How-to: Fresh Windows-install on a new hdd/sdd + optional linux dual-boot.

Step 1. Technobabble. Technobabble, technobabble.

Please skip to step 2 if you don't care about technobabble.

Before anything else, let's demystify a few things about the UEFI (unified extensible frillware interface) architecture. For a long time, a computer has usually only ever had a bios as a first basic input-output system to interface with the hardware, to trigger the next stage for the OS to boot it's hardware interface layer. It's really just a firmware that adheres to some loose standard.

Since then, functions that used to be set before the OS would load has been moved into the OS layer. Such as memory timing, processor control, sleep states, etc. A bios includes various functions that used to only be placed in an OS. Meanwhile, there are a million small limitations with the bios on filenames, structures, boot sectors, memory sizes, screen resolutions, menus, and so on that also makes very little sense on modern computers. The Master Boot Record system for partition schemes also is extremely outdated, not being able to store more than four primary partitions, not being able to boot larger partitions, etc.

So having a bios trigger an OS boot does in some ways not make sense any more.

There are also other reasons why an UEFI type boot will turn up. For example, for ever benevolent hardware makers who wish to have unlimited control over how their devices are used, it would be perfectly logical to have their own embedded hardware interface interpreter, that then would launch particular boots and enable or disable particular functions.

And it's really perfectly possible to say that "bios" doesn't exist any more. And that we only have manufacturer firmware, and then EFI and UEFI boots. Specially on laptops, since the manufacturers will make all the bios-functions impossible to access anyway.

Macs will for example start their own initial firmware like this, that only is able to boot an OSX boot. It's possible to circumvent it - but if the manufacturer doesn't wish it, they could limit that bootloader to only accept, say, a specifically signed boot-partition. Some new Windows 8 concepts that have been demoed so far are supposed to run their own locked bootloader/uefi, much like other embedded devices like phones and tablets.

There's nothing stopping a hardware manufacturer from fitting a normal PC with a bootloader on a protected eprom right now, for good or bad.

But for the time being, this is not how it works with most providers. Mostly probably because it's a relatively young system, and because actually making a full boot is reallyhardwork(tm), and "a million things could go wrong and we don't have a support department large enough"(R).

So what Asus offers with their UEFI enabled boot so far is essentially a replacement for the usual bios functions exposed to the user, with an interface for picking UEFI enabled bootloaders with support for GPT partitions. In anticipation for OS versions that would require that in the future.

And in practice what happens for the time being is that:
1. The bios starts.
2. Bios launches the UEFI interface, rather than pick the first bootable device, mbr, etc.
3. This bootloader will be placed on the hard-drive (but could be placed on anything, of course) - and it will have a uniquely identifying id (GUID) because it is placed on a GPT (GUID Partition Table) enabled partition, part of the UEFI standard.
4. The UEFI interface starts another UEFI compatible boot-loader with a uniquely identifying id. For example the Windows bootloader.

I.e., we just start up an OS, that then starts up another OS.



So at this point, the question is: will it be worth it to create an UEFI/GPT setup on a new disk, and hope the OSes you have will happily install themselves properly without breaking anything apart? Once you complete an install - would it make it easier later on?

For example, could we imagine a beautiful full-res bootloader that can pick the linux boot during workhours, while defaulting to the windows boot during the sabbaticals, that kind of thing? Yes. We could imagine that. We could also imagine an EFI-manager that has a full range of disk-analysis tools, network status tools, backup and partition restore software. But until EFI managers with those functions turn up, the real use of any of this is limited.

It will also involve extra steps for the bootload stage when installing most linux distros that honestly aren't always extremely easy to do. (But will in the near future involve something like, from the UEFI interface, "add boot point", finding /efi/bootimage.something on the boot partition for the distro, "save". But not all linux distros provide a uefi compatible loader by default yet).

I also don't know how to actually extract the UEFI boot, or installing the UEFI boot somehow yet. Which is necessary to get the UEFI onto a new disk.

So therefore this tutorial will avoid the entire thing, and just wipe the disc, and use an mbr instead.

