Windows 8 is stuck in an automatic repair loop

we've had two win 8 laptops brought in the store over the last two weeks with reboot loop problem. Nothing seems to work so far. except on an Acer formatted the partition where the operating system was. rebooted and went into repair mood and reinstall a fresh copy of win 8 from the recovery partition, worked fine. The Dell we tried everything then formatted the os system partition didn't work missing files in partion that was formatted. So you can try this at your own risk!

Hey thanks for the help. I got a bit frustrated lol so i took it back to Harvey Norman where I brought it.

They gave me a list of instructions which fixed the problem although I had to do a factory reset. For anyone that is having problems maybe this will help this is the instructions i got from Harvey Norman

1. Power off unit
2. Power on and rapidly tap F11 for about 15 seconds
3. Select system recovery
4. Backup data (optional)

This took me into the HP recovery system which may not work on other models but it sorted out mine pretty easily.

Cheers again for all the help

Ben, thanks for posting this solution, but for many of the people posting here the actual difficulty is that the subsequent repair options fail. I didn't mention in my post on page 4, but I used the F11 option. It is the same for my Medion pc.  And by this (or as a result of another of my many tries,  _I don't remember-)  i did enter into the recovery screen.

But next:

-reset to a previous configuration didn't work; there was only one reset point, of july 2012 (i bought my pc 12 december 2012, and my problems occurred on 17 december after a hard close (pushing start button without signing out windows). Probably july was the date windows actually was installed in the factory, -or it was the date of an image of a master drive that they copy to all virgin pc's they sell of a certain type.  Anyhow, resetting to this backup point didn't work.

• The refresh option also didn't work - i got a message that there was too little space on my drive to make the automatic back-up. Probably because there was about 35 GB on my SSD of 64 GB, so a backup of about the same size is too much. The message told me to free some space first, but how to do if you have no system functions...? (i learned from this to make a boot CD as the first action as soon as i have the pc back from the factory...).
• And the complete reset (complete re-installing windows, destroying all you have on your drive, uncertain what happens to things on your hdd) also didn't work. In two tries, this option completed the reinstall (up to 100%, 25 minutes), but then after the automatic restart, it came up with the message that windows had made several attempts, but did not succeed in starting the system, because essential system files were missing or damaged (i don't remember the litteral text). It told me the system was damaged an i had to put in the windows system dvd. Which of course I don't have for this OEM installed windows, only a recovery dvd. Putting in the latter didn't work. Starting up with the recovery cd in the pc also had no result.

After two of these failing reset tries , one without and the second with the recovery cd in it from the beginning, -to ensure that eventually, necessary files could be taken from there if needed during the reset proces from start-up-, a last  attempt to start recovery with F11 at startup no longer worked either: after some two minutes of blue screen the pc switched off!. With and without the recovery CD in it. Several retries had the same result. I had no usb drive connected, by the way.

In another thread (the dutch version of this forum)  we developed the theory that maybe the basic cause might be that the recovery functions don't know where to look for the recovery partition on the hard disk (recovery partition is made at the factory: OEM installed W8). This because some people there had only problems if an external harddrive or other usb was attached. Removing this, the automatic repair loop was finished and / or the re-install worked fine again (as far as "fine" applies if you have to reinstall completely due to maybe some futile initial cause).

Me and another person had done some repartitioning of the harddisk using standard windows system management. I had not damaged or resized the recovery partition, but the references (name or number) of the partition may have changed automatically, like in case an USB-drive is added after plugging in.

Of course, a well and smartly working W8 should recognize such a change, keep track and adjust its references to the discovery partition, as this is the basis for the whole rescue....   Basically, a simple unexperienced user should not have to be forced to dive into a mess of ranking numbers and minimal, cryptical descriptions as in one of the system tables I have seen passing by, at some moment during my desperate attemps to get at least sóme control again over my brand new pc. Suspecting that the problem came from the hardware.

But, if this is indeed the (or at least a) main cause of our common problem, maybe some (work-around?) instructions can be given by somebody who reads this?

How can you "manually" change where the recovery process looks for its image or other back-up system files if the partition doesn't match anymore with the situation that existed at the time the recovery dvd and/or F11 rescue was made?  So that it automatically goes there as yet, even if you have no system working  to look up up how your hdd is configured now and which one is the recovery partition? (anyhow, a boot DVD may prevent this situation for me in the future).  Are the reference-instructions for the rescue processes somewhere in an editable file we can open and adjust?

My pc has been reset to factory settings by Medion now, so for me such instructions will only be tested if the problems occurs again, and I'll make sure I'll have my own image, image restore program and boot dvd close at hand every time i start up my pc...  But i am sure still many other people would be helped...

Then it would be very fine if in the end Microsoft at least would give some detailed instructions how to repair this ourselves, instead of only repeating the instructions how to invoke a complete reset, which subsequently doesn't work, maybe because of some stupid, simple mismatch of internal system information.... Please a smart repair instruction and not just a way to reinstall the complete system back to the point where we bought it.

If you buy a new house and you can't open the door because the lock has some defect, you want to know which other door you can use or how to repair or eventually change the lock. And not how to change the complete door or even built a new house instead.

Hey thanks for the help. I got a bit frustrated lol so i took it back to Harvey Norman where I brought it.

They gave me a list of instructions which fixed the problem although I had to do a factory reset. For anyone that is having problems maybe this will help this is the instructions i got from Harvey Norman

1. Power off unit
2. Power on and rapidly tap F11 for about 15 seconds
3. Select system recovery
4. Backup data (optional)

This took me into the HP recovery system which may not work on other models but it sorted out mine pretty easily.

Cheers again for all the help