Unable to reset windows 8 on G75VX

[ShadyStan]

Just curious to know how I can do a hard-reset on my G75VX (I got 2 unpartitioned hard drives – an SSD where my OS Windows 8 and everything else is installed and a 750 GB, 7200 rpm Hitachi hard drive with nothing on it and with 677 GB of available storage :confused:. Any clues where the remaining 73 GB could be?). So I tried resetting it and here’s what happened:
- I went to PC Settings – General and then hit Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows;
- I followed the onscreen prompts (I wanted to do a hard-reset on my SSD only) and when I finally confirmed everything a message popped up saying “Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing”. Then I was only able to turn off my PC and that’s it.
When I turned it back on it started up normally but a message appeared saying something like “Reset failed. No changes were made”. In other words I had done nothing, just wasted my time.
However I can’t figure out what the problem is and how to proceed if I ever really need to perform a hard-reset on my notebook. I haven’t deleted my Recovery Partition – I can’t even see it but it is there all right (probably on my SSD) because I managed to create a Recovery Partition Drive on my USB flash drive by copying the Recovery Partition from my notebook onto the flash drive. The wizard even prompted me to delete the Recovery Partition on my PC to free some disk space as it was now on my flash drive. I didn’t delete the Recovery Partition though. So any help on how to do a hard-reset would be really appreciated.
And one more a bit off-topic thing. When my PC is on I can hear occasional clicking sounds from inside no matter whether my PC is idling or I’m working on it. I assume it might be the Hitachi HDD but is it possible that it is something else? Besides, is it normal for the HDD to make such clicking sounds.

[ShadyStan]

rewben wrote:
@ShadyStan, for stock windows, you should be able to do 2 things:

1. reset your pc to factory state (what you did);
2. f9 recovery. f9 is the default recovery; it work unless you messed up your partition tables.

what's shown in the recovery blue screen? can you take snapshots of it and post it here?

edit: you might wanna try this.

Rewben,

I couldn't reset my PC because I always get stuck on “Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing”.
And when I pressed f9 on start-up I got stuck on some Recovery blue screen which provides some options (reset or refresh your pc or enter BIOS). As I've already said I can neither reset the PC nor refresh it (when I try to refresh it a message pops up saying the drive is locked). So I can only enter BIOS and when I exit it I am sent to the Recovery screen but I can't boot into Windows. I didn't play around with partitions - I don't even know how to partition a disk or create a delete a new partition. The trouble started when I pressed f9 on start-up and now I can't exit the Recovery screen.
I can upload pics but in a few hours.
After some googling I am starting to think that maybe some BIOS security setting has locked the partitions on my SSD but I am not familiar with BIOS and wouldn't like to mess with it. I have the latest BIOS (rev. 205).

[rewben]

ah.. so that's the problem. so you do these in bios:
1. disable secureboot control; disable fast boot;
2. enable launch csm.

[ShadyStan]

rewben wrote:
ah.. so that's the problem. so you do these in bios:
1. disable secureboot control; disable fast boot;
2. enable launch csm.

I can't enable the "launch csm" option. It is disabled in BIOS and I can't change it. Otherwise no problem disabling secureboot control and fast boot.

[ShadyStan]

Rewben,

I have managed to enable "launch csm" and now I have secureboot control and fast boot disabled and launch csm enabled. However the problem persists so are there any other options in BIOS that I need to change so that I can finally reset my PC.

[Akki]

Same problem on my brother VX -

We cant refresh it,.. all recovery partitions are there,... but main OS and DATA partitions were formatted by him as soon as he got Laptop. (He put his SSD on)

Now, he want to refresh VX (for testing purposes) and all we are getting is ~ required drive partition is missing ~.

I hope somebody figured out how to fix this.

Tnx

[cl-Albert]

Akki wrote:
Same problem on my brother VX -

We cant refresh it,.. all recovery partitions are there,... but main OS and DATA partitions were formatted by him as soon as he got Laptop. (He put his SSD on)

Now, he want to refresh VX (for testing purposes) and all we are getting is ~ required drive partition is missing ~.

I hope somebody figured out how to fix this.

Tnx

Sounds like the problem may have happened after re-imaging to the SSD drive.
If the original factory hard drive and ASUS Win8 image are still available, try to confirm there is no problem to reset and refresh with it (there shouldn't be) which would indicate some problem with the re-imaging.
Can you guys tell us how you re-imaged the SSD drive or what software was used, etc.?

[Akki]

Just note,.. i can boot computer with F9, from original HDD,...

We didn't re-image his comp, it was clean install Win 8 from USB stick

[pathfindercod]

I've tried every program out to image original drive to SSD but non of them would let the recovery option work in the SSD. I ended up obtaining a OEM win 8 disc from a very helpful member here and jut reloaded from scratch. I still have he original hd in the laptop box to switch back to when I resell the machine.

[ShadyStan]

pathfindercod wrote:
I've tried every program out to image original drive to SSD but non of them would let the recovery option work in the SSD. I ended up obtaining a OEM win 8 disc from a very helpful member here and jut reloaded from scratch. I still have he original hd in the laptop box to switch back to when I resell the machine.

Well, as I started this thread, I’d like to clarify a few things:
First, you can see from my posts that I wasn’t really able to do anything to get my laptop to boot into Windows again. Then I made up my mind to send it to an Asus Service Center (that is RMA).
Fortunately I live not far from the official Asus Service Center here in Sofia (Bulgaria) and most importantly a friend of mine works there as a service advisor.
After a few days of RMA I took my laptop back home and it worked like a charm. I tested the Reset and Refresh options and everything worked. I don’t know what exactly they’d done back at the Service Center but they’d somehow managed to put everything right (I see some of the many partitions being initially present on the HDD are now gone and the HDD is now partitioned in two equal drives plus the Restore drive as a third hidden partition. The SSD is the same as before – no change there).
I didn’t probe much into the cause of the problem or how they’d got those features working again but according to the little information I got the initial problem was caused by cloning the OS from the HDD to the SSD (that was done by the reseller I got the laptop from). The cloning process itself had been alright BUT there was some mix-up involving useless partitions left over on the HDD after the cloning had been done and maybe some other minor stuff. And one more thing, for the Reset/Refresh options to work it is not necessary to have the OS and the Recovery partition on the same hard drive. For instance my OS is on the SSD while my Recovery Drive is on the Hitachi HDD (that was also the case when I first got my laptop) and as I said after the RMA the Reset/Refresh options now work fine.