Screen powers on then I get the circle of doom with the message "Attempting repairs" - what to do?

[Cityboy007]

I'm trying to sort a problem out with my sons notebook.  About 2 weeks ago it kicked him out of the system and we can't get further than the start screen, with the revolving 5 dots.  I've tried some work arounds but nothing happened to date.  Ideally he honest want to hard reset which would remove his saved data.

Any suggestions much appreciated 

[WAWood]

@Cityboy007 

Any restore is probably going to remove everything that is on it, as the only SAFE restore has to be run from inside Windows, and if you can't boot into a working desktop, you can't run that.

My priority, if this was mine, would be to retrieve files and folders from it that I wanted to save and deal with the reset later.

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the hard drive from the old PC
2) Purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit (like the one illustrated below)

3) Connect the old drive to a working PC using that adapter
4) Try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free http://www.file-recovery.com/

[Cityboy007]

Thanks.  I'll give it a shot and see if this resolves things.  Appreciate your comments.