re: Help! Blue screen of death on my laptop...

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Yes I've tried the shift F8 option
Just puts me right back on the blue screen of death

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Wondering if you are actually being quick enough with the shift/F8 combo, since Windows 8 starts loading boot files a lot more quickly than 7, after which Shift+F8 won't work. So, if you can confirm that you are holding down shift the entire time and hitting F8 rapidly the very millisecond you press the power button, and you're still just getting straight to BSOD (and you have attempted it multiple times), then that would be a sign of a totally corrupt system partition, which would mean you'll need to do what Hopeful Doc says (minus the locating the product key part. See below)

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Also I've gone through every screen in the bios, but couldn't locate the product key.

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Not that easy to access without software (which would require you to actually be in Windows on the machine) because it's encrypted. However, in theory, you should not even need the key when you reinstall or recover. Windows should detect it in the bios, as long as the disk you are using is an identical edition of Windows 8 (Regular Windows 8 x64 vs. Pro vs. Pro Enterprise vs. Pro with Media Center, and so on). It's hard-coded to that laptop's motherboard.