Asus x401a Boot loop

[Amberharding]

Hi I have an Asus x401a laptop I am trying to fix for my neighbors daughter-they don't have a lot of money so I am just trying to help out. It is preloaded with Windows 8.
It continuously does the boot loop, even when I tried the F9...recovery starts-then goes to "Preparing automatic repair" but then it blue screens to " your pc ran into a problem and need to restart"

I bought a new hard drive for it-I tried to find Windows 8 download so I could make a bootable USB..I can only find 8.1.

I am very fluent with Windows XP, Windows 7, but 8 I have very limited experience.

Can someone help me please..

 

[Paul NZ]

Win8 is the same as Win7. Change bootdisk to the flash drive/dvd. Save settings boot from it

If you've got the Win8 key get the ISO

Or if you have the key get the Win7 ISO

You have to burn it later or use rufus to put it on flash drive

 

[Amberharding]

Win8 is the same as Win7. Change bootdisk to the flash drive/dvd. Save settings boot from it

If you've got the Win8 key get the ISO

Or if you have the key get the Win7 ISO

You have to burn it later or use rufus to put it on flash drive

 

[Amberharding]

The link goes to 8.1-will this work? Also how can I extract the keycode from the bad hard drive? I do have a Linux system-the hard drive shows as being stuck in hibernation-I know how to get past that to read the drive, can I find it that way?

 

[Paul NZ]

Have no idea see if its on the bottom

Depending on how old it is I think more recent laptops have it embedded in the BIOS

 

[Amberharding]

Will 8.1 work for 8 though?

 

[Paul NZ]

Why wouldn't it it's just an update of 8

 

[Amberharding]

I was told that it wouldn't by this guy I work with..I'll try it thank you!

 

[Paul NZ]

If the key is for Win8 it should work with 8.1 if thats what you mean