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.

[dstrakele]

A screenshot from Disk Management to see all the partitions on your laptop will be helpful to further troubleshoot your reset issue. You may be required to make a few more posts before you're granted the right to upload images on the forum (Spambot prevention).

The 73 GB is the difference between the manufacturer's use of Base 10 (decimal) to report disk capacity vs. the computer's use of Base 2 (binary) for the same measurement.

Hitachi HDD's have been reported in previous threads to be "clickers" in normal use. Maybe they inherit that from the large excavators Hitachi makes for the mining industry....

[ShadyStan]

dstrakele wrote:
A screenshot from Disk Management to see all the partitions on your laptop will be helpful to further troubleshoot your reset issue. You may be required to make a few more posts before you're granted the right to upload images on the forum (Spambot prevention).

The 73 GB is the difference between the manufacturer's use of Base 10 (decimal) to report disk capacity vs. the computer's use of Base 2 (binary) for the same measurement.

Hitachi HDD's have been reported in previous threads to be "clickers" in normal use. Maybe they inherit that from the large excavators Hitachi makes for the mining industry....

I have attached a screenshot of Disk Management. Looks like I have two recovery partitions - one small-sized on the SSD and one big-sized on the HDD.

[rewben]

i guess the ASUS restore partition for machines with 2 drives should be located in the HDD, not the SSD.

have you tried the f9 recovery step?

[dstrakele]

That's good! NowI'm hoping some Windows 8 users will view your screenshot and comment on how it is similar or different to their systems with respect to the Recovery partitions.

[ShadyStan]

dstrakele wrote:
That's good! NowI'm hoping some Windows 8 users will view your screenshot and comment on how it is similar or different to their systems with respect to the Recovery partitions.

I suppose there might be some difference in the way Recovery Partitions are located in other people's machines but that would be dependent on whether they use 1 or 2 regular hard drives, an SSD and a HDD or 2 SSDs etc. The thing is that no matter what or how many hard drives one has installed they ought to be able to do a hard reset by clicking the "Remove everything and Reinstall Windows" option in PC settings.
By the way since I am not much of a techie, could anyone explain what's the difference between the "Remove everything and Reinstall Windows" option and the f9 Recovery step as Rewben pointed out. I haven't tried the f9 Recovery just yet.

[Apexing]

Im on win 8, got a SSD and a HDD, SSD is with windows 8 and some stuff.

What I do when installing fresh windows, always delete ANY and ALL partitions on ALL SSD/HDD, you can do these from the install window when installing windows (that is ofc if you are installing from a bootable device such as a usb/cd/dvd and not from a pc that has booted into windows).
I don´t care for a poorly build recovery partition, just keep your important crap backedup on external storage or cloud servies.

[Pitcher1]

are you add two HDD in laptop, if yes, please remove 2 HDD form laptop, press F9 to restore.

[ShadyStan]

Mike_Lu@ASUS wrote:
are you add two HDD in laptop, if yes, please remove 2 HDD form laptop, press F9 to restore.

A few hours ago I tried the f9 option during boot-up and maybe I shouldn't have. Now I am stuck on some Recovery blue screen and Windows won't start up no matter what boot order I set in Bios.
What's interesting is that the problem started when I just pressed f9 several times on boot-up and now I can't get rid of the recovery blue screen.
So right now when I turn on the PC I get the Recovery blue screen (f9 option) and I can only enter BIOS. Although I have a Recovery Drive on my USB flash drive, it's useless because when I try booting from the flash drive I eventually get to the “Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing” message.
Any help how to boot into Windows again?

[rewben]

@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.