If you want the UEFI back later, it involves a reinstall and a wipe of everything, and so on, but at least it's possible. That is, if the actual UEFI loader is provided somehow. So it might not be the best idea to actually wipe your original disk. Instead, maybe consider resizing partitions, and adding the boot-loader stage for the linux boot, new windows boot, etc, in the UEFI boot manager instead.

And at the moment, if you switch to a new disk, you just lose the UEFI, because it's on the physical disk, like explained, so we don't really have many options.

Reasons for doing a "clean install" can be different things. If you install the full partition recovery from Asus' recovery manager, the OS will take more than 20Gb of space. If you install this on a 128Gb SSD, you've wasted a lot of space. Other reasons is to get rid of the bloatware, and make sure that the boot you have works optimally. Finally, it's to be able to resize partitions to create space for a dual-boot, without having to move data, that in turn might create unexpected problems depending on initial partition setup, etc.


Step 2. Preparations for clean install.
You need:
1. A Windows 7 64bit OEM install.
(Asus does not provide an OEM disc in the box. You need to download one "illegally", or you can buy one on Microsoft's homepage. Note that having a legal and dearly bought windows key (from, say, a disc-version) does not entitle you to download an OEM disc/iso from Microsoft. But new purchases of Win7 will.

edit: Take a look at this page elsewhere on nbr for sources to win isos.

And note that if you use your Windows key on the original win7 install on the hdd the laptop came with, you need to disable it before you can use it on a different windows install. Use a tool called "slmgr.vbs" for this in the command shell. Or call MS-support. They love helping people with this kind of thing. And will not put you on wait for several hours, or interrogate you on whether or not you actually own your own computer at all.

And note that when installing a new Win install, you have a ~20 day grace-period before you have to register the license. But there is no way to disable a license on your overwritten and formatted boot.)

It's possible to install a win7 install from an USB stick as well. Essentially involves opening the ISO, or accessing a dvd. Then extracting the files to the usb-stick, along with creating a bootmanager entry.

You can use this official tool to do the job if you have access to an iso image.
Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool - CNET Download.com. It's intended to be used with the OEM install image you will be able to download when buying win7.

Or you can burn the iso to a dvd with your favourite burning software, or by double-clicking on it in win7.

2. Asus driver disc. Does usually contain the same driver version as the one shipped on the slip-streamed (read: custom OEM/Asus provided) Windows version). With the n56, the driver disc contains enough drivers to make sure you have proper display drivers, wifi, etc.

3. Optional Linux spin. I'm not going to recommend a specific spin, but I use Fuduntu, a Fedora fork. Sabayon is another good distro based on Gentoo. Either comes with a "live-image", which is an OS bootable from a dvd/usb stick, etc. Installation between the different spins vary very little.

4. For people who don't have the privilege of messing with their own system, or can't afford to lose their data, maybe consider making a cloned backup of the entire system, including EFI and so on, with for example Clonezilla.

I.e., create a bootable dvd with the software, have an external disk-drive on hand, create a backup image of the current drive on the external disk, including system partitions, etc. Do that BEFORE starting with the installs. Then if something blows up, you can boot the image again, and recover the disk-image from the external disk-drive.

If you intend to mirror this image to a new SSD, make sure you shrink the partitions so they fit on the new disk (and then expand them to fill the disk again later. Can use any amount of tools, like PartitionMagic, etc). It's possible that Norton Ghost takes care of this process for you, but I haven't tested this on the later versions.

Either would be an alternative to another fresh install as well. Or an option to keep the provided OEM slipstream, if you wanted to store it for some reason.


Step 3. Install Windows/terrifying and irreversible things will happen.

So to summarize: 1. Get Win7 OEM ISO, 2. Optionally switch physical disk. 3. Find the Asus driver disc.

