Solved Can't recover Windows 7 from ASUS recovery CD's

[Reggie49]

Hi All,
I'm in a real bind. When I first bought my ASUS N61JQ Laptop it was recommended to make a set of backup cd's to recover the system in the event of a major incident, which I duly did.

Today, after putting up with a poorly running Windows for too long, I decided to install a new SSD and try and do a clean install of my system software, from these CD's.

They all loaded successfully and when they finished loading I was prompted to Restart the computer.

All looked good on restart, the Windows logo appeared, then another screen, and after a few seconds, a very large red word saying "ERROR" and the message "cannot find c:\recovery.dat.

I've spent the rest of the day trawling the web to find the way to recover Windows from the data put on the SSD from the CD's, but to no avail.

I would have thought that if ASUS wanted you to make a backup of the recovery files, they would also give you the procedure, on how to recover to a clean installation. Unfortunately I can't seem to get a lead anywhere.

I'm confident there are some people out there who know how to do this, and I would really appreciate it if you can point me in the right direction, because is starting to really do my head in.

Regards Ron

 

[GokAy]

Hmm, wait until someone gives a green light on this:

Some searching show this is quite common

Make a bootable media of Partition Wizard free and delete the hidden recovery partition.
If it works, later "move/resize" C into unallocated space on left.

 

[gregrocker]

Did you try to run Asus Factory Recovery from F8 Advanced Boot Options>Repair My Computer>AsusRecovery? There may be more specific instructions for this on the Asus Support Downloads webpage for your model if you read the Manual download.

What sometimes works when Recovery disks fail is to wipe the drive first with Diskpart Clean Command using the Win7 disk, System Repair Disk, or a bootable Partition Manager.

But keep in mind that this only recovers the factory install which is the worst possible install of Win7 one can have, larded with bloatware and useless duplicate utilities that interfere with better versions built into Win7. For this reason most tech enthusiasts choose to Clean Reinstall Windows 7 which gives the best possible install and allows experiencing WIn7 native performance on the PC for the first time.

 

[Reggie49]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll try these things when I get home.

I read a bit about doing a clean Windows 7 update rather than use the ASUS recovery, due to Bloatware. So if I can't get the recovery working I'll try the link you have provided.

Thanks for replying , it's most appreciated. Ron