System restore help

[st00p3rman]

Hey all, I have a G73JH-BST7 and I've been experiencing problems with random shutdowns, which come much more frequently when I am gaming. Sometimes after these random shutdowns, it will take my computer a few minutes before it is able to be powered on again.

I wanted to try a system restore, but I just want to confirm that I'm not screwing anything up here:
I am currently running ASUS AI Recovery Burner, and it's burning a the hidden partition to a disc. Is this all that I need to do?
I also downloaded an ISO of Win 7 Home Premium (I believe Chastity posted it) that I was going to burn to a disc. Is this necessary?

I've been led to believe that once the hidden partition has been burned by the AI Recovery Burner, I'm good to go, but I'm not completely sure how to use the discs to do a system restore.

Any help with either my original problem or with a factory restore would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[BrodyBoy]

st00p3rman wrote:
I wanted to try a system restore, but I just want to confirm that I'm not screwing anything up here:
I am currently running ASUS AI Recovery Burner, and it's burning a the hidden partition to a disc. Is this all that I need to do?
I also downloaded an ISO of Win 7 Home Premium (I believe Chastity posted it) that I was going to burn to a disc. Is this necessary?

I've been led to believe that once the hidden partition has been burned by the AI Recovery Burner, I'm good to go, but I'm not completely sure how to use the discs to do a system restore.

Any help with either my original problem or with a factory restore would be much appreciated. Thanks!

You kind of have it backwards. The AI Recovery program just creates a DVD backup of the recovery partition already on your hard drive (assuming you haven't deleted it). You don't use AI Recovery to do the restore itself.

You can do a factory restore from the recovery partition or from the set of DVDs you made (with AI Recovery). It takes much longer with the DVDs, but they end up in the same place. You don't use a Windows installer disc or ISO in this process at all.

To do a complete restore on a system with the recovery partition intact, press F9 immediately after power up and follow the on-screen menu. From the hard drive partition, the recovery can take up to an hour. Once it starts, don't touch anything.....no user input is required.

[BrodyBoy]

One other note about the recovery process. When you first start it, one of the dialogues will look something like this:



Which options are available to you will depend on your particular computer setup, but the important thing to understand is that this menu item refers only to your primary hard drive....the one Windows is already on. If you have a second hard drive, it won't touch that at all.

Here's what those options mean:

• Recover Windows to first partition only: Puts Windows on the same partition where it currently resides and affects no other partitions.
  
• Recover Windows to entire HD: Deletes all existing partitions on the primary hard drive, makes one big partition, and installs Windows on that one partition.
  
• Recover Windows to entire HD with two partitions: Deletes everything, like option 2, but it divides the space into two new partitions....one for Windows, and a new data partition. (This option isn't available if the HD isn't big enough.)
  

(In every case, the recovery partition will be retained on the hard drive.)

[st00p3rman]

Thanks for the help!

[dstrakele]

+1 Brody! A good complete explanation of the factory restore. This should be a sticky thread... (or at least added to the important threads blob thing)