Then:
1. Hit "esc" during boot, and pick the dvd-drive from the pop-up menu.
Windows install should boot.
2. Pick "Repair/Advanced" mode, or something unintuitive like that. You're not going to repair, but get access to the custom/advanced setup.
3. Select the existing partitions, if any, and delete them. If it's the original gpt-disk, it's just one huge partition. A new disk, like an ssd, will be empty.
4. Create a new partition for Windows. The install will automagically add another 100Mb partition at the beginning of the disk for system files.
5. Optionally leave a portion of the disk free for a linux boot. For a standard setup, 20Gb is generous. Simply reduce the size of the Windows partition a small amount.
6. Choose the Windows partition for installing windows.
7. Let the Windows install complete.

8. Once you boot into Windows, insert the driver disc, and let the install complete all the steps.
9. Connect to the internet. Optionally run windows updates. Set aside the rest of the evening for that.
10. Use Asus-update after the updates have completed to install newer graphics drivers, audio drivers, etc. There's no real need to go to asus.com to pick up parts of the new driver kits, unless there's something specific you're looking for.

Step 4. Optional Linux install.
At this point, the asus bios will be trying to point to an uefi as default, and then falling back to a second device. And since the uefi doesn't exist, it will try to boot from the first bootable device. Unless the dvd/blu-ray is selected, or an usb, etc., is on top of the list, the next device is the first hdd. Hdd0, sda, etc. Unless something mysterious happened with a slip-streamed Win7 oem install that included a UEFI some time in the mystical future, Windows will write a reference in the mbr, and have a boot partition (ironically similar to an EFI partition setup) that will be bootable. The mbr will point to this windows boot-point.

What we're going to do when installing a linux boot is to create a new boot-loader and have the mbr point to that. The linux boot-loader then can be configured to chainload the Win7 boot.

This is all done automatically for you in the install-routines.

1. Prepare a live-image. Burn an iso to a dvd, or use a program like "unetbootin" to create a bootable USB-stick from the iso live-image.
2. Boot the live-image.
3. Use distro-specific routine to install the distro.
4. Pick "use free space/unpartitioned space". The installer will place the various partitions needed for operation (/boot, / (<- read: "root"), /home, etc., one after the other on the free unpartitioned space.
5. Pick the location of the boot. Most bios-setups won't be able to distinguish between partitions on the same disk, so you need the mbr to point to the linux boot ("grub").
6. Install files. A normal Fuduntu install should take about 10 minutes.
7. Reboot.

You will now be punched via bios to grub. And grub will give you options between the linux distro and the existing win7 boot.

You can choose the default entry in the boot-loader via a graphical editor, or via editing /boot/grub/grub.conf. For example to set windows as the default boot-point, to change the time before the default boot, change the background of the bootloader, etc. Like the Windows Bootmgr.. you could set up the boot-manager to silently boot windows, unless you hit a key and bring up the boot-menu. So resumes from hibernation, etc., would work seamlessly.

edit: Important tweaks/extra tools to Windows after a clean install:
1. Virtual memory - set a fixed size at for example the minimum size, or 1Gb, etc. Otherwise, the page-file can typically grow to RAMx3Gb->24Gb. Computer works the same without a page-file for the most part. Performance is generally identical, because you typically don't use the virtual memory. But some programs require a page-file in order to work.

2. Hwinfo. Temperature, cpu-state, battery level monitor, + various gadget add-ons.

3. MSI Afterburner. Gpu/graphics memory overclock utility.

4. Ad-aware. Free (for personal use) spyware and virus detection/removal. Light-weight, real-time detection can be disabled.

5. Nexus Winstep. Themeable and configurable dock-application. Has support for various system-keys and functions, media-keys, etc. (Free "basic" application, no nag-screens).

