I created an account for the sole purpose of thanking you all. When I got this error, I almost cried. And I'm a grown man. You all helped me considerably.
I want to clarify for other people my exact steps because I was a little confused by all this (and stuff I read in other forums and such). Hopefully the next person can have an easier go at it.
1. On another comp running Windows 8.1 (It was Pro, while the problem comp was Home. I hoped it wouldn't matter and it didn't
I created a USB recovery drive. To do this I clicked the search charm and typed "recovery". One of the options was "Create Recovery Disk" I followed the simple instructions. It said it only needed 512MB of memory so the 4GB usb drive was more than enough.
2. I stuck the USB into the problem comp and started the comp.
3. At the error message, it also said "Press Esc to access the something something" This brought me to what I believe was the BIOS. It looks like an old DOS Prompt PC from 1988.
4. In the submenu (tab if you will) of that screen there was a Boot option. On the Boot Tab was a list of boot options that began with 1) Windows, 2) USB Cruzer (which was the brand of USB I had so I knew it was that) and 3, 4 and so on.
5. On option 1 I clicked enter and went to the USB Cruzer option and clicked enter. This changed the order to 1) USB Cruzer and 2) Windows, etc.
6. I saved my changes and exited (I think the option was F10 to save)
7. I restarted and it went to the Windows Recovery!!! This was a milestone. I cheered alone in my apartment. No one heard, but it didn't matter to me.
8. I picked Advanced and went to Cmd Prompt as the instructions said.
9. Here is the part it took me forever to figure out. No offense to all the posters because you did help considerably, but it was really hard to decipher what EXACTLY to type in the command prompt. It was (remove the quotes) "bcdboot c:\windows /s c: /l en-us"
9.5 Note as a previous poster mentioned that the direction of the slashes /\/\/ is VERY important. And the spaces are important. That is a lower case L not an uppercase I before "en-us". Also a lot of the previous posts seemed in my mind to disassociate the "bcdboot" part from the "c:\windows" part and it was my sixth or seventh attempted when I typed them together.
10. A response in the cmd window said "Boot Fixed!" Actually it was a longer more specific sentence, but that's what it said in mind.
11. I exited the Cmd Window (clicked X, this whole time I assumed the mouse didn't work, like in the old DOS days before mice, so it was an embarrasingly long time before I used the mouse to close that window).
12. In the Windows Recovery I clicke the "Exit and Start Windows 8.1" option. It rebooted back to the Windows Recovery screen.
12.5 I realized I should have probably removed the USB key. I turned off the computer because I was unsure what would happen if I removed the USB while the comp was still on. Then removed the USB. Wait a few seconds as I've been taught in the past..... Turn on the comp.
13. Wait with extreme anxiety as the pc booted ... like ... normal
, but it took a good long while. About one-two minutes longer than usual.
Success!!!!
Now to look into how much a 500GB cloud storage would cost so I don't break down in tears the next time something like this happens.
Again, thanks to all who helped in this forum. I'll be sure to come back for any future problems.