Unable to restore Asus X550CA using Asus recovery DVDs

earache

New Member
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Hello,
I have in my possession an Asus X550CA laptop which was running Windows 8.1 before it failed to boot. The machine cycled through the automatic repair, failed, and then did nothing. The advanced bootup options were useless, including chkdsk, sfc and the usual suspects. The recovery partition was apparently missing, atleast, I couldn't use it, but doing a diskpart confirmed it was there so I suspect the 8.1 upgrade broke the link to it.

I tried the "refresh your PC" option, but this told me the drive was locked, and disabling secure boot via the BIOS did nothing (thought it would at first). In addition, the reset your PC option wanted recovery media which I didn't have at the time.

I ordered the official Asus recovery DVDs as the laptop did not have media created when it was new, hit F9 and went to the "reset your PC' option, but it told me the recovery media wasn't valid. Odd given it's official Asus media from Mentor Media, for that specific machine.

From the legacy BIOS I booted from the DVD, it loaded the Asus specific Windows 8 recovery options from the disk and I get as far as "Start rebuild Windows system process", with "processing...." underneath and the machine does no more.

I've also tried UEFI booting from the DVD drive and get the same as above.

Any suggestions welcome please!

Regards.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    OS X 10.10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Is the ASUS recovery media Windows 8.0 or 8.1? It may be because the recovery disks are 8.0 and it's a conflict because your now running 8.1. The 8.0 to 8.1 upgrade does break the factory recover feature on some laptops. ASUS for sure I think. I have a K75DE, that shipped with Windows 8.0. I clean installed with Windows 8.1 from here, Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help. It reads and uses my 8.0 OEM embedded code and activates online automatically. no muss no fuss. That tool will create a bootable USB thumb drive that will work with UEFI for you. If you need any more info just ask and i'll see if I can help. I don't know why your getting the "Start rebuild Windows system process" message and the lock up? It may be because the partition structure has changed on the Drive. I created a Recovery drive, then swapped in an SSD and it would not work on the SSD. It kept saying required partition missing. That's why I bailed and did a clean install. I was leaning in that direction anyway.

EDIT: If I don't get back to you tonight don't panic. I have company coming and may not get back online until tomorrow morning. Have to go now.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2
can you boot into safe mode? you can boot into safe mode to restore your system. If you cannot boot into safe mode, I suggest you boot a bootable media with desktop created with another computer to restore system.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8 64bit
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