How to bypass automatic repair on an acer laptop to get to bios?

When I boot the computer, it automatically goes into repair mode, eventually reaching a screen saying "Reparing hard disk errors. This can take over an hour" (or something like that, the actual text is not in english). The computer hangs at that screen forever (it's been attempted for 24 hours).

I would like to bypass this repair to boot up a linux live cd and see if I can salvage some data. Pressing the customary bios keys (f2, f10, f12, delete, enter, running palm accross keyboard) doesn't seem to work. The live cd/BIOS shouldn't require the use of the hard drive right?

Any ideas on how I could get past this screen?

The laptop is an Acer Aspire V5-531, with windows 8 installed.

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