I did a manual update from Nvidia and upon restarting my OS crashed.. the recovery disks failed and ASUS is giving me the run around about repairs. So.. this is going into the shop and who knows how long I'll be down. I'll be checking in from my netbook from time to time to keep track of any developments. Ciao for now. -Shane
(If anyone knows where I can get new recovery disks without the $60 price tag... please let me know.)

aw man, that sucks. hope everything goes well with your comp and to see you back on the field. hopefully, one of these guys can get you the recovery discs.

Shane I got your message. The warranty voiding bs is complete bullshit if I ever heard it.

Ive heard of past incidents where their tech support gave out misinformation like that.

I cant really help you from here since the recovery partition and discs are seemingly not working.

But get on notebookreview sometime in the asus section, even if its after the fact and post this up please.

Hope you get things back in order soon! :).

Their reason for voiding warranty is that I didn't get the video driver from THEIR support page.. that I got it independently from the manufacturer. They call this a 3rd party download and that they can't be sure that I got the correct set of drivers. But when I told him that the video driver from ASUS live update contained the 3D update and wouldn't finish the download on my computer which doesn't support 3D.. his response was, "you should've called us and we'd have given you the correct web address to go to."... so I asked what site would you have sent me to and he stated "NVIDIA"! I then I told him that if even if I had gotten the wrong set of drivers the worst that could've happened was that I would've had no picture.
I'm far from done with contacting ASUS about this issue. Like I told him, "I'm a letter writing motherf*cker and I won't stop until I've gotten this resolved or spoke to Mr. ASUS himself. And if he won't help me then I'll write negative reports on EVERY forum, petetion and website I find about how piss poor you are going to treat your customers. All I need is a set of recovery disks that I've received with every single computer I've ever bought until this one." To which he responded, "Microsoft will not allow us to send out recovery disks due to potential piracy issues with their operating system and that they are to be considered accessories." Yet, they are willing to sell the same piracy issue for $60 from their E-store?
I will contact Microsoft about their operating system crashing and if they don't assist me then I WILL PIRATE their operating system from a warez or torrent site. And I'll advertise to everyone who wants it the links I used to pirate it so that they may do the same. (If you can't tell... I'M PISSED OFF!)
Anyway... for now I'm looking for a set of G73sw recovery disks or a copy of windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit (which wouldn't have all the bloatware that the ASUS recovery disks would have anyway) and I'll find all drivers and accessory programs I need from a "3rd Party".

you can go to best buy and by the upgrade disc, that will work, thats how i installed windows 7 on my pc, was only 45$ Canadian..

Microsoft Windows 7 Starter To Home Premium Upgrade - English : Operating Systems - Best Buy Canada

thats it, not sure why it says 100$ i got mine for 45$ when i was living in Saskatchewan..

Shane its all complete bullshit. In the hands of a reseller this computers drive would be restored to factory condition and returned to you with at worst a shipping charge.

I will forward this to the ASUS reseller that I normally deal with, who btw is on notebookreview, just post already i dont feel like posting your issue and then relaying everything to you.

The license/activation is oem anyways the bios has a hard coded slic table. Its not that hard to get legal windows back on the machine.

You are dealing with low level idiots of america, asus tech support. That level knows nothing, sometimes the entire building believes something that no other employee of asus knows not to be true. ASUS Tech support isnt even a good source for info like how much ram can my notebook take.

I sent the reseller i deal with this message:

I have a friend in my gaming community with an ASUS G73SW.

He apparently did an update from nvidia that killed the os install. He is saying the recovery partition isnt working and the recovery discs dont work either.

Now while the problem might sound like something else, thats not the problem I am coming to you for at all.

ASUS is apparently telling him downloading a driver from a source other than ASUS voided his warranty. Which last i checked is the same old bullshit we occasionally hear from them. It always turns out to not be true.

Any information, help you can give me would be great. He is trying to avoid buying new restore discs for 60 bucks. I have a feeling if nothing is working this update death was a coincidence the machine needs to be checked out and serviced under warranty either way.

Oh and his expressgate is working, so that means maybe not a hardware issue, unless its HDD/chipset.

Alright shane he responded... with some help, that I could have given you.... not the ASUS tech support help I wanted:

Long time no see my friend.

Sorry to hear about your friend, however, you can always download a full version Windows 7 Home premium legal copy ISO here:

Just burn the ISO to the DVD and do fresh install from there, when it ask for product key you can use Asus Windows 7 Product key on the bottom of the laptop.

Let me know if it works and good to hear from you again.

I sent you a PM

Thanx for the help guys... I'm having a friend d/l and burn the ISO from the site now.. i don't have that capability with this netbook (it doesn't have an optical drive).. I should be back up and running by the weekend. I'll have to get all the drivers and software needed but that shouldn't be a problem.. my remaining questions would be will i have to get the turbo program for the processor and where can I get that from? will I have to flash the BIOS? and what else would I possibly need/want to make my machine bigger/badder/stronger than what ASUS would have done with their recovery disks?

The asus support site should have most of the original software. It used to be support.asus.com ill look later but just select downloads notebooks g73sw windows 7 whatever. I can also see if any of the G73 guys have a driver disc they can copy. My G50 had 2 sets the os install and the driver and software install.

Rain is the homie. He knows his shit and look's out for another. BIG UPS RAIN!