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    Just received my Asus W3J!!! Few Questions

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by AbN610, Jul 7, 2006.

  1. AbN610

    AbN610 Notebook Evangelist

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    I just got my Asus W3J and all I can say is...WOW. This thing is amazing. It looks SOO NICE. I can't even believe how nice this thing looks. It is built like a rock. There is no flex. The screen, despite what everyone says, is nice. It is much much better than my old Dell Inspiron 8100. I love it. There is some minor light leakage, but nothing out of the oridnary. It is so light. The keyboard is great. It is perfect. I still have to run benchmarks and all that, but before i do, i have a few questions.

    1.) How do I format this thing? I put in the XP cd that came with it, but it as just a recovery cd and only recovers this thing to factory settings. I have a XP CD w/ Service Pack 2 that came with the Inspiron E1705 that I returned, and I'm thinking about trying to format this thing with that. I want only one partition with NTFS. Do you guys think the Dell XP cd will work? I really want to try it, but I dont want to mess things up. Please help with this!

    I'll be posting pictures and benchmarks a little later. I may even write a review. Anyways, please let me know if my Dell XP CD will work. I have the CD-key and everything.
     
  2. Underpantman

    Underpantman Notebook Virtuoso

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    The restore cds are IMHO great and a good way to reinstall XP...there is also a hidden partition on the hdd which contains the restore image. During restart press F9 to restore from the hdd. You have several partition options during resinstall one of which is to have just one partition spaning the whole drive.
    You can then convert this to ntfs using the short cut on the desktop once the install has finished. Its nice and quick about 10min....compare this to the hour or so for XP disk plus having to manually install all the drivers...etc etc reboot reboot reboot after everyone.
    But if you still want to do it the hard way, then press F2 to access the bios on reboot, change the cd drive to first boot device and restart with the XP disk in.
    a
    :)
     
  3. AbN610

    AbN610 Notebook Evangelist

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    will the Dell XP cd work on the W3J?
     
  4. lmychajluk

    lmychajluk Notebook Evangelist

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    Probably not. Most OEM CDs are somehow keyed to that manufacturer's PCs, or even a particular model or series. You'll need a retail CD of XP to install from, though I think you can still use the Product Key from the sticker on the bottom of the laptop.
     
  5. AbN610

    AbN610 Notebook Evangelist

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    Okay if that is the case...how can I format the Asus W3J using the recovery CD so that I can have one partition with NTFS?
     
  6. SilverRocket

    SilverRocket Notebook Enthusiast

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    You'll need to get Partition Magic or other partition software to merge the two partitions; then just convert to NTFS within Windows. You shouldn't need the recovery CD at all for any of this.

    That being said, I am not sure if the recovery CD will work in the future once you've made those changes; can someone chime in?
     
  7. ledzepp14

    ledzepp14 Notebook Evangelist

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    I believe you still can, since the actual recovery CD gives you the option to have one or two partitions. It should work.
     
  8. ledzepp14

    ledzepp14 Notebook Evangelist

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    Congrats!

    That sig looks mighty familiar... ;)
     
  9. Underpantman

    Underpantman Notebook Virtuoso

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    As I said before during restore one of the first things it will ask you is what partitioning you would like, 1 partition or 2 partitions split 60/40.

    Its then a very simple matter of converting this drive to NTFS using the convert tool, this is non-destructive and takes about 5min.

    a
    :)