6. Irfanview. Least problematic replacement for MS Photo/fax/image-viewer. Switch in options for using a context-menu with similar functions as the viewer. The MS-viewer should be replaced as the default viewer, since it greedily uses undeclared library functions, that consistently causes protection faults for random running programs that have to obey user-level memory restrictions. (Known problem since Windows XP.)

edit: Grand Microsoft Moments - 9th of October 2012. Microsoft releases a partial fix to the photo-viewer lock-up problem, numerous years after the program was first released.

editer: An efi-bootloader such as the one I described above now exists. It's called rEFInd, a fork off rEFIt. Visit the page on the link to learn more about replacing the efi-loader that likely is shipped on your computer with this one, along with requirements/limitations in terms of mixing gpt/non-gpt partitions, and so on.

another edit: With the changes to the rendering path for the composite window manager windows uses... Aero, etc. Introduced with one of the March kb updates to windows 7. And very successfully integrated with the latest intel and nvidia drivers for optimus/intel+nvidia systems, specially if you have automatic allocation of set (standard) in the nvidia settings, between the internal and dedicated gpu..

But with that setup - there's a small side-effect. If you have a standard setup, and start up processmanager, you'll see that there's a component that keeps nagging the graphics card, even when the context is not active. It's not much, but there are changes made to the memory area pretty much constantly. Which causes the window manager component "dwm.exe" to "wake" the nvidia card in an optimus setup from idle (in spite of that nothing is shown on screen). So the nvidia card suddenly runs at a high memory frequency. And since the write requests happen so often, the card never goes to idle speeds again. This is easily another 15w drain on battery, and it pulls the temperature over the first trip-point for the fan.

What this actually is is the aero "peek". You've probably seen it already, on the taskbar, that the preview popups are actually current, and update about twice a second, or even faster. This peek function also isn't affected by disabling it in either the "advanced" properties, or on the right-click on taskbar properties. It simply runs that peek function in some different way, handled by the window manager, rather than disabling it. Leaving you with no other option than to disable the composite window manager to get rid of it - which leaves you with ugly windows, and a very densely packed desktop. But it also makes the sync with the refresh rate when showing video in anything but exactly the refresh rate flicker. It's a particular quirk with optimus systems, since the sync isn't handled by the nvidia driver, or the specific program that runs the video. With browsers streaming netflix, etc., you'll get this problem.

Solution is this - make the aero peek poll with higher intervals. 2-3 seconds is more than enough, but if you don't actually use the tiny aero peek windows to watch what is happening in the open windows anyway - just increase the poll delay, and watch the battery life while aero is enabled, increase a great deal.

The path is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced"

And the key is a 32-bit dword called "DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime". The value of that register can be set in decimal, where the number is the milliseconds between each polling interval. The name of the key obviously refers to a different component, with a separate entry in the aero options, but it does, for whatever reason, control the aero peek interval, as well as the desktop preview. You can download and import the registry file below to add the key and increase the interval to 10 seconds (P.s. please be careful about adding registry strings with random .reg files).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25785460/aero-peek_poll interval.reg

editer: Better yet, simply disable the entire live preview by adding a 32-bit dword key in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband"
..called "MaxThumbSizePx", with a value of "1".

Depending on your user level, you might also want to set a similar d-word in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\" called "TaskbarNoThumbnail", with a value of "1".

 

Thanks for this guide.

I own a N56VZ-S4066V bought in Germany about a month ago. This is the first Win 7 computer that I bought. My previous five year old computer had Ubuntu 12.04 and Win Xp dual boot on it.

The things have changed it seems in regard to BIOS and partitions and Win installations/registrations. I did what the computer recommended and produced recovery dvds (haven't burned them but copied the isos in an external drive).

Then I managed to install Ubuntu 12.04 from a dvd (I couldn't do it from a usb, but I think that was my fault) on the N56 and it works (I'm writing this from Ubuntu), except for some gltiches with the touch pad and not recognising my external monitor if it is plugged in when the linux starts up. If I plug it in after the startup it works normally.

However the launcher (grub) does not work. It shows the win 7 but does not start it. It can only start Linux. Windows works normally but I have to change the boot order in the bios (UEFI?) to start win 7 (not a clean install, and probably registered by now, I'm not sure). If I change the boot order it directly starts windows without asking anything about linux. This is probably due to the fact that there were already 4 partitions in the HDD when I installed Linux.

