How to recover Windows 8

[Fixon]

Hi guys

I have problem to recover windows 8.

When my g75vw was new i installed windows 8 and made a clean copy to a extern hdd from recovery partition. I just made a copy/paste. Then i installed some widnows 7 but now i want to install my original win8.
When i installed windows 7 my recovery win8 partition dissapeard from computer and now when i putt my extern hdd with windos 8 recovery i start with the windows 8 loggo and click on recover my system and after that i receive a information that some files are missing and i can not install widnows.

Please help me how to recover my windows 8

[gokica]

Check if your external HDD backup contains a file named install.wim. It is a huge file, about 10GB.

If yes, that you can use the external HDD backup to restore Win 8.

If not, follow what our friend rewben suggested.

[Akki]

Hi

I dont need to do anything yet, but just to make sure,....

I have 6 install.swm files in sources folder

They total to around 11GB.

Can they be of any help in case of recovery?

[gokica]

*.swm associates with install.wim split into smaller segments. So yes those files can be used to recover Windows.

[Fixon]

I have 5 install.swm files in sources folder. From your last post i have read the webpage and im not shore that i understand:S
Is it easy to convert swm files to wim and what shoud i do after that?

[Akki]

imagex doesnt work on win8 , dism i cannot find a way to merge them into .wim files.
can you give us more info for procedure recovering this way?

thanks

[gokica]

Try apply-image command:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825258.aspx

(not for merging but restoring Windows of course).

[rewben]

ah.. sorry about that @Fixon you do have .swm (not .wim) in sources folder.

i think the process is:
1. boot into recovery; it should be pressing win key + i; then goto change pc settings > general > advanced setup > restart now; select advanced options and then command prompt;
2. in the console, identify your OS partition (assuming it's c:\)
3. navigate to the sources folder in your external hdd;
4. issue command: Dism /apply-image /imagefile:install.swm /swmfile:install*.swm /index:1 /applydir:C:\

*be careful* this is just my best guess! guys, please correct me if i am wrong.

[Fixon]

Thanks @rewben.

I am just wondering why asus did not have a w8 serial number under my laptop, instead i have a logo of asus and w8

[Fixon]

@rewben, if im right you with go to change pc settings/general/advanced setup... you mean in w8? right now i have w7. what are the comands in w7?

[rewben]

oh.. you need to have a w8 recovery/boot disk for this purpose (i think there are some compatibility issues if you used w7). can you boot with your external drive?