Vista 64Bit & ASUS

I'm planning on buying a future Asus laptop for college in the coming school year (possible G50V)... I know Asus, like many other laptops, come full of crapware. I am very interested in reinstalling Vista without this crapware but I do not want to disturb the vital drivers. My question boils down to this: I want an Asus laptop with 4 gigs of ram and vista 64 bit. What is the best way to get 64 bit on the lappy if it doesn't come with it without disturbing the drivers?

 

From my experience with my U6, on 32 bits, Asus recovery CDs tend to put back the things you have on the drive when you first start it up. 20 million things in the tray. What I advise, and what I did, back up your Asus license, use a Vista DVD, install the 64 bit version of the Vista you purchased, activate it, boot up, insert the Asus Utility disc, select the important apps and drivers and try to minimize optional apps (like Norton and other trials). Install SP1 and you have a system that saves around 200megs at startup.

Note, if you do not back up your Asus license, you will need to call microsoft to activate it again with the serial on the laptop. Just because you have the serial on the laptop it does not mean it will activate on the spot. Your OS is already activated from the factory, and that is why you do no need to worry about things like this when you restore the factory image using the recovery disc.

 

ASUS doesn't install Vista 64
Options you have are

1. Barebone ASUS with custom Vista 64 install.
2. Regular ASUS with Vista 64 install instead of original removed Vista32.

In both cases the best way is to call to a comany like XoticPC.

 

I know Asus doesn't sell their machines with 64 bit installed (except G1Sn).. I was just wondering what the best way to go about putting 64 on would be (I'm getting a free copy of vista from my college).


And TY Wishmaker. I was pretty sure this was the way to go about doing it but many thanks for your response.

Just to clarify - As long as I leave the sticker on the bottom of my notebook that has my Asus windows license on it (or keep record of what the serial is) I should have no problem activating it if I ever need to?

 

Actually, Wishmaker's information is not really correct. You can use the recovery DVD to install a clean copy of Vista. Check the Info Booth_FAQ for a way to do that. Which saves you the activation trouble.

There is a significant amount of bloatware in a default recovery... but it is less than with some other brands.

 

I did say from my experience ...


I used the recovery cd many times , as you already know, and when I refused to insert the driver cd, the windows setup would end up corrupted and Vista would not boot. As soon as your pc is recovered, you are asked for the drivers cd. You cannot choose what to put and what not do. You end up with what Asus wants.

Note:

What I did:

1. Boot from Asus Cd,
2. Recover
3. When asked to insert cd with drivers, ignored, rebooted
4. Vista ends up with message :Corrupted installation, reinstall.
5. Back to the drawing board, reboot, load Vista from Asus recovery cd.
6. Ignore the drivers, reboot, boot Vista...Vista boots, vista error, please reinstall.
7. Reboot, boot from Asus Recovery, insert driver cd, wait for it...wait for it...
8. Reboot, boot Vista, everything works, 20 million things in your taskbar.
9. Insert Vista DVD with all versions.
10. Boot, select the Vista you have a license for.
11. Reboot, boot new Vista, insert, cd with drivers, select important, and what you want, minimize, trials, things you don't use.
12. Reboot, voila: Vista with 200 megs less at startup.
13. Drawback? No Asus in my computer but Vista is activated.

 

Yes, sure, noone's blaming your or anything

I haven't heard of corrupted Vista installs by refusing to install the driver CD, until now...

The fact is I have never tried this myself with the Vista recovery, and that information is based on reports from other people -- just the W7Sg came with Vista and I killed it off as soon as I got the chance.

Be aware that at least in some models, there is a prompt telling you to restart the computer, during the Vista recovery, which comes too early; so if you do restart there, the install gets corrupted. Maybe that's what you suffered from?

In any case, if the OP wants 64-bit Vista on a system that comes with 32-bit, then the discussion is academic for his purposes, since he has to use a retail DVD anyway

 

I rarely express myself if I don't experience something first hand. I did reboot when the pop-up said . I don't reboot when the wizard is installing windows, I am not that bad . I've read so many things about the U6 on this board but some rarely applied to me. Especially when it came to the OS/Recovery/VGA/Optical Unit, etc .

 

What I meant is that in some ASUS/Vista recovery processes, there is a popup that says "please reboot your computer now" but it's too early, the computer still does stuff in the background; following the advice will ruin the install.

But by your step by step description, it really seems that refusing to install the driver CD messed up your install.

There is another option, at least for XP there was a time-out built-in, if you didn't insert the CD for 5, 10 minutes or so it would reboot on its own to a clean install. Although I'm not sure about this.

But we are veering a bit offtopic

 

I can confirm this from my own experience.. Just force a restart when it ask for driver cd

 

where is this info_booth faq page i keep hearing about, someone post the link?

 

how do you force a clean install with recovery dvd? can you tell me a bit more on how to do this?

 

Scott, the Info Booth is the 2nd thread on the 1st page of the ASUS forum. It's a sticky. It contains theFAQ. It's also linked in my signature, which appears about 4 times on the previous page of this very thread.

Dougbrad, I really don't follow. In the message where you ask a question; which is on a thread that discusses at length answers to that very question; you also quote a message that contains the exact answer in 10 words.

 

yeah, I agree, that was rather stupid of me

 

No prob. Hope you can use the info to install Vista.