Formating MSI laptop

Euronyme

Sweden3804 Posts

July 20 2012 09:36 GMT

Hello.
First of all, I'm a complete retard when it comes to computer, so bear with me.
I have a MSI gaming laptop that I haven't reformatted since I bought it two years ago. At this point I can't play SC2 without severe lag, and I felt it was time for a reformatting.
The 'recommended settings' are all ultra, and currently I can't even play on 'lowest'.

I have some issues here though. I never burned DVDs of Windows7, as I was never prompted to do so, and assumed they had another solution for it.
I was also never provided a Windows 7 CD-key and never had to type one in when I installed windows after purchase.

After some fumbling around, I've come to the conclusion that reformatting would most probably be done from the W hard drive. W contains an .exe called 'RecoveryManager'.
When running it, it says that it'll completely remove everything on C and that it'll put everything back to default settings.
I'd like some advice from anyone with a similar computer whether I need to burn whatever husk of a windows I have left before reformatting? Do I need to dig up some CD key from some document? Will this actually be a clean reformatting, or is there a better way of doing it?

flor

Finland3 Posts

July 20 2012 11:16 GMT

atleast for me, with a MSI GTx 683, its called F3 hotkey recovery function.
When you start the computer, pressing f3 before it goes to windows gives me the possibility for MSI recovery manager.
This will install everything back to factory state. Atleast this model doesnt ask for cd key (and i was never provided with one either), its pretty much just pressing next a few times and the job is done. Never burned Windows like it asks you to, since the recovery is always on the harddrive anyway.

Hopefully you have two drives so you can put all your photos etc personal stuff on another drive, since it will erase everything from C:

I could recommend that you get a can of pressurized air also to clean the beast out, sounds more like your getting it too hot rather than operation system malfunctions

Euronyme

Sweden3804 Posts

July 20 2012 12:41 GMT

On July 20 2012 20:16 flor wrote:
atleast for me, with a MSI GTx 683, its called F3 hotkey recovery function.
When you start the computer, pressing f3 before it goes to windows gives me the possibility for MSI recovery manager.
This will install everything back to factory state. Atleast this model doesnt ask for cd key (and i was never provided with one either), its pretty much just pressing next a few times and the job is done. Never burned Windows like it asks you to, since the recovery is always on the harddrive anyway.

Hopefully you have two drives so you can put all your photos etc personal stuff on another drive, since it will erase everything from C:

I could recommend that you get a can of pressurized air also to clean the beast out, sounds more like your getting it too hot rather than operation system malfunctions

Yeah. What I tried with the recovery manager didn't work out at all.
When doing the F3 thing the MSI recovery manager just tells me not to touch anything.
There's no progress bar, and after about 3 or so minutes it just tells me "The recovery Environment is not normal. System will be restarted, please try f3 function later."
When I try to start the computer normally, I'm now stuck in a "System Recovery" loop, that just searches for 5 minutes, tells me it finds nothing and tells me to restart the computer.

Basically I can't access my computer, and I'm typing this from a friend. Kind of a sticky situation as I need my laptop to work :/
I'm right now downloading a pirated copy of windows 7, and I'll burn it to a DVD and see how that'll turn out unless anyone here knows wtf is going on.

flor

Finland3 Posts

July 21 2012 12:51 GMT

hmmh, that sounds a bit more complicated then... hope you find a way. you should also contact their tech support via internet, maybe its a common problem for the model and they have an answer

Euronyme

Sweden3804 Posts

July 22 2012 14:04 GMT

On July 21 2012 21:51 flor wrote:
hmmh, that sounds a bit more complicated then... hope you find a way. you should also contact their tech support via internet, maybe its a common problem for the model and they have an answer

Yeah I put the pirate hat on and rammed the fuck out of Windows 7.
Windows doesn't have a tech support, but refers me to some kind of external tech dudes who want about 80$. Fuck that, I could buy a new windows 7 instead for that money.
MSI tech support is basically non existant in my country at least.

I'm right now running windows ultimate that a friend downloaded for me. I'll have to reformat again and install home edition instead of ultimate so I can use my CD-key, but that's for another time.

I've come to the conclusion that I had this problem http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139576-startup-repair-infinite-loop-recovery.html and nothing helped against it. At the same time the MSI reformatting tool was broken, so I couldn't reformat from the partition on the hard drive.

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