Asus Laptop, new HD, XP/Vista installation

Hi,

I've never owned an Asus laptop before, but, I'm seriously looking at the newly released U20a.

If I were to get it, I'm pretty sure I'd want to install a new 500GB, 7200RPM drive in it.

1. Do all Asus laptops come with a Vista recovery CD? Alternatively, are you able to create one with an Asus utility?

2. Can you use the Asus recovery CD to install Vista on a new hard drive?

3. I've read a few posts here and there about installing XP on various Asus laptops. As the U20a hasn't been released yet, would the consensus be that I have a pretty good chance of being able to successfully install my own copy of XP on it (finding drivers, etc.)? It seems like only Vista if officially supported by Asus on this laptop.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

1. Yes, all Asus notebooks come with a restore disk as well as a drivers disk that carries all the necessary drivers/utilities. If you'd like you can also create your own restore disk.

2. Yes, you can use the Asus recovery disk to install Vista on your new hard drive. You can also clone your existing hard drive to your new one with Acronis True Image - this way, you can save the hassle of reinstalling all the drivers.

3. I don't see why XP won't work on the U20. Finding the working drivers may take some time, but if you purchase the U20 and the XP operating system from a reseller such as GenTech, they will be able to help you find and install all the necessary drivers and even provide you with a copy of the XP drivers.

 

Hi David,

Thanks for the great information!

I already have my copy of XP Pro, but I helps to know that with enough digging, I should be able to find the appropriate drivers on my own.

May I ask you a few more questions?

4. Does Asus laptops generally use a Vista recovery partition?

5. Is this recovery partition used just for generating the recovery disks, or can it also be used to restore corrupted system files?

6. If I use the Asus recovery disk to install on the new HD, will it create the recovery partition as well?

7. Will the recovery disk install use the entire hard drive? If I wanted to add my own data partition, could I just resize the existing system partition and add my own?

Thanks again!

 

I used my recovery DVD to install a new HDD in my X59sr-a1, it did not install the hidden partition, also the recovery media I have allows 3 install types

Install to entire HDD with 2 partitions 60/40 split
INstall to entire HDD 1 partition
install to first partition only( iguess if you format the drive then install you can get the partition sizes the way u want them

60/40 split means the 1st part will has 60% of the drive space and the 2nd part will have 40%

hope this helps

gl

 

Thanks for the input!

Did the supplied recovery DVD install all the drivers for your Asus laptop during the installation as well?

Thanks!

 

Oops, I just re-read what David said. I guess all the necessary drivers are on the supplied drivers disk

Thanks!