ASUS x540UB - Issues with drivers after trying to downgrade to Windows

I recently tried to downgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 7 on my ASUS x540UB because I thought Windows 7 would be faster and less bloated. Unfortunately, when I booted up Windows 7, I noticed that there were a bunch of devices that didn't have drivers (the touchpad and wireless card included). I did some research and discovered that there were no drivers available for this hardware that would be compatible with Windows 7 so I made the decision to go back to Windows 10.

And this is where I am now:

After re-installing Windows 10, I seem to be having the same issues. The touchpad, wireless card and many other devices do not have drivers and I can't seem to install any for them. Using a different PC and USB, I've gone onto the ASUS website and downloaded this laptop's drivers and tried to install them but they don't seem to actually work, despite saying they've installed successfully. I've tried updating the BIOS but my Windows partition doesn't appear in EZ Flash 3 and so I can't navigate to the BIOS update. I've also tried doing a hard reset but, of course, it fails in an unspecified way at around 73%.

Interestingly, the touchpad seems to be working while in the BIOS but will stop when Windows starts. Also, for any device that does work, they each have generic Windows 10 drivers (and show up as Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, Generic PnP Monitor, and so on). If I try to update them to an ASUS driver, they still show up as the generic driver.

I'm at a loss as to what to do from here so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much!

Caledon Ken said:

Hi Mackaby. Welcome to the TenForums @Mackaby

Not sure what you mean your Windows partition won't show in BIOS update. The BIOS is to be copied to a USB Flash drive.

Is yours new BIOS on a USB Thumbdrive.

I very much doubt this is a BIOS issue.

May I recommend that you investigate and use a disk Imaging tool like Macrium Reflect. A restore is the recommended way to go back to working copy. Create and test boot media for any tool you select. Macrium is free, reliable and used by numerous members. There are other tools.

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect

Have you copied your personal data off the machine? If not please use Kyhi's recovery disk. This will give you windows and you can use file explorer to perform the copy.

Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

Once data is copied off I would then do a clean install.

Clean Install Windows 10

One of the steps withing the clean install is to delete all partitions. I would not skip this step although it will wipe the recovery partition Asus installed.

Not sure of age of machine but the BIOS may contain the product key and will load for you. If the clean stops and asks for a product key just skip. Since you machine was running 10 it has been logged on the MS servers and should activate automatically.

Once machine is up and running you can then install the Asus drivers as required. If the Asus exe's don't force the correct drivers you can manually update drivers use the option to browse my computer, let me pick.

As an alternate recovery you may try the manual install of Asus drivers to see if this gets you there faster. You can also use this tool to remove and third party drivers to start with a fresh slate.

https://github.com/lostindark/Driver...lorer/releases

Since you were going to do a reset anyway I would recover data, do clean install, resolve the odd driver and create an Image. Likely faster and more solid base to move forward on.



Ken

After following the instructions for installing a clean copy of Windows 10, my issues are resolved! I think the difference may have been deleting all the existing partitions before installing. After that, all of my devices were working with generic drivers and I was able to download and install the ASUS ones without issue. Thanks heaps for the help!