Asus utilities and drivers N71JQ-XI

Newbie questions - answer as many as you like, your help is appreciated!

1) Somewhere along the line someone blew out the recovery partition and the Asus utilites. After a fresh install of Win7 Home Premium, is there a way to get all the drivers in one pass? I've manually loaded the video and sound drivers. Also, are there Asus utilites for system monitoring I may be missing? I know where the drivers are, but not Asus utilities - I assume at least some of them must be useful.

2) Is it really impossible to add a second hard drive???

3) If the only option in the BIOS is 1066 RAM, does that mean I would physically have to purchase 1333 RAM, or am I missing a way to push the existing RAM in the BIOS?

4) If everything seems to be running smoothly, do I care about flashing the BIOS?

5) I'm a little perplexed the downloadable manual doesn't explain what all the F keys do. Is there a supplementary manual somewhere?

 

I think I already answered the first question for you in the Owners Lounge.

With respect to second hard disk, it would only be possible if you can find a shop where you can buy the missing adapter board.
As far as I know, the most common ASUS sparepart shops like asus estore ( http://estore.asus.com/) and Asusparts don't have it.

If the bios shows 1066 RAM then you don't have DDR3 1333 RAM in your system.

You don't need to flash the bios if you are satisfied with the machine. If the fan ramping up and down every few seconds is annoying for you then you should flash to bios v208.

There is an eManual on the driver CD and this explains about all the different function keys.

 

Actually, you didn't say if I could get the most recent drivers in one pass or not. You also pointed me to a list of applications, but not where to load them from. So if you could be more specific, I would appreciate it even more. Would you have the file from the Drivers CD that explains the F keys you could send me or know if there's a download for it?

That's what I figured about the RAM.

Regarding the second hard drive . . .so we are just talking about a non-proprietary connector cable going from the mobo to the second hard drive? Would you or anyone by any miracle know what the mobo side connector is called? "SATA controller cable" or something similar.

 

You have to look closer at the webpage I guided you to in the other thread here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6833852-post1593.html

This ASUS website not only contains a list of the different applications, but if you click on one of the items listed there you will be guided to the page where you can download all the versions from that specific application. Maybe also have a look at the following thread which explains what each ASUS application is for:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/380681-asus-utility-bloatware-guide.html

With respect to the SATA connector, I think the mainboard has only pins on top of which is screwed a special extension arm to provide external SATA connection. There could be some serial number on this extension arm, but it is not easy to read it out without taking the complete notebook appart.

Regarding the eManual, just look on the driver CD as it is there. It would not be easy to upload it here as this file is around 50MB.