Complete Walk-through For Doing A Clean Windows 7 Install

WOW, that is a SICK G73 you've got there! Congrats.

Unfortunately in windows the keyboard backlight only comes on after logging in, so far there is no known way to make it come on earlier.

 

ahhhhh... I was afraid of that. I am going to research a warranty voiding hardware mod to possibly tap a permanent hot feed to achieve this. There is a second smaller ribbon cable on the keyboard. This a 2 conductor power LED backlight lead - there must be a way to just feed from an "always on" location. Looking for schematic - anyone who has one, a copy would be appreciated. Thank you for such a prompt reply - and the kind words on the laptop.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/465841-ul30-backlit-keyboard-mod.html

EDIT: POST 2000 HERE.

 

YES!

Propeller beanie spinning at top speed now - modding tonight - many thanks again for the info. Will post again afterward...

 

hmmm, not the same cable as pictured - this has only two traces, not 4. The 5v access points do not exist either, except the large copper "hour glass" shaped one - it only reads 3.1v though, and after testing, that is not enough to light the keys - still poking around carefully for a remedy...

 

I have a question about the Windows key on the sticker under the laptop. I have ordered an SSD-drive, and I wondered if the key is still usable after booting up the computer as one would normally do when first getting a laptop? Is the key still valid for a clean install after the initial boot with the original HDD and the preinstalled OS?

 

Yes you can use the Win7 key on your new SSD! Have fun.

 

Thank you very much!

 

Ok I need help getting my missing drivers back.My computer crashed a couple months ago and I got it back completely wiped with nothing but windows 7 installed so none of my asus stuff worked like my keyboard lighting up.Well I slowly got a few of them back untill it crashed again due to fail repairs by the dorksquad at bestbuy.. So I started looking online for help for when I get it back again from repairs again.I hapened t stumble across a forum on asusrog.com made by Chastity which was a godsend.I was happy to know that when I got my computer back that I'd have evrything I need to get it back up an running.Unfortunitly I have my computer back but asusrog forums is gone...So I have no freaking clue on what to do now an I'm tired of not having my subwoofer not working or my audio playing through both my headphones an my internal speaker..So please can anyone help me!!

 

You can hit up the official asus site for drivers, too.

 

I have, most of the driver files I have downloaded are empty zip files which annoys me that it's an asus product and they don't even have the drivers for their own laptops nor previde you with a disc.....

 

They do provide a driver disk. If you bought it refurbed, that's not asus' fault - it's the refurbisher/resellers fault.

And if you're not downloading from the asus site, that's weird. Works for me, I imagine for most other people here. Check your settings.

 

1) Relax. I'm waiting for the admin to fix the issues for the server.

2) Realtek

You can get the latest Realtek audio drivers from here.

 

Thank you Chastity. I didn't mean that to come out sounding like a jerk. Just annoyed that I bought my G73jh at bestbuy brand new an they they never offered to do a recovery disc when they are suppose to when the company doesn't have it included with the computer.This is my first asus laptop so your thread was really really helpful on asusrog.

 

You're welcome. Unfortunately more companies are skimping on CD's in favor of broadband.

 

Lol yeah,I got to be the unlucky sap to notice the nice piece of paper in my laptop box that says this asus product does not come with the recovery disc after it crashes haha.So that's why I had to go driver hunting.

 

And yet, it still comes with a driver disk - just not a full set of windows recovery DVDs - you have to burn them yourself when you start up. And if you got a refurb, none of the standard "ships with" options applies - it's up to best buy to inform you that refurbs are generally missing all the little addons.

 

Philosophical question, not related...
As you seem extremely knowledgeable on the subject, and I, the opposite...

If you had an ASUS G73SW with twin C300/256gb SSD's, a Seagate 500gb XT hybrid, a C300/128gb SSD, a 2920XM processor, and 16GB of Kingstom HyperX (EMP) RAM, how would you set it up to be very high performance, albeit safe?

