So get this. In basic rage/I wonder mode I decided to hard boot my machine many times to try to force windows 8 into repair mode. I had read somewhere that if windows was unable to start it would enter repair mode automatically. Well, what ended up happening was I got the dell emblem, and then a black screen. I rebooted a few more times and I simply got the Dell Emblem, it never moved on. So I held shift, hit f12 to enter the boot options. I change from UEFI Secure to Uefi non-secure, rebooted and Voila! The Windows 8 repair boot took hold. I was unable to do an Operating System refresh because it complained the hard drive was locked, but the Dell Recovery to the Factory image worked like a champ. Sucks that I lost my save game on Civ 5, but at least my machine is working again.   
This is absolutely crazy weird. So bear with me. XPS 8500 Special (has the SDD cache drive), Windows 8 Pro. Troubles started while I was still logged in yesterday, could not click on anything at all. CTRL+ALT+DEL brought up the splash screen and I was able to reboot. After reboot, I could "login" but the same troubles. By Accident I got the Task manager up one time, I immediately CTRL+ALT+DEL & Selected Task manager. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all, but I could not do anything else but look around task manager. Moving forward, after numerous attempts (with both users on the machine), now half the time it boots to a black screen (interestingly if I hit shift 5 times the sticky keys question comes up) OR I get the "pretty" picture that comes before the user selection and it stalls there. I can get no further. Now, this is when I start to rage a bit. I cannot get into any kind of repair functionality in Windows 8. I have read about the SHIFT+F8 approach but I believe it to be a myth now (After 30+ attempts). How can I get Windows to repair if I cannot boot, or if it does happen to boot I am locked out? Before anyone asks, I did not try to hack anything or run any cracked or mischievous code. In fact the only things I've done on that machine for the prior 2 weeks was play CIV 5, a bit of Bioshock Infinite, and check my emails. I really didn't mind Windows 8 too much until this incident. The bootup times were stellar, but if I am unable to repair my own PC this is a deal breaker. Though I suppose I'm stuck now that I just bought a new machine. I'm basically posting this as a last shot. Any help would be appreciated.
Windows 8 sort of boots