Hi everyone, I am new to the forums and also a novice with computers. My friend gave me an Acer Aspire AXC-603G-UW15 after they owned it for 3 months and it quit working. They took it in an the guy told him that the HDD failed on it which is a 1.0 TB WD10EZEX. My friend didn't want to deal with it so he gave it to me. After messing around with it a little I got it to start up but it was very slow. I went in where it displays the OS activation key and wrote that down so I would have it and then with another computer using Windows media creation tool I put Windows 8.1 on a USB flash drive.
In the mean time I had shutdown the Aspire a few times and restarted it a few times each time it worked. I then entered the system settings on the Aspire and under recovery I set the computer to restart to the UEFI. The computer would shutdown and then start up again but nothing would appear on the monitor. After waiting a while and nothing happened I held the power button shutting it down. I hit the power button to turn it on and it started normal, not going to the UEFI. This time I accessed the recovery options and just set the computer to restart and boot from the USB flash drive. The same thing happen as before. After manually turning it off and then back on again I enter the recovery options and this time I tried to do a clean install of Windows. Where it deletes everything and reinstalls just the OS. I thought if I did this I would be able to clone the OS to my SSD. After the process was complete the computer said it was restarting and the same thing happened as the previous two times, but this time when I manually shut it off and turned it back on it still wouldn't turn on, nothing on the monitor at all. I wanted to include everything I have done so far so thank you for reading this all. I have no idea what to do now and would appreciate any suggestions on things to try to get this desktop running without having to purchase a new OS for it. I also tried to clone the installation media from the USB flash drive to my SSD and then put the SSD in where the HDD was thinking it would boot from that but that didn't work either. If anything is unclear just let me know and I will elaborate more. What should I try next?
In the mean time I had shutdown the Aspire a few times and restarted it a few times each time it worked. I then entered the system settings on the Aspire and under recovery I set the computer to restart to the UEFI. The computer would shutdown and then start up again but nothing would appear on the monitor. After waiting a while and nothing happened I held the power button shutting it down. I hit the power button to turn it on and it started normal, not going to the UEFI. This time I accessed the recovery options and just set the computer to restart and boot from the USB flash drive. The same thing happen as before. After manually turning it off and then back on again I enter the recovery options and this time I tried to do a clean install of Windows. Where it deletes everything and reinstalls just the OS. I thought if I did this I would be able to clone the OS to my SSD. After the process was complete the computer said it was restarting and the same thing happened as the previous two times, but this time when I manually shut it off and turned it back on it still wouldn't turn on, nothing on the monitor at all. I wanted to include everything I have done so far so thank you for reading this all. I have no idea what to do now and would appreciate any suggestions on things to try to get this desktop running without having to purchase a new OS for it. I also tried to clone the installation media from the USB flash drive to my SSD and then put the SSD in where the HDD was thinking it would boot from that but that didn't work either. If anything is unclear just let me know and I will elaborate more. What should I try next?
However, I'm afraid that if it's too damaged/corrupted, you won't be able to clone it or even if you are able to clone it, it's definitely not recommended. I'd suggest you to check up on the HDD's health and S.M.A.R.T. status by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the WD's Data LifeGuard diagnostic tool. Here's a link to the utility: 
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