I can see nothing in the BIOS that allows fully exploring the capabilities of the processor, nothing in the provided ASUS utilities as well, and the OE Win7/64/Home Premium disk I received doesn't work as a bootable (errors) to reinstall a clean OS. Just my luck, I guess!
THANK YOU FOR ANY HELP!

 

How do you get 4 HDD's into your laptop?

 

Sorry for throwing it out there like that...
I have available those parts to use, most of which are spread out on my workbench in AS bags at the moment.
Ultimately, I will have only 3 HDD's total in the machine, so one's SOL!

Have a great week!

 

Great guide. I had a few questions.

I just purchased an Asus K52F from Best Buy. It came with Win7 Home Premium and bloatware. I plan to do a clean install with Win7 Ultimate because I need the display language switching capability. Otherwise Japanese software installed on Home Premium does not always display correctly. On Ultimate, it is not a problem, at least for newer software.

So my question is, if I follow the guide and instead use purchased Win7 Ultimate discs, and I use the key that came with Ultimate, will there be a problem since the hidden partition will contain Home Premium? Or is it better to format the drive and repartition?

Thanks,
Bertman

 

IMO I would reformat thus getting rid of the factory recovery partition. On mine it was 19 GIG.. Once you have your system up and running as you want it I would create an image and store it on an external HD.
That way you can restore to Ultimate easily with the language you need.
(You may want to create the DVD's from the Asus recovery program in Windows or create an image of HOme premium just in case something goes wrong with the 7 Pro install, but I am overly cautious or so I have been told.

 

Does anyone think that there would be problems or benefits to installing SP1 and updates before installing the drivers from the ASUS cd?

 

Should be no problems or benefits, but as a rule I have always installed low-level software before higher level software. So BIOS/Firmware, OS, drivers, apps - in that order for me.

 

Order of operations:

Win 7
Intel INF
SP1
Windows Update

I just did a Win 7 install, and the update count dropped from 84 to 27 after SP1.

 

Hi,

I am stuck at the step where you change the boot order in BIOS:

The Boot Option Priorities shows
Boot Option #1 [P4: ST9500...]
Boot Option #2 [P1: MATA ....]

There is no problem moving the DVD up to position 1....
... but where is my P0?

I know that P0 is the drive on which the C partition and OS live, but I can't select it here.

I thought maybe somehow the labels had gotten misassigned (P0 <-> P4), but when I go to the last screen in the BIOS utility and click P4 to boot, an error displays that this is not a bootable drive. If I then click P0, the system boots.

Does anyone know why this is happening? I really want the system to be as normal as possible before I start changing things.

By the way, I had the dirty flag problem on C: other people have reported, and I thought maybe that was why P0 got kicked out of the boot order. But I've fixed that (dirty flag) now, and I still have the problem.

Thanks.

 

I'm just working out a plan of attack to do a clean install of Win7 Ultimate on my G73SW. If I do an install using retail/oem media will that get rid of the silly partitions I have at the moment being;

OS (C)
DATA (D)
SDATA1 (E)
SDATA2 (F)

And leave me with;

HDD 1 - C:\
HDD 2 - D:\

BTW, I had a bit of a poke about and couldn't find the recovery partition. Is it on one of 4 parttions that exist now or hidden somwhere esle?

 

When you do the Win 7 install, you will get a screen where you tell it where to install. If you hit the Advanced Options, you will get listed some partition controls, where you can delete old ones. Just delete them all, then create 2 new ones, one on each drive spanning the whole disk. Format both, then select your desired boot drive.

 

I'm in two minds whether to go hunting for the latest drivers and apps or just install off the driver CD I got with it.

Is Asus Live Update any good? I think I read somewhere that it's just for updating bios stuff NOT apps., but when I ran it it wanted to download about 4 or 5 files. I'm buggered if I know what they were because they took ages to even partially download so I cancelled. What's the deal with it?

Is there any particular order I should install the drivers and Asus apps?

