or a good starting point for switching to linux
For as much as i love Linux i can't switch over it on my main system. Its a gaming beast and Linux just doesn't have the support it needs to have for me. I use Linux on my laptop all the time though.
you could get the safe mode menu by cutting power while windows is running. normally an unsafe shut down causes windows to display recovery options.
it may also help if you disable fast boot in your bios.
I tried that too. Windows 10 just launched a boot repair reset and then booted normally. I ended up formatting my system and starting all over again and then using data recovery tools to fetch my stuff from my HDD's. I am 95% done and recovered most of my stuff.
Whoa; that is extreme. Could you not have just taken the HHD out, connected it to another computer, and backed up the data before the OS re-install?
Also you might want to do this for the future. Claim back you safe mode F8 key:
I didn't have any data but windows on my boot drive. I dedicated a SSD to windows only just in case something like this happens so my data was on my other drives.