You can find the answer here.
I hope this is helpful. I googled hard reset as I was having trouble connecting my ESP8266 to the IoT. The problem would load then leave the hard reset message but all I would get was a line of ............................... on the com window. It drove me crazy. I tried changing boards, tried changing libraries.... nothing worked!! I tried changing the baud rate down... nope.... then out of desperation I changed my network from 5Ghz to the slower rate.... bingo!!! connected fine. Then back checking I found ESP8266 doesn't work on 5GHZ... Hope this helps some one.