 

See my Driver Reference link below for your updated current list

 

Any advice/clarification on the other bits,

It used to be a lot easier in my old desktop days.

 

I always make sure my hardware is working first so that means drivers first, then apps.

If you got a drivers/utilities disk then I would use that first. Just opt out of the utilities you don't want installed ( Asus Utility and Bloatware Guide). And don't install Asus Live Update!

Then get and manually install new drivers from Chastity's list or the manufacturer's site.

Not any different than desktop PCs...

 

By the way, where are the recovery files hidden? I can only see 1 partition with the OS and 3 empty partitions.

 

Just did a clean install and now Windows wont recognize my 460m(it says standard vga adapter). Any ideas?

 

@Kaybree Lady
download the graphics drivers for your card from nvidia.com

 

I did, but it says not compatible with this version of windows

Ugh, I figured it out..32bit lol

 

ok I am late to the Party, but this was a killer post.

Nice work....

I not 100% sure if all the link are to the most Current drivers, but each user can fix that on there own..

THank you once again for making this nice post...

 

Great walkthrough, however i wonder how to install AHCI driver before starting Windows 7 installation. As you know, almost every Asus ROG notebook comes with AHCI enabled in BIOS by default, this requires AHCI drivers must be known by Windows 7 during Windows setup, at least, it was like that in XP, i wonder how Windows 7 handles this. You used to press F6 and install via floppy, what a pity it was!

Now with Windows 7, has something changed? Do we have to let Windows 7 recognize AHCI controller by pre-installing AHCI driver? No notebook has floppy, isn't there another option to install through, like USB, if required?

Though Intel states it's not required for Win7:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-021736.htm
..is it true and did anybody manage to install Windows7 without explicty installing any drivers in AHCI mode?

Please let me know.

 

Win 7 installer recognizes the AHCI controller from Intel no problem. I've never had to use a driver floppy.

 

Windows 7 will use their own AHCI driver (MSAHCI), which in fact has the least issues with SSDs, Intels AHCI comes with their Rapid Storage Tenchology driver that can be installed after windows finishes, right when it finishes i install chipset reboot then intel RST, at least thats how i done all my clean installs, and no issues.

 

Does this deletes the hidden partition as well? Also, does the recovery disk in this guide refers to the self made disk burned using the asus utility AI Recovery? Just to add, my g53sw came only with the utility disk. The recovery disk is part of an add on from the reseller.

 

is it possible to recover deleted hidden partition using recovery disc?

 

Are all the Windows 7 Recovery Media for Windows 7 Products disc the same? Or are each one solely for their respective notebooks? I have a previous disc from my old notebook. Can I use that for my G53SW?

 

@der-kaiser you can use a retail or OEM windows 7 disc to install the same edition with the key on the bottom of your laptop. Recovery media is different, that will only work for the same manufacturer and usually the same model series.

 

Thank you! So using the self made recovery disk will not remove bloatware?

 

No it will reload it the same way it came from the factory, with all the bloat included.

 

I have own made W7 dvd which I use on my old laptop.I install this I just change boot from dvd drive.
How to do this on G73? I look in bios and can't boot from dvd drivr.

I install ssd (formated) and can't start W7 install
I need boot from dvd but can't do this on this new laptop how to do it ?

Asus G73SW,how to change in BIOS to boot from dvd drive?

 

@fantomasz hit ESC repeatedly when you first turn it on to get to the boot menu. You can hit F2 to get to the BIOS setup to permanently change the boot order if you want.

 

I did

NTLDR is missing

cant boot from my W7 dvd

 

I don't recall the particulars of the upgrade option from 32-bit to 64-bit. In my experience it seems very flexible. I've done a fresh install twice. Once using an purchased upgrade disc with a different license key. The second time following Chastity's forum at:

G73 Series Driver and Application Reference and the OEM license key from the bottom of notebook. Both worked perfectly. Both times I had to activate using Microsoft's automated phone activation procedure. Not much to it.