Can I reinstall Win 7 from the recovery DVDs or from somewhere else into 1 partition? Then I can make a linux partition and reinstall linux. Would grub work properly then? Any ideas?

 

You know, I'm not completely sure. I think it's supposed to be possible to use the recovery dvds to create a new "original" slipstreamed win7 setup. This should include uefi, uefi-compatible win-boot, etc.

Then you should be able to shrink the logical partitions, and then create another partition inside the gpt-partition for linux, instead of making another primary partition outside it.

But at that point, you would need a uefi-compatible bootloader to launch the win7 boot, and a grub efi boot. And I'm not completely sure about the progress on that just yet. Grub has some trouble with loading another efi-boot, but I think it's supposed to be possible. It can be launched as an efi-boot, though..

Alternative is that.. not yet good enough bootloader that would be able to launch either efi-grub and efi-win7.

...further complicating things is that what you're picking in the bios for boot-order is a kind of hybrid uefi boot again, even if the ui doesn't let you just pick different boots from a drop-down or something..

So what I would do is to install a new win-boot, create a primary partition with boot and grub, use that, and then chainloads windows like usual..

 

Great that you are taking your time, passing on some knowledge.
I see I've still have got a lot to learn about EFI/UEFI.

About the win7 iso, and key. I just got the iso from here:

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

And always just typed in the key, and the activation is smooth... Am I just for once having some luck here?

About drivers, you don't install them manually, and some of them in a specific order? Seems a kind of caotic when the the Asus driver disk does the work for you!!!

This is an asus n56vz guy, dualbooting with arch, using bumblebee for grafik switch and cuda, I think. So if you are thinking about Arch-linux, theres a little help to get here:

Archlinux + CUDA on Ivy-Bridge + Kepler « It compiles

 

It's a breach of the EULA i think, not exactly sure on the legality of the whole thing as to whether it's truly illegal or in some sort of gray zone. In the mean time, you can grab the iso here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html so far it's been tolerated and we'll act accordingly if the situation changes.

Nice guide y the way.

 

..yeah, grey area.. I guess maybe the manufacturers would complain before MS.

Nice page, didn't think you had one like that And thanks for hat-tip.

@elmer_f: Arch is very heavy, though. And there are a few distros that have bumblebee in the standard package well, or with a good pre-config. Such as Sabayon.. it's a well-maintained distro over Gentoo. Build from source with a package script. Suse has bumblebee part of the standard packages. It's a bit more fiddling around to get it to run in Fedora or Ubuntu. But with a quad-core, building it from source takes.. 10 seconds?

Bumblebee - NVIDIA Optimus support for Linux!

..oh, and the install thing - the drivers and software you download actually have a bunch of switches for "silent" command-line installs. It's more and more arcane the longer you keep going at it, though - every install has different settings, and syntax that seems similar but isn't, and so on. So if someone actually went through all that trouble to find out how to do this for all the installs, I'm not going to complain.

But this one also actually works. Was way too much chat in the guide anyway, but unlike most of these "packages" you get, this one actually worked, and didn't install too much annoying extra stuff. So yes, you can install this one without any problems. I just typed down the order that is least likely to cause some lock in some driver database, or weird dependency problem that halts the install, and that sort of thing.

Was actually a bit surprised. I only had.. five reboots, and no fails ..lol.. never happened before.

 

#6 Heavy how, not beginner friendly? Yes indeed... But if I don't go for stuff like that, I will never learn, just get annoyed when it doesn't work
And man... Arch can make an old computer run


Used the disk as well for driver install, and it worked fine on the first machine. But seems at bit random though, what order it installs, and it takes a long time. I usually go for chipset hd-bus gpu and sound, to get the basic things running first and lets it reboot, when needed/suggested, but perhaps that's just superstition and a waste of time?

 

Anyone! Am I wasting my time here, or is there a good reason for installing drivers in a specific order?
I usually install the driver in a similar way as I descibed, but is it at waste of timer, or is there good sense to it?
And if so, any good suggestions?

