Asus n56 UEFI restore boot entries after upgrade? Urgent!

Hi.

I deleted some boot entries, updated my BIOS, made clean install. Now I need to restore the system, via restore disks. After restore I can not boot into my newly restored system. I am pretty sure it's because of my stomping around in the bios boot section.
Can someone give a clue on how to fix it, which paths to put in, maybe check yours?

Need to send the machine back for service, so pretty urgent.

Cheers.

 

Try resetting to user defaults in the BIOS.

 

I did. I don't think the path is implemented in the default bios...

 

Can you boot successfully by hitting ESC or F8 at POST to get the boot selection menu?

 

Nope. The only options I get, is DVD, Lan and setup. Right now I will try to run the recovery disks once more, with UEFI enabled in bios, to see if it then writes something to BIOS. Checked the partitions, they look fine. The first partition, is an EFI about 200mb formatted in fat32. The only problem, I guess, is no path to this partition, in the bios UEFI setup!!!

Didn't work. Some input would be most welcome, especially if someone with asus n56/76 would check their boot settings

 

..what exactly did you delete, anyway?

And you can't boot to the uefi at all, even after the recovery completed, and setting uefi in the bios, and so on..?

 

I think it is called entries. I can boot to the bios. All I need to do, is to to set up a "Windows Boot Manager". But i don't know what to put in it :-D
Did you get yours, or have there been some sort of mix up? ...read the other thread.

But in bios ver. 204, the actual UEFI post under boot, is gone. Now you only have "pxe oprom", that includes "legacy bios and uefi". This one I enabled, I'm no sure if the "UEFI"-post are supposed to be left out, or if it is flaw...

 

Yeah.. the shop is like "What, you paid us a bunch of money over a month ago? Oh, right, I see that in our system now! I'm not sure what to do with it because of some technical problem in our order placement system, I guess. I'm absolutely sure your laptop will turn up soon, though! Sort of certain, at least! Hahaha".

Anyway. So what exactly did you do? What commands... where?

 

Check this link:
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums
The bios looked about the same on the 202 v. for n56, notice the 'enable UEFI'
Bios v. 204, which I upgraded to, doesn't have that feature, but everything else is the same. I guess if you choose a boot option with UEFI in front, it uses UEFI by default, but that's just guessing.
As you can see, there's an option for "add new boot option" . And I guess all I need is to specify the right path, after using the recovery disks!!!
Does that sound right, and what may such a path be, I now wonder???

Weird story though... But a good thing they still believe they have your money.
I requested a DOA and a Lenovo. They send a new laptop, and I, after a couple of month, mail the company whether or not they were gonna send me return note, or what you call it. They were both confused and pleased

There is an EFI path on my recovery dvd, but it doesn't seem to recognize that in BIOS!!!
When putting in win7 install disk, it gives you the choice UEFI and no UEFI, in BIOS!!!

 

..best guess: I think it's set up in the way that the disk is a gpt drive. So when you boot, you're going to get the efi version of the bootloader. And that that's what you see when booting from the win7 dvd. And maybe that you can just add an existing entry in the asus efi manager to boot win7 again.

I've no idea about the specifics here, though. (And I think I'm going to use a blank ssd with grub when I get my laptop..)

So if anyone knows how the asus efi is set up, and how this actually works, that would be really interesting to know.

 

From what I have read, tutorialwise on the net, the only thing you got to do, is to enable uefi in bios, and then let windows set up your disk using GPT. And it seems to be what is going on, when i make a clean install, looking at the disk afterwards, it is GPT. And as mentioned, the rescue disk has the efi-dir, but bios204, doesn't seem to use it. I guess if you stick to bios202, you will be fine. But before doing ANYTHING!!! Please check the entries, write them down, for you and me None of all the people I have have been writing with seems to know how to check it in BIOS, so you are pretty much on your own...
The rescue disks set up GPT as well, but bios won't boot from it!!!

 

So, I downgraded bios:
How to flash an older bios version on ASUS laptop & desktops : General Software Programs
That didn't help at all. I've got the feeling that it might have got something to do with the Asus AI-recovery software not doing its work properly. But no error messages at all during the recovery sequence nor did ai-recovery report any errors burning the disks on the lowest speed. But after recovering, at first boot I get 'put in win7 dvd, and repair' or something like that.
I have to mention, there still is no UEFI-boot possibility in bios on the recovery disks, unlike the Win7 installation disk...
I tried doing the recovery from usb-flash bios204 as well, here I got the UEFI choice, but still didn't work.

Believe I did what i could

 

Weird. Doesn't the AI recovery create the uefi entry points, or mark the gpt filesystem, or something like that? ..I'm sure the bios is supposed to detect the presence of a gpt, then read the efi entry (this is just files in a normal partition, except it's marked by a unique entry-id the efi can reference, and so on).

But I guess if you can still boot from the win7 dvd, you could delete all the partitions, and create a new filesystem from a new install.. Then use a default mbr setup for boot instead.

 

I think it is maybe that unique entry-id you are talking about, that is missing. It seems like, everything else is there, gpt efi-dir and all. But the bios just doesn't recognize it. And I don't need to use the old mbr-way, booting from win7. It has the efi-entry, and creates a gpt system, and boots just fine into it afterwards. But with the AI-recovery disks, no no no

So I can't return the system to factory default. But guess that's gonna be their headache. Their software...

