When my ASUS eee PC was stuck in the endless boot loop (failure to boot) I managed to use the memory stick formatting method to recover the system, though this scrubbed all my files and restored the computer to original state.
NOTE: You may be able to access the system restore by hitting F9. Jab at it constantly after rebooting or you are likely to miss the window of opportunity.
If this fails the general USB method of eee PC recovery for Linux systems went like this for me:
FORMATTING memory stick:
Put the eeePC recovery CD in a separate computer.
Plug in a USB stick
Bring up the eee PC disk and click “Utilities”
Select ASUS Unix Flash Utility
Select “Format” You’ll be prompted to pull and reinsert the memory stick.
Select “retry” after reinserting the memory stick.
REBOOTING:
Put the USB stick in the eee PC
Now you’ll need to start the eeePC and hit F2 a lot. It may take a few attempts but eventually you’ll bring up the bios settings.
Change the “boot” setting to use the USB stick. I also wound up selecting and then disabling the hard disk before this worked, which took several attempts.
Joe Duck 
I thought I’d mirror my Twitter responses to you on this here as well.
I love my own EEE PC, but I wanted to really use it immediately. If I had kept the default OS on it I’d be riding a learning curve rollercoaster that, although geeky fun, would’ve dragged my productivity down tremendously. So after a week I installed XP on it, and it’s served quite well ever since.
Also, it’s worth purchasing an SDHC card to use as a data drive. Even though I have a fair amount of free space on the onboard storage when I create or download anything, transfer digital pix off my camera, etc. I store it immediately on the card. There are risks, but if I ever had an emergency and had to reload the default OS I know I won’t be losing my data in the process.
Anyway, a few tips there. Have a great one!
Jim
thx Jim!
my eeepc701 had same boot loop prob, but managed to solve with f9 & 3rd option of restore factory settings. asus tech support useless & told me to go to manual, but my support cd had no usb recovery option! thanks for your help!
if you google, you can find instructions on creating a rescue mode and you can delete some files when you’re in there and that should restore things. the boot loop problem seems to happen when the harddrive gets too full. very annoying. i’ve successfully brought back my eee in the rescue console before without losing anything (other than some non-vital files i deleted).
this time i managed to screw up something when i went into rescue console – deleted something vital to the system by mistake, i think, and now can’t get into rescue mode or any f9 options.
but what has worked for me is knoppix on a usb stick, and from there you can see your various partitions and copy files. my partitions are too corrupted and won’t show any data, but i used the dd command to copy the drives to another usb stick. i popped that in another computer and it shows no contents, but the usb stick is full. so i used a data recovery program on it (drive rescue) and recovered lots of files.
i’m an absolute newbie to linux and not literate with IT stuff at all and have managed to do all this just following instructions online. just wanted to let you and others know it is possible to fix this problem without losing data.
btw, could not get knoppix to boot on the eee until i entered this at the boot screen: knoppix vga=normal noagp (advice found here).
Are you running anything that might have a “memory leak” and be eating up more memory the longer you run it?
My Asus Eee PC just went into the “boot” loop. I’ve only had this system for a year so I am very disheartened. But, I searched for help on the web and found this posting. It was sooooo helpful! I hit F9 and I was able to get my system to recover itself! Thank you for sharing your expertise on recovering the system! I appreciate it very much!
Pingback: Uninstall Ubuntu | ALT for mange links!
Woah! I’m really loving the template/theme of this website. It’s simple, yet effective.
A lot of times it’s difficult to get that “perfect balance” between usability and appearance. I must say you’ve done
a amazing job with this. Additionally, the blog loads very quick for me
on Opera. Outstanding Blog!
My partner and I stumbled oer here different website aand thojght I
might as well check things out. I like what I see so i am just following you.
Look forward to checking ouut your web page for a second
time.
Hello! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if
that would be ok. I’m undoubtedly enjoying your blog and look forward to
new updates.
Ҡeep this going please, great job!
I’m not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your blogs
really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your site
to come back down the road. Many thanks
Thanks , I have recently been searching for info approximately this subject for a while and yours is the best I’ve came upon till now.
However, what concerning the bottom line? Are you certain concerning the source?
Thank you for the auspicious writeup. It in truth used to be
a leisure account it. Look advanced to more introduced
agreeable from you! However, how could we keep in touch?