 

on xp it usually made sense to install chipset drivers -> display -> audio. But if everything is at least nominally supported from the beginning, it doesn't really matter anymore. There's still a chance that you get a database error when you shift out the deck in the house of cards. But as long as the driver package is written well, you can avoid it. So the only real use you would get out of installing one driver at a time, is that you can roll back just one driver at the next reboot, and potentially avoid a complete breakdown, and so on.

..point is that if that happens, you're really in for a reinstall anyway.

 

Thanks. I will save some time on that account in the future then

What about win8, when it comes. Will there be more compatible drivers included for older computeres, since some or lots of them doesn't even have support for win 7. My old asus only had support for for vista, but it was possible to find compatible drivers for 7.
But hopefully asus will make drivers n56, since it is a rather new product...

 

By the way. What nvidia driver are you using. notebookcheck rates 9400points in 3dmarkVantage, mine only rates 8900. Are they overclocking, or do the machines just vary that much, if that is much???

 

I'm using the standard drivers, and I'm pretty sure they did the same in the test. Could be the drivers have different standard settings? Could be there's some profile tweak you're missing. One of the components in the test rely on some IGP routine, something like that. So if the control application isn't kicking in for some of the sub-routines, it could be running on the hd4000 card, or you're missing a score, etc.

Win8.. good luck. I'm never going to bother with it. I'm not going to buy something that turns my computer into a closed console.. it's already bad enough with the closed bioses and tweaks the companies make. The second we're getting this developed, we're going to get more and more identical processors with different vbioses to different prices. Differently locked clocks on graphics cards that actually are the same. The same Ssd with different signaling speeds, depending on whether you pay money to the right company to install it for you. Losing functions depending on what OS you have - in addition to the first one. Asus already locks the media-key to Microsoft's mediacenter, for example - there's nothing stopping them from for example disabling just about all inputs via bios commands, unless the computer goes through a secure boot, that kind of thing. You might not think that this would be good business - but Microsoft is convinced (and therefore other companies are as well) that locking out competition is a good way to earn money. I.e., competing on availability rather than a good service. Where they would lose. Microsoft has always been extremely skilled at this, from pseudo standards, to introduction-deals and eternal support-agreements, and all the way to creating closed formats by simply packing perfectly well-documented formats in a new proprietary wrapper.

But they have to do something in order to survive, I guess. Just business, obviously. But it's not a coincidence that more and more companies actively spy out and use open source, or open-source based solutions right now. But there's always going to be enough dolts in the computer world who have no concept of useful demarcation between closed and open source. And keep thinking that their product is "protected" only if they can have a guileless publisher protecting it with a draconic drm-solution that has weaknesses and vulnerabilities that leave all the non-hardcore customers with their pants around their knees in the middle of the highway very often. So who knows.. Maybe win8 will be a success. I mean, people buy a lot of strange things. Get it for the thrill! That kind of thing.

I mean, don't you just love it in windows when it suddenly shuts down with a protection fault - and the program routine that triggered the fault forgot to leave a message in the event-log? Maybe it'll happen today, maybe it'll happen next week? And you don't know why, or what's causing it! It's excitement in everyday life. And in the meantime, I have the warm fuzzy feeling of having supported a company that took 12 years to finally produce a semi-workable OS. So grand.

 

So in game, there properly isn't much difference between the machine they tested, and my machine. Or is there some setup I should look into?
About the HD4000 graphics, I set global and 3DMark to dedicated card, so there shouldn't be any confusion there?

Well... The very dark site of microsoft. Hopefully the linux community will be able to put enough pressure on how standards are set, so there will be just a little hope. I for one, guess I will stick to 7, and see if I will be able to put more time into becomming a linux user. But again, depends on how well they mannage to spoil our posibillities with linux on our hardware, that we paid for and actually own.
How long time do you mannage to get linux running on battery, on the n56vz?

 

One quick question, If I download the ISO from digital river, and burn it to a dvd and boot from it, will I be able to activate it with no problems?

