Hi all,

I just spent days on this issue and figured I would pass this along before someone else go into the same situation..

Brand new G750 jx. We also have a G75vx. In the past we downgraded the G75vx to Windows 7, downloaded the drivers from Asus and the system has been running just fine. The G750jx came with Windows 8 installed but we started having major USB 3.0 problems where it would not recognize properly, external hard drives... No matter what we did, the system would fail trying to bring up any USB 3.0 hard drives we attached no matter the make and model or the enclosure used.

So while trying to figure that out, we suffered a power loss.. and boom even though connected to a UPS, the primary internal hard drive somehow corrupted to the point we could not access even the restore partitions.

So first we thought, ok we will just do the downgrade as before to Windows 7. Nope... does not work because ASUS does NOT supply any drivers for this unit for Windows 7. We were surprised by this to be honest... But we tried Windows 7 anyhow just to see and ended up seeing random BSOD's even after trying other drivers, i.e. the G75vx drivers to see if they would work or not.

So then we realized we had no choice but to re-install Windows 8. So we took a brand new Windows 8 DVD and started a clean install. All going great until it got to the Windows Key.... and the system told us it could not find a matching key for this install...

To make a long story short, this all led to eventually contacting Asus. And we were told that the Windows 8 key is firmware embedded!! And THAT is why a brand new clean copy of Windows 8 would not install and accept the new key we bought on this machine.

So there we sat.. A new unit with no apparent way to re-install any windows versions that were compatible with the hardware.

Asus's solution? Send them the unit and they would re-image the drive.

NOT Acceptable for a few reasons:

1) Users should not have to send them a computer just to re-install Windows.

2) In our case, there is classified information on this system and although we could not access directly the drive when corrupted, anyone with tech savvy could recover data using other methods. And the second drive was still functional which also now contained classified information

3) What happens in 4 or 5 years when hard drives just fail from age??? Do they expect all of us who bought these laptops to send them to Asus for a re-image install on a new hard drive?? In other words we have to send them not only our machines but the new hard drive we bought to replace the one that failed??

NOT Acceptable Asus.

4) Convenience is obviously an issue too.. Sending a unit to Asus could take weeks to get handled.. Re-installing Windows on our own takes but a couple hours... you do the math especially for business related purchases.


Now, I am not one to complain without proposing solutions. So first my solutions for Asus then what we ultimately had to do to get this unit to work..

Asus:

1) Put up ISO's of the images for all your systems that registered users can download. We can then create our own install disc's. And while some people will point out that users need to make restore discs when they buy a unit, sometimes things get in the way and in our case, things fail before you had the chance to do it... regardless there should be some way to have access to the master restore discs by other means in this case.

2) Create drivers for Windows 7 for those that want to downgrade in these cases.

3) Include actual restore discs in the units when purchased.

4) Allow users to purchased pre-made restore discs online.


How we got the system running again:

With this purchase we also purchased an Asus K55N which also came with Windows 8 installed. So what we did was immediately create image discs for that unit then take those discs and restore them to the G750jx unit... and to a point it worked.

By doing this we did not have to try and enter the new key for Windows yet. We did have to uninstall a bunch of items and a number of non-compatible drivers but once we did that we were able to then able to get into the 'upgrade windows to a new version' feature and enter the NEW Windows 8 key we purchased... AND then once done, download all updates as well as all driers for this unit which are available but again only for Windows 8.

And so we have the system back online but what we just went through to get there was ridiculous.

So a warning to everyone... If you want to downgrade or if your drive fails, make sure you have an image of all the original resore files because otherwise you are screwed...