Bought a 3 month old G750JM off Craigslist - Need help. Drive totally wiped/corrupted

[baschulz1]

Hey peeps,

Well.....I sold my G73 on CL for $600 and the same day found a G750JM for $550! The rig was purchased in March from Best Buy. Kid gave me the receipt. It looks mint, not a scratch on it! He needed the cash for some type of certifications he was taking so was in a bind to get rid of it. After talking to him for a bit it was apparent that he NO CLUE about laptops or computers in general. And I mean no clue.

So....let's get to the bad part. Basically....right before we planned to meet, he said he did a "Reset" and manually shut the laptop down when it displayed he was at 40%. because he "didn't want to be late"....I know....like I mentioned earlier, not the sharpest tool in the shed. So after getting this information out of him, which mind you, was some of the most unintelligent jargon I have ever had the pleasure listening to, I came home only to boot an attempting to repair Windows 8.1 that would run for quite some time and then error out that WIndows could not be repaired.

Then enters me....who has limited knowledge about Partitions and formatting drives and definitely doesn't eff with BIOS's and CMD prompts + Shift + F6 x: commands.

I read up a bit, wiped s bunch a chit and probably did more harm than good! Haha.

No basically I'm booting in UEFI DVD as first boot (for the Windows 8 retail OS I have with key) then I have the Toshiba SATA as second boot. Fast boot disabled...in IDE mode.

What happens is...it comes to the Windows Language screen and I press Shift + F10 and then run CMDS: DISKPART, LIST DISK. Then I see Only Disk 0 status Online 931GB Free 0B and GPT has an asterix under it.

SELECT DISK 0
CLEAN
CONVERT MBR

I go through the screens then see 1 entry for drive 0 and it's allocated. I click next. Windows sticks at 0% then errors out with "Windows could not format a partition selected on disk 0. The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error code: 0x80070057

Where did I go wrong?

I have the Toshiba Drivers on a thumb drive as well as most of the latest drivers loaded from Asus's site.

I know OEM comes with 4 partitions. A recovery (GONE) A System file (GONE) A Primary and restore or something.

Should I change to AHCI? I think I tried that actually.
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UPDATE:

Sooo......My friend brought over this Intel 520 series SSD 120GB 6Gb/s 2.5" and I'm very new the HDD's in general let alone a SSD.

I'd like to tackle this and learn a lot and get this thing running right rather than RMA it, but if you suggest I RMA it then I guess I can fork it over for a month.

Basically, I'd like to know what my best configuration would be and a layman's terms guide on how to achieve it.

I was thinking we put the Win8/8.1 retail DVD OS on the SSD only and the rest of everything (personal files/docs etc) on the 1TB SATA slow-as-chit 5400RPm HDD?? If so, where do we start 🙂

Oh also, where would I want my games installed? The SSD as well? (with the OS)

[Maxter]

Did you figure out the partition thing?
Anyhow, put the SSD in the computer (only SSD, no HDD) and install Windows. It's a small SSD the one you got there, so you might only want to install your main 1-3 games on SSD and the rest on HDD (which you can place into the next computer bay once Windows has been installed.
You don't know what's wrong with the original drive until you do a full check. So, install OS on SSD, then open a command line (with administrator privilege) and do "chkdsk /r d:" (I'm assuming the HDD will be drive "D". Let it do its thing (probably 30 mins).

[Maxter]

Another question... why would you format the HDD the G750 came with? you got rid of the Win8 copy it came on it (free).

[RayGobot]

I know the recovery partition on the drive is wiped, but if you can get an image of a bootable USB drive for your laptop, you could recover windows 8 with that could you not? I believe that laptops that have shipped with Windows 8 have the key in the BIOS (or something) so you won't need to purchase one.

I can upload an image of my G750JM recovery drive if you would like, (It's 14GB though so it'll take a few hours.)