 

I guess we kind of "rent" the entire laptop, really. Except we also pay the entire price for it.. Asus, Microsoft, and so on technically reserve the right to change the product after you buy it. Apple won several landmark cases.. or, they settled or pre-emptively submitted legislation that involved injecting various additions into existing law.. that let them remove adobe flash-support via firmware update, for example. Poof - now you need to buy the same program from the apple-store. No way to contest that, even if it very obviously isn't supposed to be allowed to change a product significantly, or limit it, beyond what the customer should expect depending on specifications, etc. Other companies, like Sony, don't even care to try to inject it into law until it goes to lawsuits. They just state that they are treating their user-agreements as operative law. Completely bonk legally, but..

Similar reason Asus is more eager to adjust their advertisement than they are fixing their bios, for example. Basically setting 8Gb ram as "max supported", even if that's actually caused by their very bad bios-tweaks, and 16Gb should have worked perfectly with standard setups on any available 204-pin chip. But they know, or at least believe for very good reason, that it's going to be a bigger problem for them to advertise too much specifically, rather than being deliberately vague and then stealth-change things later. You would think that advertising with good specs would pay off, for example. Instead of saying: it's awesome! Has stuff! But that's not how this business works any more. If it ever did, I guess..

..um.. sorry about rant... Yes, it works to register the windows with your key, after you have installed an OEM version, or a version from some disc or other. Just remember to unregister your existing windows key in your current install first, before you format the disc and install again. You can't unregister your key from a different system than the one it was enabled on. But the enable/disable tool works well.

 

Even when Installing a new SSD, I will have to unregister the key from the original HD? Or does it come without the key already activated?/

Thx.

 

No, I don't think so. ..If you open the "system" card in the control panel, it should say if it's registered or not at the bottom.

It's not extremely difficult to use the command shell to unregister the key, though. Open a command shell. Run "slmgr.vbs /upk [key]". Then use /ipk when registering it later. Just type slmgr.vbs to get a list of all the /- switches.

 

If it's an OEM key, you don't need to unregister, i never had to do it. Personally, i use ABR Beta to backup the activation (it needs to be a factory OEM install that you backup for ABR to work) when i change a drive.

 

@OP
Thanks for the easily comprehensible guide, you have been more than helpful.



I just bought an N56VZ-S4102V less than a week ago, and performed my usual clean install right after i replaced the original Seagate Momentus XT 750/8GB HHD with a brand new SSD.

After creating a 5-DVD ISO backup, disabling the Windows, and making sure I had the proper driver DVD, i wiped the original harddisk and completed my clean install on the SSD with no problems whatsoever.. ..or so i thought.

First, I noticed that the touchpad wouldn't disable through fn + f9 (all other fn + combinations work normally: brightness, wifi disable, etc).
Soon i realized that the touchpad had installed with generic drivers from Windows. The touchpad could not be turned off, cannot use multitouch gestures, and apparently palm rejection is nonexistent (which is quite annoying while trying to type). The function fn + f9, and multitouch gestures worked fine from the original factory install.

Using the Driver DVD from Asus, i tried to install the one and only available touchpad driver (elantech), which resulted in a popup that mentioned that this is the incorrect driver for the device.

Still hopeful, i searched for drivers on the Asus website, which provided me with a download for the touchpad driver (yet elantech again). This downloaded driver too resulted in the same popup. Confused, i looked up the hardware ID for the touchpad, which informed me that the hardware device is a " SYN0A17" (a synaptics device!).

Remaining patient, I took the time to download synaptics touchpad drivers, which installed normally. I felt relieved, until i found out that this newly installed synaptics driver did not solve my problem. Still could not be turned off, no multitouch gestures, no palm rejection.

Beginning to get desperate, i turned to my ISO backups (which were on my external HDD), and set my mind on restoring the computer to default factory settings. Luck was not on my side again, because a co-worker accidentally knocked over my external HDD, which met the floor, and is now completely useless.

