got a new asus, how do i reinstall os

i got a new asus laptop, and it came with windoes mc edition preinstalled with ons of bs. on fat32

it only came with a recovery cd, or i am missing the os cd.

i want to reinstall after formatting ntfs. So I assume i have a legal winxp license. but not sure where or on what disc its located, any help would be great.

also is there a way to go ntfs, without reformatting and reinstalling the os

thank you

jay

 

Usually there is an icon on the desktop that will convert the drive to NTFS. Also, I am absolutely surprised to hear that there is "tons of bs", that doesn't sound right. What all is there that is a problem?

 

well there was norton someting or other, skye telephone, bunch of asus apps, asus mailcheck, nb checker, direct console, virtual drive, moto modem helper, multiview


asus net4switch, not sure what this does, but it and intel wiress less keep fighting each other to take my wireless connection.

any info on os cd

only thing i see is recovery cd, g1 driver cd, and ms works.

thanks for thr help

 

No you do not get a Win XP CD if your laptop came with Win MC. That'd be like giving you two separate OS's. But if you just bought your ASUS, you should be able to upgrade to Win Vista premium next year for free. You just need to pay S&H and they'll give you a Vista CD I believe.

 

Please use the search feature for simple questions like this.

Applicable thread

~ Brett

 

You know what... when you don't know what something is, it's best you find out before you format or delete it... Otherwise you'll be back on here or calling your dealer to find out what stuff doesn't work. Asus provides a lot of helpful and useful utes with the system that help run a lot of the stuff your notebook can do..... Uninstall things you know you do not want, but as for needing to format, you really don't. Asus doesn't load their systems up like other companies, with a bunch of crap... Asus only includes things that either make certain functionality possible, or honestly help you...... no malware, adware, spyware, general bloatware... not an ounce.

 

not a probem, thx

but still trying to figure out the whole file system thing

yes there was an exe to convert ot ntfs, seems like a batch file, and only applicable to non-os partition. ie is there a way to switch to ntfs, and keep os intact

again thanks all

jay

 

type this into command prompt
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs
Example; convert c: /fs:ntfs
will convert you C drive/partion to ntfs

Note: on the bootable partion it will convert the drive to 512b cluster which will be slower than the Fat32.

my system is set up like this
C: Fat32 16kb clusters(fast but not as fast 4 kb ntfs, but faster than 512 b)
D: NTFS 4 kb clusters.

as i do not load my os from d it converted to 4kb clusters which is very very faster but i have see alot of threads where people had coverted there bootable drive and have had a speed reduction because of the 512b cluster... you can ajust how big it converts to, with some application but you have to buy them.


hope that makes sense. good luck!

 

thx, yuio

well to my dismay, seems like the g1 recovy cd just loads norton ghosted image.
So even if i convert, (ie wanted a 4kb cluster) and reload os, doesnt seem like there is a standard install process for windows. guess its loading from a friends xp cd.

 

No there isn't a standard install process for windows.

But you emulate one easily, using the recovery CDs. Just recover from CD and when it asks for the drivers CD, don't insert it, let it time out. It will reboot and voila! a fresh XP installation.

The NTFS converter will convert the system partition, only it will do it on the next restart since it can't mess with system files while system files are being used.

And there is a safe, efficient process to get 4KB clusters on NTFS. I am not going to give details here, because it's been posted tons of times on the forum, I myself have posted it at least ten times.

So, please use the search feature. Not necessarily on the forum, even google will do.

 

Just use partition magic to change the cluster size... off course you'll have to pay for the program.

 

there are free utilities that do the same thing

check download.com

 

So is it correct that tricking the Recovery CD for clean XP install is still not a say, "fully clean" XP install since afterwards the partition still has to be converted to NTFS ?

So will the XP Pro CD work, using the ASUS' license no. ? Because then you get clean reformat with option to choose cluster size prior installing the OS...

 

Correct. I used to be annoyed by this too, but I got over it somehow Probably because I only install Windows once a year

An OEM XP Pro SP2 kit will work, probably. If you can get a hold of that, use it. I would use it if I would have one.

 

Thanks very much for clarification!

 

If you have an oem XP Home, couldnt you just format NTFS from that one, and then install using the recovery from asus with XP pro?

 

If you have an OEM XP Home, just use it. If you're not afraid of installing drivers yourself (it should be easy).
Edit: Sorry, only now I realize you said Home, and need a Professional. Well, what I said below applies.

If at any time you use the recovery disks, they will reformat (at least) the first partition to FAT32, regardless of what you do prior to that.

 

When I get my machine i think i'll simply reinstall with recovery (and manually install drivers to get a fresh install).
Then i'll use partion magic to divide my harddrive into partitions and convert to NTFS. I have noticed that it is possible to control cluster size with partition magic (so i'll set it to 4kb). I guess this would be the easiest way to do it.

 

It is just as I did - after recovery (to one partition), I realized that I have FAT32. Ok, converting to NTFS but cluster sizes are 512b. Actually, the hardest part was to change cluster size since I had installed pretty much soft when I wanted to change - anyway, Partition Magic did the trick (took only around 15 mins) and the clusters are now 4kb. Everything works sofar, chkdsk did not find any errors.

 

How do u tell if your NTSF Cluster size is 512 or 4?? I just do a fresh reformat of my drive to NTFS before resinsalling XP will it be in 4kb cluster??

 

Reading the post, I take that using the conversion NTFS provided slows down the system more?

Will formating the drive and setting it NTFS do the trick then?

 

Again, the questions have been answered many times before.

To see how many bytes per cluster,

chkdsk c: from a command prompt and the summary report at the end will include cluster size information.

Converting to 512bytes/cluster slows down the system, marginally (according to some), or significantly (according to others). I would tend towards the "marginally" qualification.

Converting to NTFS to 4096 bytes/cluster should give no significant slowdown from FAT32. I can't guarantee that however, I never used FAT32 with WinXP more than 20 minutes.

As to converting to 4096 bytes/cluster with Partition Magic, I've read quite a lot of people are doing it and it works safely. So, it's a valid, simpler option than the now "classical" BootItNG/slide files/and then convert. Be aware however that data loss may occur in some (unlikely) cases, however (but this is true with any application which affects the filesystem).

 

Hmm, yea, but then again, if your're converting a fresh windows, it must be limited how many important data, you have had time to store on the pc But thanks for the "heads up"

 

But then again, for example with my case, you could have a second partition for My Documents, Pictures, Music, etc. so you can reformat one partition without losing all the data on the other. I used the BootItNG method a little while ago and it went very smoothly.

~ Brett

 

I second that. It's always a good idea to keep your data files separately from the OS partition. A lot of bad things can happen to an OS partition.

I have a guide on installing Windows XP in the Guides forum, all this and much more is given there. I'm too lazy to give a link but it's somewhere there, there isn't much activity so you should be able to find it.

 

Here's the link to E.B.E's Guide, and might I add it is very well written and informative! Big thanks to E.B.E on this!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81828