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Can't Refresh

My (12-year-old) son's computer won't boot.  It's a Dell Inspiron 17" running Windows 8, bought in July 2013.  When I turn it on, Dell logo comes on and then in upper left it says "Checking Media [fail]", then "checking media" again, then "No Boot Device Found.  Press any key to beboot the machine".  I insert a USB recovery drive (it was made for my Toshiba that runs Windows 8.1, but it should work anyway, right?).  I choose US keyboard layout and it then opens into Recovery Environment.  I choose Troubleshoot → Refresh Your PC.  Message appears "The drive where Windows is installed is locked.  Unlock the drive and try again."  I go to Troubleshoot → Startup Repair, which runs and then says "Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC."  I then go back to Troubleshoot → Command Prompt and run chkdsk on Windows drive (c:).  It says "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems."  Dell would probably tell me it's a hard drive failure and tell me to buy another one.  But my son has a lot of things on this computer he'd like to keep, and I have a funny feeling that all his stuff is still there if I can only figure out how to fix this boot issue.  I will make him put a backup procedure in place once it's running again.  I just need to get it going.