So, to sum up:
-clean install of Windows 7 on SSD
-touchpad is problematic (no multitouch, cannot be turned off)
-touchpad is synaptics? (when it is supposed to be elantech)
-recovery partition on original HDD has been wiped clean
-recovery DVD ISO backups no longer available

Any help or thoughts welcome.. thanks in advance

 

Kssh. Bad news. So they didn't have the right driver on the driver-disc.. Do you know if the synaptics driver was there on the oem slipstream, or the first install the laptop came with?

Maybe try finding a synaptics driver here.. Drivers | Synaptics
..before trying anything else.

 

Thanks for the quick reply..

Yes, no correct driver on the driver DVD, there was only one driver, which was elantech.
Quite sure the proper drivers were installed on the laptop from the default factory install, because gestures worked fine and the touchpad could be disabled with fn + f9.

Already installed the synaptics drivers, installation is complete, but still no luck on gestures and disabling..

I have found a way to disable the touchpad manually from "control panel>mouse>device settings>disable", and currently am using the computer with an external mouse because typing becomes a nuisance when the palm rejection is nonexistent.

Oh and in my country, it is almost impossible to get proper support from asus representatives here, and getting the unit exchanged or returned is out of the question. Its just the way things are.

Is there anybody out there with a synaptics touchpad? Maybe someone could help me by sharing the driver from the OEM install?

thanks

 

Hey nipsen, I have searched the web for a long time for a fix to my problem and haven't found one. Maybe you would know: I am trying to install Ubuntu 12.10 alongside my Win7 64-bit installation with no success so far. For some reason the Ubuntu installation whether it's wubi or installation from a usb stick doesn't seem to recognize my partitions. I have tried shrinking a partition from the windows utility thing and leaving it unpartitioned but still it does not work. Any solution for this except from installing everything from scratch?

 

Please post a screen shot of disk management in win 7 to help sort this out.

 

right now the extra space is allocated to vmware

 

Don't really have much experience with vm, so not sure what you're trying to do..

But since I wrote the guide, I see I've kind of omitted one sort of.. er.. crucial detail about Ubuntu/Suse/Fedora installations.

What happens is that if you boot in efi-mode, the installation assumes you're running with a gpt-setup, and you can choose between using the linux-installation's efi boot, or picking another efi boot such as the one already on the system.

If you boot into mbr/legacy mode, the installation assumes you need to set a reference to the bootloader in the mbr/master boot record, which then will launch a bootloader such as the windows boot loader, or the linux bootloader (usually grub) in the /boot partition (or on the / partition, if you didn't specify a location for the boot partition).

So here's the problem. If you have a gpt-boot set up, and shrink the partitions in Windows, what you're actually doing is shrinking the gpt-partition, and creating a new space outside the gpt-partition. And an efi-loader on that boot will actually not be possible to launch from the system's efi boot, making it invisible.

In the same way, if you use an mbr-setup, and add an entry to the mbr in your otherwise perfectly usable gpt/efi setup, that mbr boot (if you get to actually launch that boot from an efi-bios..) will not be able to chainload the efi-boot..

Kind of a big issue.. So very sorry I said you could "just shrink the partitions" in the windows disk-manager.

Try to use this tool..
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

It's easy to see what you're actually doing, you can arrange and experiment without applying the changes. And most of all, it sees the difference between gpt and mbr partitions..

Two things, by the way: You can only have four primary partitions on a drive. A gpt-partition circumvents that by being a wrapper, basically, for other partitions. The bootloader has to target that partition, and then target a "sub-partition" with a globally identifiable id, which the gpt-partition scheme allows.

But it's perfectly possible to add a bunch of "logical" or extended partitions, and use those for the OS, and only leaving the boot-partitions as primary partitions.. So if you have one primary partition space left, you could add one linux partition, make it active/primary, and mount it as /boot. Then add other partitios (such as the root (mounted as "/") and swap partitions..

 

What I'm trying to do is install a Unix system on my computer for uni homework purposes for now..So since I failed to install it alongside windows I used VM.
What settings should I apply in Partitionwizard for the Ubuntu installation to see my other partitions? I think I already tried using it before but with no success since I didn't really know what I was doing...