Window 8.1 endless restart loop help

I have an asus ux31a touch that originally came with win 8 but I upgraded it to win 8.1 via the MS store.

Was running fine until this weekend.

When I turn on my laptop, it looks like everything is ok but then I get this blue screen with a message saying that an error occurred on my PC and that they are collecting information on the error but will restart after that. The screen then goes blank and then the asus logo pops up like it's rebooting again. But then I get the blue screen error message again. This repeats endlessly.

What can I do? I did create a win 8 boot flash drive when I first got my laptop. But even then, it doesn't seem to be registering the flash drive when I put it in the usb port? I think cause it's stuck on that loop and won't boot from usb drive.

I'm trying to let my laptop run out of batteries right now hoping the cycle will end. But I don't know if this constant restarting is good for it.

Also, I really don't want to lose the contents on my laptop. I left one thing on it I really want though I thankfully backed everything else up already.

Thanks.

 

we won't be able to be of much help except to recommend a repair or a reinstall unless you can think of what changes were made to the system just before the first bluescreen. can you boot into safe mode?

 

I'm not sure how I messed things up. I was trying to get access to my wdmybooklive NAS remotely and their standard WebDAV page automatically mounts a virtual drive of my NAS onto my laptop. When I tried to copy and paste a video file onto my NAS through windows explorer, the laptop froze. So I did a hard power off. I think it gave me a windows is updating don't turn off laptop but then it never finished updating (might be remembering this part wrong though). So I had to a hard return since it would stay at that message forever.

I think that's when I started getting the loop.

If booting into the safe mode happens by holding the windows button and pushing f8 repeatedly then I can't boot into safe mode (I thought win 8 got rid of that function).

I thought my battery draining might solve the problem but when I plugged it back in again and tried to reboot, same problem.

I tried putting in the system restore bootable flash drive I created back when my laptop was win 8 (this was after laptop battery drained and I replugged it in). The laptop would not boot from the flash drive and continued with the same problem.





If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it.



Thanks.

 

you might be able to access safe mode by holding shift while pressing F8...? i tried it once and it didn't work. i didn't mash very much. you should also be able to get to recovery mode by booting from your W8 flash drive. from there you can then try to boot in safe mode. if you can there's a bunch of different things to try including safe boot with network drivers after troubleshooting any local issues.

 

I'm supposed to hold the shift button while pressing f8 repeatedly right? If that's the case, no it doesn't work.

Neither does the boot flash drive which has worked in the past.

I wonder if my battery just isn't fully discharged even though the power looks like it is dead? Could that be it cause if so, I could open my laptop and remove the battery but that's not easy to do on my ultrabook so if it's not, I'd rather avoid.

 

what does the battery have to do with anything? that's a rhetorical question. it doesn't. what do you mean the bootable flash drive doesn't work? what's on the drive -- install media or an image? you either need to disable secure boot, enable legacy boot, rearrange the boot order, access the quick boot order menu, or some combination thereof.

can you clarify -- are you able to get into windows at all at this point? are you able to install a system monitoring utility that will create a log for any blue screens/crashes, aside from the windows event logs?

Sent from my Lumia 1520 using Tapatalk

 

I don't think I'm in windows. I get the black screen with an asus logo. Then I get the blue screen. Then I get the black screen with asus logo again.

I don't think I can do any of the stuff you suggested since I'm not actually in "windows". Flash drive is supposed to boot automatically and start running the restore.

How do I install a system monitoring utility?

I

 

did you check in the BIOS to see if the flash drive is detected? other than that if fast boot and secure boot is turned on you will not be able to boot into the flash drive

as for the f8 booting, i think you have to boot into the flash drive before doing so since windows 8's UEFI implementation prevented the system from directly accessing the advanced boot menu unless you boot into the recovery media -> hence try disabling fast boot and secure boot in the BIOS, also upon startup try the f12 or whatever to bring up the boot option, if the flash drive is detected you'll be able to boot into the flash drive from the boot menu on f12

P.S. the flash drive is not supposed to boot automatically unless you selected it as the primary boot drive in BIOS