Windows 8.1 Can't Get Passed The Boot Screen

My Windows 8.1 laptop boots up and shows the spinning dots infinitely. When I tap F8 to go into safe mode it instead says "Preparing Automatic Repair", but is then changed into a black screen. The only keys that I found out to work are F1 which shows system information, and F2 which shows "HP PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI". I have reached a standstill and have no idea how to fix this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi can you post what laptop you are using, and what you were doing before this happened, the more information you can supply the better

My laptop is an HP Envy 17, product number F0D50AV, and my computer was updating a driver and asked me to restart, after that My cursor had disappeared and my mousepad stopped working. I was looking up how to get my mouse working again and the guide said to preform a system restore. Afterwards this started happening when it turned back on.

Did you make restore points ?

I may have, but I have no idea how to access them from the boot up screen.

wafflebandito said:

I may have, but I have no idea how to access them from the boot up screen.

Click to expand...

This has worked for me.

I pressed the power button to shut off the computer.
I pressed it to start it.
I did this 3 or 4 times quickly.

Finally a screen with boot options appeared.
I chose the option for a command prompt.
edit> Option #6--- Safe Mode with Command Prompt
I typed in - rstrui.exe -- & pressed Enter.

The System Restore window popped up & there I could choose a restore point.

Of course, what has worked for me may or may not work for others.

I'm unsure if I'm not doing it correctly, or if it just doesn't work (pressing the power button 3-4 times method). It keeps alternating between the regular bootup which keeps the spinning dots, and the "Preparing Automatic Repair" bootup.

I just tried some different combinations and F9 brings me to a Boot Manager, the options here are "OS boot manager", and "Boot From EFI File", F10 brings me to a System Utility/BIOS Setup options menu. There's a sub category that has a drop down menu for "Boot Options", but again I am clueless to what this is as I have never seen it before. Finally, F11 says "System Recovery", but shows the spinning dots, then text that says, "please wait", then brings me to an infinite black screen.

When the screen says "Preparing Automatic Repair" let it go for a while and see what it does. That will eventually bring up another screen that will give you advanced options. Under there you should be able to find a function that will allow you to boot into safe mode.