Recovery Issue

Hello all,

I bought an Asus G50vt-X5 off eBay the other day and installed Windows 7 since the computer was locked with a Windows password when it arrived to me. The touch buttons at the top of the keyboard don't work. The only one that does anything is that third one from the left, the one that looks like a little guy running or something.

I figured my best bet was to simply put the computer back to the factory settings. The problem is, I don't know how to access the recovery partition. I've tried hitting F9 when the computer is booting up, but that doesn't get me to the Asus recovery features. It just gets me to some kind of Windows repair tools.

Any help on this?

Just to clarify, when I press F9 it takes me to the Windows Boot Manager. It gives me the option to select my operating system, or press F8 for advanced options. If I select Windows 7, it boots normally. When I press F8, it gives me other options, like booting to Safe Mode and things like that.

 

If F9 does not get you to the recovery partition, it most likey is not there or is corrupted. If you go into windows 7 - computer management, storage - disk management- disk 0 -- do you see one partition for the OS (C). IF this is true, you need to DL the drivers from Asus's site, you do not have a recovery partition.
http://support.asus.com/download/options.aspx?SLanguage=en

You will need the ATK driver(s) to get the touch buttons to work.

 

I installed the ATK drivers, but the buttons just wiggle when I touch them. They don't do anything.

What is this "windows 7 - computer management, storage - disk management- disk 0" that you speak of? Sorry, I'm coming from Windows XP so I'm not quite sure what you're refering to.

When I press F9 and go to the Boot Manager I go to the advanced options, and click on Repair Computer (or something like that). From there I can see that I have three partitions. X: called Boot, C: called recovery, and D: which looks like my regular partition. But I can't seem to recovery :-/

 

If this laptop was made before Asus made ATK into a single package, you will need both the ATK driver and ATK hotkey utility to get the hotkeys and touch buttons to work. I don't know if the ATK package 1.0008 would work but i assume it would. I haven't tried it yet on my N50, it's still running with the separate ATK components but i'll get to try it sometime. I would get al ATK components except for ATK media which launches windows media center when you press play an no media player is opened which pissed me off to no end.

 

I reinstalled the drivers, and now the touch button to the far right works (I can enable and disable the mouse pad). The button next to it (looks like a little man running) rotates between things like "Entertainment Mode" "High Performance" "Quiet Office" "Battery Saving" and things like that. The other two buttons (Direct Console, and the lighning bolt) just blink at me when I press them.

I still want to recover the laptop back to its original state. I'm pretty sure the recovery partition is there, but for some reason it's not doing anything when I press F9.

 

What JOSEA was talking about is the windows 7 disk management utility. Just hit start and type disk management in the search bar. Click on Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions. You should see two (or three) partitions for disk 0 is there is a recovery partition. If there are three partitions, one should have no name, aother is probably named OS and the other DATA.

Maybe someone with a G50vt could provide an iso of the restore disc as well but since i don't have a G50...

 

When I follow those instructions, I see that I have two partitions: C: and RECOVERY.

 

Any ideas on how to recover to the original state?

 

You have to press F9 at right timing, did you hit F9 when Asus logo or Republic of Gamers logo appears on the screen?

 

I've been hitting F9 as soon as I hit the power button to turn the computer on.

 

Your timing on F9 sounds good. Another approach is to install AI recovery program. D/L from here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download AI Recovery
If the hidden partition with the recovery files is still there, I believe this application will create DVD's that can be used to get you back to factory state.

 

By the way, some of the buttons might not work unless you have the correct Asus utility installed. Both my Asus laptops have a button for the splendid utility which i find totally useless and they don't do anything since splendid isn't installed.

After looking at pictures of the buttons, the lightning bolt looks like the button to launch expressgate which is a sort of linux based mini os for web browsing and won't do anything if you're in windows already.

The other one is for the wireless console, i think. You could try installing the latest version of the wireless console 2. If that doesn't work, try the wireless console 3 which was made for more recent models than the G50vt.

It's not necessarily that there is a problem, it's probably that the utilities controlled by the buttons aren't there to begin with.

This might not go with your wish to recover the laptop to it's original state, but personally i switched from vista to 7 on my N50 and never looked back. All my hotkeys and buttons work fine with the ATK package, Power4Gear, Wireless Console etc. excpet for the button for splendid but as i mentioned earlier i didn't install it so i didn't expect that button to work.

 

I wonder if there is a way to make this program write to a virtual dvd drive, or create a CD image that can be mounted. The optical drive on this computer doesn't work, although I have another one on the way.

 

F9 may not work if the MBR has been altered. In that case you will not be able to boot into the recovery partition directly.

You can copy the recovery partition to a usb stick or usb drive that has enough space. It will need to be a raw copy so the existing data on the usb drive will be wiped (back it up if you want to save what is there).

This can be accomplished for free with an Ubuntu cd. Since you have no CD drive, you can make an ubuntu liveusb with unetbootin. In this case you will need two usb drives, one to boot ubuntu and one to copy the recovery partition to.

Let's say in Ubuntu your recovery partition is /dev/sda1 and your target USB drive for the recovery partition is /dev/sdb (you can figure out which is which with the Disk Utility or sudo fdisk -l and sudo blkid).

You would go to applications->accessories->root terminal and run:

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb bs=4096k

This will copy the partition directly onto the usb drive.

If you aren't so hot on typing commands into a terminal, you can use gparted which is also on the ubuntu live cd. Gparted lets you copy and paste partitions with a friendly graphical user interface.

After it finishes you can reboot and hit esc to get to the boot menu, and boot from your usb drive and into the recovery utility.

I know this technique works because I have used it on many systems. Good luck.

 

The utility says I don't have a recovery partition... :-/

 

Robb235, I deleted my recovery partition (about 1 year ago) and If I launch the AI Recovery Program I get the same message, so the recovery partition on your system must be corrupted or damaged I guess.
Did you happen to notice the size of the Recovery Partition when you looked in Windows Disk Management?