Laptop won't boot all the way, keeps refreshing itself

I have a Dell Inspiron 1521 touch screen laptop (factory installed Windows 8) which was purchased earlier this year. Apparently a couple of days ago, the automatic updates did their job and updated files. My pc ended up restarting itself due to the automatic update installation. Anyway, I went to use my laptop yesterday and encountered some issues that I cannot figure out what to do. The pc comes on and has me sign in to my account as usual. Then, the Windows 8 metro tile app page  tries to load, granted I had changed the factory default setting to load my desktop on start up and not the windows 8 metro tiles page. I had also set the default windows key on the keyboard to open the desktop page and not the windows 8 metro tiles page. So, the Windows 8 metro tiles page opens and it keeps refreshing itself about every two seconds. I am unable to click on any icons on the screen nor can I touch them and make them work. I can scroll my mouse over to the right side of the screen and the charm appears but cannot click any of the options. If I magically somehow get the desktop icon to work, it pulls up my Windows 8 desktop page but again cannot click anywhere and it continues to refresh about every 2 seconds. I have read online about starting the pc in safe mode but cannot find on my pc where to get it in safe start. I pushed F2 and reset the factory settings to default but honestly do not know what I am doing so I thought I should not change any other settings but did not see anywhere to get safe mode. PLEASE please please HELP!!!