Clean Install of W8 Pro to G750JX

[Tallman]

Just received a new G750JX with Windows 8 preinstalled and applied the "free" upgrade to 8.1 from Microsoft. Am awaiting a shipment including Windows 8.1 Professional then plan to do a "clean install" of 8.1 Pro. Have researched and tested "booting to CD/DVD" so hopefully will be able to restart to the 8.1 Pro disk without issues. Need guidance on "cleaning up" the "C" drive (256GB SSD) partitions before the "clean install". "C" drive presently has a 100MB EFI System Partition and a 238GB "OS" partition (I deleted the recovery partition after making a recovery USB stick). It seems I can "clean" the "C" drive with diskpart just before the reboot to install 8.1 Pro but this leaves unallocated, unpartitioned space on the SSD. Must I therefore create and format a new partition on "C" after the diskpart “clean” and before rebooting to install 8.0 Pro? Will the 8.1 Pro installer re-create the 100MB EFI System Partition or must I make two partitions on "C" (one for100mb and one for the balance of the space) before rebooting to install 8.1 Pro? Sorry for the long post but I am trying to get the sequence of events correct. Thank you.

[villiansv]

The 100MB EFI partition is there to hold the bootloader files. So if you perform the diskpart "clean" command you'll lose it and indeed end up with an unpartitioned drive. However, the Windows installation procedure can and will partition it for you, and format to NTFS (it will also invisibly recreate the EFI partition without you having to do anything).

[Tallman]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[hmscott]

villiansv wrote:
The 100MB EFI partition is there to hold the bootloader files. So if you perform the diskpart "clean" command you'll lose it and indeed end up with an unpartitioned drive. However, the Windows installation procedure can and will partition it for you, and format to NTFS (it will also invisibly recreate the EFI partition without you having to do anything).

Did you guys figure out the problem with installing Nvidia sourced drivers, the newest ones, on a clean install - non-Asus OEM Windows install?

As I recall if you do a clean install of Windows, blowing away the Asus OEM install of Windows 8, then you can't use the latest Nvidia drivers - and are forced to use the ones Asus posts for download from the G750 support pages.

After upgrading to 8.1 on the Asus OEM Windows Install I still have all the ROG labels, apps, and am running the Nvidia 331.82 release - backed off from the current beta - it was a bit slower for me.

I know of no Earthly reason to do a clean install, nothing is gained, and the Asus branding and Nvidia sourced driver support is lost.

Why the fascination with clean installs over a new/clean Asus Windows 8.0 OEM install?

The only reason for clean OS installs is to get rid of the cruft that collects over time.

But, if you are starting with a clean Windows 8.0 OEM install, there is no cruft to get rid of. In fact, you want to keep the configs that Asus gives - except for Splendid and Power4Gear - which you can simply uninstall until they get versions we like / can use.

I did the Windows 8.0 => 8.1 upgrade on a G750JW that had a lot of use, and it worked fine. I also did the WIndows 8.0 => 8.1 upgrade on a G750JH and had no problems - except it completed a lot faster.

If you do a clean install, back up the Asus OEM install for safe keeping, in case you want to restore it later.

I pulled my original drive(s) in the JW/JX and put in an SSD to use - saving the OEM install disk for support later - but I cloned the ASUS OEM Windows install from the original disk to the SSD and it ran great.

To each their own, but the Asus guys spent a lot of time making the customized Windows install for the G750, why do you think you can do better?

Uninstalling stuff I don't like makes sense, not trusting the original engineers that designed the notebook to make a good Windows install doesn't make sense to me.

[villiansv]

I'm on a JX with a clean install (as I put in an SSD drive and had a win8pro installation usb already lying about). Never had any problems with the official nvidia drivers.

If you're referring to the slow (1min+) startup time with official nvidia drivers, there were a few threads about that. I think it ended up being specific to 3D models, and for those someone found out that enabling "launch csm" in the BIOS fixed the issue. I think his English was bad, so he couldn't explain it better, but I do recall a few people confirming it worked. I can't find the post though :(.

[hmscott]

villiansv wrote:
I'm on a JX with a clean install (as I put in an SSD drive and had a win8pro installation usb already lying about). Never had any problems with the official nvidia drivers.

If you're referring to the slow (1min+) startup time with official nvidia drivers, there were a few threads about that. I think it ended up being specific to 3D models, and for those someone found out that enabling "launch csm" in the BIOS fixed the issue. I think his English was bad, so he couldn't explain it better, but I do recall a few people confirming it worked. I can't find the post though :(.

Cool, glad to hear it, Nehmia was recently posting that people should use the Asus G750 drivers and not the newest Nvidia ones, so I was concerned it was still an open issue.

It still seems like a lot of work for no benefit, but at least you can still use the newest Nvidia drivers 🙂