long out of warranty and he'd like to at least have it usable even if it isn't his main computer.So, when I turn it on, the Dell circle emblem comes up, and that's it. It never gets any further. If I boot and press F12, I get boot options. Under UEFI I see UEFI: Toshiba MQ01ABD100, Partition 1, so I figure the HDD is good, at least to a degree, so I select that. The screen blanks, then the computer sits at a black screen until I turn it off. I boot with F12 again and run diagnostics and I get error code 2000-0142 which means the HDD Self Test was unsuccessful. I figured I'd try to repair or reinstall Windows 10 before ordering an SSD to replace this old Toshiba HDD, so I inserted Windows 10 Install Media via USB. This time, when I boot with F12, I see UEFI: SanDisk, Partition 1, so I know it sees my flashdrive, and booting from that is an option. I select the flashdrive, press enter, but then I get the same blank/black screen. This computer just won't boot, period, and it isn't just the hard drive. I should also mention that I pulled the Toshiba HDD from the laptop and checked it in an external caddy on my computer and I can see data and open files without issue. It just won't boot in his laptop, along with anything, so it seems. What's something else that I can look into that could be causing these issues? Does anyone have any idea?Thanks.
Dell Inspiron 5559 will not boot from HDD or USB