I found a way to have an F8 equivalent in windows 8. 1) In MSCONFIG, under "BOOT" make sure there is a decent timeout, say 10 seconds. 2) Next, launch admin command prompt and ensure you are at C:\windows\system32. Now type the following and hit enter: reagentc /enable You will get a message "Operation completed successfully". Exit command prompt. 3) Restart. You should get a boot menu with your regular boot entries plus "To specify more options for this choice, press F8" Now, with Windows 8 boot entry highlighted, press F8. 4) In the next screen, you'll get the option to press F1-F9 for all the safe mode stuff etc. At the bottom, there'll be an option to press F10 for more options. 5) Hit F10. Now you should see a menu to launch recovery menu. 6) Press the recovery menu option and you're taken to the familiar window. This works on an HP laptop running windows 8 pro solo OS. Metro is disabled, UAC is set to lowest and Tihiy's patch is being used to skip metro completely. I have no clue how this'll pan out on a system running metro. In case, somebody has already come up with idea, I may kindly be informed as I have no intention of plagiarizing etc. Just discovered this while fiddling around this morning so thought to share.
Run Command prompt as Admin and type bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy. ensure operation completed successfully. restart system and you'll find F8 works. in this case, you can also launch WinRE without going to Windows first.