An other thing is, I can put the recovery files on a usb-pen, and when I BOOT into bios, it actually recognize EFI, unlike the dvd. But when installation is through, the same thing at boot. I'm giving it another shot now, with the old bios v., but I'm pretty sure the result is going to be the same...

Didn't work either!!!

 

Hi !

I totally messed up my system after trying to install Ubuntu alongside the preinstalled Win 7 (too long to explain all the crazy things I did) and what I read here is not really reassuring.

Are you telling me that, even if I restore the whole system, there's no way to see the originally present (now gone) Windows Boot Manager option in the boot page of what I still naively call the BIOS? And where is the add new boot option I saw once in the same page? Is it gone forever?

 

I call it BIOS to

Did you do the recovery with the four rc-DVD's as well?
Or do you still have the recovery partition on your hard-disk?

 

After so many years using this word, it is hard to change.

I did not burn the 6 (yes, 6 DVD to install windows and all the ASUS crap !!) rc-DVD. I still have the recovery partition on the hard-disk but did not try to boot on it.

Even if I can, I wonder if it is usefull to use this recovery partition if after doing so the situation in the UEFI (correct word?) remain the same (no more Windows Boot Manager option, and no possibility to manually add a new boot option).

 

It claims that it will takes 6 DVD's, but it uses 4. But they are useless anyway, at least in my case
UEFI is short for "unified something something..." I think, but yes, it is right.
I believe the problem is, that the Asus configuration doesn't recognize UEFI entries for its own rc-software. If you boot from a win7 install with the EFI directory and stuff, it pups up just fine in BIOS boot section, with the ability to do UEFI boot.

I have to go now, but I will write later.

For recovery, you are supposed to press F7 at boot or something like that!!!

On BIOS202, you can disable and enable UEFI under BOOT, be sure to check that.

If you look at your partition table, do you still have the "microsoft windows reserved partition" I think it is called, and the EFI partition? I don't know if they are essential for the UEFI-BIOS to boot the rc-partition. As I understand it, as long as you have the EFI directory on the partition or media you want to boot, UEFI should be able to boot it, and in many cases detect it it self. But perhaps the partition with the EFI-directory has to be fat32, I'm not sure.

For some asus laptops, F9 is the recovery button. More research is perhaps needed.

If you use English/Spanish/French, you can easily just do a clean install, with or without UEFI enabled in BIOS. After the clean install, just run the driver disks auto-run, and soon you will have fresh install, just like when you got it with all the bloatware you can't live without, but with your own partition theme and without rc taking up 30Gb of your disk. Or uncheck all the bloatware and software you don't need.

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life

Or if you have someone who owns a home premium your language, just borrow that one. But after using linux, be sure to set the right time in BIOS, or you might have problems activating you original key for some reason.

 

An other thing. If you manage to do a clean install, but keep the recovery partition. I believe you will be able to install the AI-Recovery software, and then burn the four backup-disks. I noticed that, when I installed the tool without having the backup-partition intact, it would start when I boot into windows, notifying me about it not being able to create the backup-disks because there no longer were any recovery-partition

 

Thanks for the tips. After all, I manage to burn the recovering disks and use them. Anyway, I think I will give a try to reinstall a clean Windows.

 

This is a bit of a necro on the thread, but I'd also discovered the same issue, and after some digging around, found it was a problem with the ASUS AI Recovery software itself:

Repair Your Computer & AI Recovery doesn't work after Did Factory Recovery by DVD

In other words, the version of AI Recovery they had on the initial deployment of the N56VZ also has the same problem as the G55 and G75 units. You will need to restore to a drive smaller than or equal to 500 GB (tests show 120GB and 160GB will work); afterward, update AI Recovery to the latest version (1.0.24 was the one they used; I imagine 1.0.27 will work), and then re-create the discs so they work in anything above 500 GB.

 

THX. Good to know. I'm not gonna waste more time on it though, believe Asus is able to handle their own software as it was intended, I left the iso's on the desktop for them

 

I have the same problem here. Long story short, I use EasyBCD and accidentally delete the Windows 7 boot entry.

For more detail, I use EasyBCD 2.1 to add Ubuntu entry to the boot manager since after installing Ubuntu, I can't boot to Ubuntu. However, it was no use since EasyBCD couldn't identify any boot entry. I tried to add some Ubuntu entries and a Windows 7 entry but still didn't see any of them in EasyBCD (in the Windows Boot Menu, they all appeared). Later, I realized that EasyBCD 2.1 didn't support EFI but EasyBCD 2.2 beta does. That's why the entries doesn't show up in EasyBCD 2.1. Then, I downloaded EasyBCD 2.2 and deleted the added entries leaving a Windows 7 and a Ubuntu entry.

However, when I boot to the Windows 7 entry, the black screen appears and nothing happens. I'm able to use the F9 key to load the asus recovery wizard.

Is there any chance I can add the missing (corrupted ?) Windows 7 entry ? Or I must use the recovery wizard to recover Windows to 1st partition (which I may lose many softwares and files) ?