We had the same identical issue here on three boards (every one we tried). Installed Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, everything seems to be fine except when waking from sleep. Seems to try a couple times with the described symptoms, but does wake up. Then, use Intel Express BIOS to update the BIOS from 0069 to 0105. The system attempts to restart to begin the update, but fails as described in the original post.
At no time during attempted BIOS recovery was any video signal detected. We did what Larry also suggested, but it did not work until we tried disconnecting the battery for 12 hours. Even then, there was little sign that anything occurred. No keyboard, mouse, or monitor. However, the USB drive did flicker a couple times. The front panel power LED did not blink at any point. However, after waiting 30 minutes, we just pretended the BIOS was updated and tried a normal start.
Surprisingly, the system did start. However, the BIOS was still at 0069, so I have no idea what actually happened. After Windows started, we shut down and installed the BIOS update (0105) directly on 0069 using the F7 method. That worked fine and all was well.
The moral of the story is never use the Express BIOS tool on this board (or any other board, as far as we're concerned). The disconcerting thing is that we are still not sure this issue is just unreliable software (Express BIOS) or if it includes a hardware component as well.