Hi...
Well I guess I screwed up my laptop... ASUS model x401A.
I didn't renew my McAfee protection and the computer started slowing down, including startup, mouse speed etc, same old story. I started doing some malware removal with instructions from what seemed like a trustworthy website.
I RESTARTED my computer because it told me to.
From that time on, my computer hasn't started normally, only goes to the grey asus screen, says it's loading files, opens run.exe windows and says a bunch of junk, and proceeds to go into a recovery wizard. It tells me I need to make sure that my files are backed up because they'll probably be lost.
Okay... But my only problem is that I have no way to access those files.
This happens every time I start the computer. No way to go into safe mode or normal mode.
F8 does nothing when starting up.
And here's the kicker- this particular model does NOT have a CD disc drive.

Help.  if you want to SAVE your files download a LINUX flavor ( distrobution) such as ubuntu, mint, puppy linux , or any other one that is a live disk,  and burn it to a usb stick then get the acer laptop to boot from the usb and you should be able to save your important files,

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ thats should be able to give you the full tutorial on hwo to do this .... good luck It most LIKELY has a hidden Recovery Partition that'll take the PC back to Day 1 status...
See the ASUS site for info.