Allwinner A13 Q8-AL8 - Stuck in Boot Loop

[Kingdarien]

Hello. I purchased an AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 1.5GHz 4.2.2 tablet for one of my kids about a month or two ago. I have not made any alterations to the tablet and it suddenly has gotten stuck at the ANDROID logo when we turn it on. My model specifically says : Q8 (A-3) Q8-AL8. I just want to hard reset it/restore to factory defaults at this point to see if that fixes the problem. Here is what I've tried and run into so far:

• tried holding power and + volume for over a minute - does not turn on at all (when I have earphones in, I can hear that something happening)
• tried holding power and - volume for over a minute - same as above
• tried holding power and both + and - down for over a minute - same as above
• Oh and there is no reset button on this tablet. took it apart and none to be found.

I have also noticed that when I do one of the above, you can't turn the tablet on at all on the next try unless you hold down the power, let go of the button, and hold the power again.

• tried hooking the tablet up to a PC - PC will fail in loading a driver for the tablet

On a side note, I have a duplicate of this tablet for my other child and when I hook it up to a PC, it finds the driver with no problem.

• I've rebooted this thing maybe 50 times and 1 time, probably around the 40th try, it actually booted all the way up. Stupid me=I have the tablet do a soft reset thinking everything was ok......and back to the ANDROID logo boot. Should have just factory reset it at that point.

I cannot get the right combo to make the first android logo come up with the open chest so that I can factory reset.
Need help. Going on a long drive with the kids in a week and really need this thing working for my own sanity. Please help.