I let mine run in recovery mode overnight. When it was still going the next morning,I finally powered off and did three reboots (hard). I had already tried 3-4 times the night before but on my Asus c300 had to press Escape +refresh button then Power button to turn on. Tried doing just the refresh and the power button that was recommended on another site but didn't work on my model. Finally put some patience I'll let it go on the third try and waited the prompt saying to take my thumb drive out finally appeared. It takes some patience and persistence. Someone on a another site said you might have to do this 20 or more times maybe to get it to reset. Frustrating but at least I didn't have to resort to pulling my hard drive out. My laptop had been out for a year and I pretty much just used my phone and a backup tablet. It's good to have it back.