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gewgleit · ‎12-01-2014

Hello, I have a quick two part question about something that has been bothering me.

I have recently done a fresh reset after doing a recovery since I did not wish to have the windows.old folder and just did them in order to see the difference for myself.

For one reason or another I am seeing some remnants of the old installation after doing a reset. Things like:

Autocomplete of addresses put in my url bar in IE.
A couple of files here and there although they are the residuals of the installs themselves.
Settings such as my desktop background and lock screen even though I have the cloud disabled so I do not believe an of the photos should be saved at all.

Is there a way to start completely fresh or will I have to request an OEM disk?

Secondly, is there any Way I can do my fresh install/recovery "reset" whatever you want to label it as without this hellacious amount of bloatware? Is it safe/possible to modify the recovery partition's programs/.ini to stop these from installing. I am aware of programs I can use to remove it but I am one of those weird OCD heads that just doesn't want them at al on a clean install.

Thanks so much in advance guys, I have been spending a lot of time skimming through these forums and this community makes it as is ASUS doesn't even need tech support.

gewgleit · ‎12-02-2014

All I had to do was go to this LINK :

http://rufus.akeo.ie/
This is a usb tool. If you already have one skip this step. It is my preferred bootable creator however.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

Create the Media with these steps:

Click create media.
A download will pop up.
Save or open the program.
When you go through the options make sure you choose the operating system that was originally installed on the system.

For the g750JM, the option is Windows 8.1
Although tempting, do not choose the USB option. Choose the ISO option and save to desktop.

Use Rufus to create a USB Image choosing the windows file you saved on the desktop.

That's it. No serial key asked for or anything. No more bloatware.
It pulls the key off the bios.

Everything worked fine for me.

Hope this helps anyone trying to do a true install of windows. It is definitely what I paid 1400$ for. Not advertising.

I am a gamer, not a billboard.

hmscott · ‎12-02-2014

Guys, there isn't a "hellacious amount of bloatware", but I agree I uninstall several programs after I do a restore. It takes like 3 minutes total. Much less time than going through all the install from scratch route takes.

Asus does slipstreaming of the correct drivers in the correct sequence during their build, you can't recreate that as part of a generic from scratch install, and depending on the ROG laptop model, it can cause various functions to not work correctly as compared to the OEM install. The most annoying ones are bad USB 3.0 performance, BSOD's on the 860m models even with newest Nvidia drivers, keyboard light doesn't work even with correct drivers, auto-dimming/auto-contrast not controllable. There are likely other issues.

The McAfee is a full version, not a demo, so it isn't technically bloatware, it is just undesirable, and is the first thing I uninstall 🙂

Here is what I uninstall and why:

1) Asus Splendid - trys to correct the color, but misses the mark with bad tuning options, none look right to me, and I have been trying to like it for many years, each time I try it it just doesn't work for me. The good news is the install package includes an ICC profile specifically for your model/screen type. Look it up with hwinfo => inventory => monitor then match it against the ICC .icm profiles stored in C:\eSupport\eDriver\Software\ASUS\Splendid(G750JH)\Vista32_Vista64_Win8_32_Win8_64_2.01.0014\data\ColorTable

2) Asus Power4Gear - adds no other feature except forces it's own Power Plans into service over your manual settings. Most annoying is if you set Battery Plan for High Performance it switches back to it's own plan when you pull the power cable to run on battery - slowing things down, then when you plug in it puts in a power saver plan of it's own on AC. You have to manually adjust it 2x, or if you don't notice this switch, you run on low performance and wonder why FPS is so low 🙂

3) Asus Live (update) - earlier versions killed G series laptops by bricking them with bad BIOS installs that happened automatically - it has been a while, but it is still a good idea to uninstall this puppy first thing.

4) Asus Gaming Mouse - seem innocuous, even if you don't have an Asus mouse, what could it hurt. In the Windows 8 => 8.1 upgrade old versions caused random BSOD's - it took a while to find that one. Look for a new version specific to your particular Asus mouse - you may need to contact Asus support to find the download area for it, be persistant with your Technical Inquiry's.

5) Asus Vibe - this is Asus bloatware in full form, trying to sell you media in their own store. It isn't like noone else is doing this, but I don't need it so I uninstall it.

6) Cyberlink Power2Go - not bad software, but Asus version is several versions old now as compared to what is available from Cyberlink, I don't need it and uninstall it.

7) Asus DVD - this may be going away anyway, as the some G751's (most?) don't have it included. On my G750JH it is version 10 (from 2010), and Cyberlink is up to version 15 (from 2014), with version 15 coming shortly (2015). I reinstalled this and am using it now because Cyberlink introduced a nasty volume bug in the latest version that turns the volume up to 100% when starting to play a new BDR/DVD, ouch.

Like I said it takes 3 minutes to uninstall, it might take you 5 minutes, but it is a lot shorter from start to finish than a complete from scratch reinstall from Microsoft Media.

Also, if you have a problem with your laptop, and try to contact Asus to fix it, and you have to tell them you can't do a rest/restore because you did your own custom install of Windows, Asus will require you to send in your laptop for debugging - so they can reinstall their version of the OS to make sure it wasn't something you misconfigured in your Windows install as compared to theirs that might be causing the problem.

To get support from Asus you need to be running their Windows build.

At least make an Asus Backtracker flash recovery backup so you can do a restore back to the out of the box configuration for support 🙂

gewgleit · ‎12-02-2014

The recovery Partition is never erased so if you absolutely have to its easy to go back to the OEM install. I have no problems sequencing the driver installs

Asus Recover ( Reset Utility ) Asus ROG G750 JM