[baschulz1]

Maxter wrote:
Did you figure out the partition thing?
Anyhow, put the SSD in the computer (only SSD, no HDD) and install Windows. It's a small SSD the one you got there, so you might only want to install your main 1-3 games on SSD and the rest on HDD (which you can place into the next computer bay once Windows has been installed.
You don't know what's wrong with the original drive until you do a full check. So, install OS on SSD, then open a command line (with administrator privilege) and do "chkdsk /r d:" (I'm assuming the HDD will be drive "D". Let it do its thing (probably 30 mins).

Thank you man. It is small indeed. Batman series and Fallout series for now 🙂 (Replays - all except for Origins)

So I merely take the 1 TB HDD out and install the 2.5 SSD in which bay slot? The one I take the HDD out of? Leave the HDD out and simply run my retail version of Window 8 that I immediately update to 8.1 correct? (And YEP....I cleared and wiped the whole OEM 1 TB schabang O_O....) can someone tell me if my key is possibly still usable and in my BIOS? But I guess that wouldn't matter would it, seeing as I'm putting a retail version of Win8 on the SSD as my Primary (and only - no dual boot) OS.

After I install the SSD, do I simply run the retail Win8 DVD and follow the instructions? Don't I need to format or clear or run a CMD Shift + F10 promptor the such prior to installing windows? I may need a quick step by step : /

Maxter wrote:
Another question... why would you format the HDD the G750 came with? you got rid of the Win8 copy it came on it (free).

I know...cuz I was messing around too much. Just trying to reformat and get windows to install as the repair and OS was never bootable hence I could never make a recovery and I had already wiped the whole drive. I know, I'm a moron. Hey ya learn something new everyday!

RayGobot wrote:
I know the recovery partition on the drive is wiped, but if you can get an image of a bootable USB drive for your laptop, you could recover windows 8 with that could you not? I believe that laptops that have shipped with Windows 8 have the key in the BIOS (or something) so you won't need to purchase one.

I can upload an image of my G750JM recovery drive if you would like, (It's 14GB though so it'll take a few hours.)

Wow man that would be frickin awesome! I could then sell this $120 version of Win8/8.1. The key has obviously not been used. I have a 32GB Flashdrive in my laptop as I write this. I will wait patiently. haha

Edit: And I now love Canada 🙂

Can anybody answer my SSD question real quick as I 'd like to get the physical SSD swapped in and that Transformer they call a Toshiba HDD out!

Double Edit: A buddy told me to run this since it's an Intel drive. (which he said was very desirable) Your thoughts?

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=18455

[RayGobot]

baschulz1 wrote:

Wow man that would be frickin awesome! I could then sell this $120 version of Win8/8.1. The key has obviously not been used. I have a 32GB Flashdrive in my laptop as I write this. I will wait patiently. haha

Okay, I'll make an image of my USB stick tonight and upload it. I'll be using Macrium Reflect to make the image. It'll be from a 16GB Flash drive (the Recovery partition & Drivers will fill the drive) Will report back with the download link.

[baschulz1]

RayGobot wrote:
Okay, I'll make an image of my USB stick tonight and upload it. I'll be using Macrium Reflect to make the image. It'll be from a 16GB Flash drive (the Recovery partition & Drivers will fill the drive) Will report back with the download link.

I can't thank you enough. Long live Canada!

[RayGobot]

So Macrium Reflect wont read from my external USB drive, so I'm going to use USB Image Tool. This should work. Just connect a 16GB USB drive, click restore, and select the image file. It should work.


Just note, I'm not 100% sure if this will work for your laptop, or if the image will be bootable (I don't see why it shouldn't be) so I really hope this will work for you.

It'll take me overnight to upload the image, It will probably have to be in a multirar file. I will post the link to the files tomorrow morning or later in the evening (depending when it's done uploading)

[baschulz1]

No problem, really appreciate it!

[baschulz1]

Do I put the SSD in the same bay that the HDD came in? The one towards the corner of the laptop. Not under the RAM. Drive 0 I believe.