Just bought an Asus Q550 from Best Buy

I just bought an Asus Q550 after going through FOUR Sony Flip 15 notebooks with serious defects. I'm guessing its a Best Buy exclusive because I can't find many references to it on the internet, and there's no owner's thread here. I have a couple of questions: 1) Is there a known bug with USB 3.0 hard drives disconnecting themselves occasionally? The first time it happened I had brushed the USB cable with my jeans and then when I touched the palm rest felt a static discharge. So I figured some static charge zapped the cable from my jeans, but it could also be a software issue. 2) How do I create recovery discs? There's no application with "recovery" in the name.

 

Congrats on the new buy, hopefully it will serve you well.

1) I'm not sure about this...the static discharge may have been caused by lack of proper grounding. Do you feel a tingling sensation when touching a strong ground (like metal pipes) and the palmrest?
2) To create recovery disks on my Thinkpad, enter recovery mode on reboot and choose an option to burn recovery disks. Be warned that it will be disabled after being used once.

 

Does your laptop have Windows 8 or 8.1?

If it has Windows 8, and you upgrade to 8.1 you cannot go back to 8 and you may lose the ability to restore altogether so before you upgrade, make a backup.

There are a couple of ways to create recovery images. Here is one way for Windows 8.1 (If your PC shipped with Windows 8.1, not an upgrade you did to 8.1)..... Create a USB recovery drive - Microsoft Windows Help

You could also use a free program like Macrium Reflect and create a backup image to restore from should the need arise.

Backup instructions here v5: How to create a disk image (Backup, Image, v5)

Restore instructions here v5: How to restore a backup image (Restore, v5)

Or you can use the built-in recovery via Windows itself. How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC - Microsoft Windows Help

To use the last option, press F9 during boot and follow the instructions to "reset" your PC. This option is easy but is no good if your hard drive dies so I would recommend one of the other like a recovery USB flash drive as a second backup in case you need it. It will contain the recovery partition from your hard drive as well if applicable. Follow the instructions carefully.

Rob

 

I used the Windows restore thing to create a restore SD card. Will I be able to boot from it to install Windows on a new hard drive? I have an SSD coming in the mail

 

BTW how do I get support, drivers, etc when Asus doesn't list the Q550 on their site?

 

I can't figure out how to boot from USB/SD card. There is no option in the BIOS except for the Windows boot manager... Anybody know how you actually boot from an external device? I tried hitting ESC but that only gets the option to go into the BIOS or boot Windows.

 

Will I managed to boot the recovery, it just needed to be on a actual usb drive. But the recovery seems to be unable to install Windows onto a new drive... so now I have to download a Windows 8 image and install it, and somehow get the drivers working

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

Your Support URL is located here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Q550LF