Thanks for all the suggestions, tried booting from various discs (linux/win7) but would not boot from either, tried all the F keys and only F2 did something (enter bios) and F10 which would only give the option to boot from the HD or enter the bios, fiddled with the few options that were in the bios to no avail.
Safe mode by default is disabled in windows 8 hence the F8 didn't work, u need to enable it via msconfig first ( or so a google search reveals), guess microsoft thought their auto recovery would sort it all out.
as the laptop was purchased this year they should really take it back to the shop they got it from
Hate laptops, give me a bespoke tower PC any day