Asus X101CH system/OS recovery problem ?

Hi...my son has an Asus netbook...model X101CH...he "cleaned" it yesterday and since then it has not booted further than a screen with a shell on it...(I assume this is Asus pre-load page or whatever)...and then goes no further.

On trying to boot into any of the safe mode options (networking/command prompt etc) all that comes up is a black screen with "safe mode" captions around the screen edge...the mouse pointer is visible and working but no start up or any screen options are visible.

I have tried to use the "factory reset" options of F9 and also various BIOS boots but all to no avail...only the shell screen is visible along with the mouse pointer...there are no options to access any commands or start up etc.

When trying the factory reset procedure (F9) and accessing the windows memory diagnostic,files are loaded and then stop,with a message that mem.something.exe (I can`t remember the exact wording) is not found and goes no further.

Several weeks ago I did a factory reset for him on this netbook and made a recovery disc for use in such a case and am trying this now but on loading it has been hanging now for some time...some files were loade3d but it has stopped with the circular thingy doing its stuff,round and round,for some 30 minutes now.

Has anybody any ideas on what may have occurred please ? I am thinking the hard drive is kaput and will need to be changed but will go through the motions until then.

Press F2 upon start repeatably and see what that brings up

Hi...F2 brings it to BIOS...I have tried all options here.

I have just run a test on the hard drive and it is faulty...so at least I know what the problem is and will mark the thread as solved. (not sure why I had to post this twice)

Yeah missed that in your first post that you had got into the Bios good luck with the new drive

:)...thanks.

...more money going out of my shallow pockets !