Windows 8 or boot drive issue?

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1

Over the last few weeks my dear friend windows 8 has failed to wake up from its sleep state multiple times... the computer would power on, but monitors would never initialize anything.

This morning a message of "please ensure boot disc is installed and restart" (or something to that effect) popped up on a black bios-type screen.  After restarting, the computer posts fine, gets past the bios, but does not get farther than the windows 8 loading screen.  After the windows 8 loading screen, monitors are on, seemingly have a source, but are not displaying anything - no errors or warnings get thrown.

Anyway, after mashing shift+f8 for a few (10) restarts, I finally got to boot windows 8 in safemode, and successfully backed up my data onto an external drive.  Data transmits from the hard drive just fine...leading me to think it's an OS issue.

Is this more likely an OS issue...or could my SSD be failing (kingston 240gb hyperx ssd)? 

Thanks for any help on this.

2

Just from curiosity are you using Avast antivirus?

3

No, haven't used an anti-virus in forever - since they seem to cause more harm then good... not disputing the fact that this could have been caused by some sort of virus...but yah.

Anyway, I gave up and reinstalled windows 8...so far so good.

4

For the future, only press F8 to get to the advanced boot screen. The reason you were having difficulty getting to it is because you were also pressing shift.

Your issue was more than likely a driver error (I had the same problem) and using the "use last known good configuration" would have probably solved your issue. Just letting you know for future purposes.