Recovering an ASUS UL30VT without Recovery Partition

Question

My drive has crashed on this machine and taken the recovery partition with it. Now need to reinstall Windows 7 and am finding that the install process doesn't work: Windows complains about a missing driver before it gets to the drive selection window.

What's odd though is: The external USB DVD drive clearly works since I get that far and if I drop to the command console to look for a driver I can see that the drive works.

I'm not sure what driver windows is missing to get past this...

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It is most likely the hard disk or hard disk controller it is not happy with. At the beginning of the installation process you are offered an opportunity to install any installation critical drivers that may be needed but aren't present on the W7 installation media.

Go to the Asus site and download any hard disk related drivers and put them on a usb stick. Then hit F5 (if I recall correctly, keep an eye out) at the beginning of the installation and you can install the drivers.

Then it should continue happily.

Answer 2

Turns out in this case the problem was the 'recovery partition' was corrupt but still present. It made Windows look at the recovery partition and not be able to access it which in turn prompts for the driver installation I suspect.

Solution was to complete remove all partitions from the drive and start over.

Paul's response led me there actually - but it seemed weird that Windows should need a basic SATA driver - which led me to look at the drive and find the unmountable partition.

Once removed Windows went ahead and installed.