I have 2 question's about win 10 home

reble · 20 Nov 2018

This is about an Asus model X541N laptop OS win 10 Home 64bit that I up for free from a pawn shop owner that I know. He couldn't get the previous owner's Microsoft account off the laptop and he can't sell the laptop without the previous owner's account removed. It was a simple job to remove the previous owner's account.
But I have 1 problem. In the bios I can't get the laptop to see the onboard optical drive, like if I have to put in a self booting cd or a dvd. The laptop only sees the hard drive in the bios so I can't change the boot order to boot off a cd/dvd. Windows sees the optical drive just fine. But the bios don't. This came about because forgot the Windows password. I have a self booting Windows password recovery prog that works on any Windows from XP to Win 10. I was tearing my hair out because I couldn't get the bios to see the optical drive. I finely found the paper that I wrote the password on.
Whtch leads me to my 2nd question. How do I make a password recovery cd? I found instructions for Win 10 to make a self booting USB thumb drive or a self boot SD card. But not for a cd disk. This laptop doesn't have a SD card reader and I don't have any small USB thumb drives to do it on.
ooooo 1 more question. When I left click on the Windows icon on the lower left and those 2 groups of icons popup. How do I get rid of the groups? I am used to win 7 Home. Win 10 is different and new to me.

Steve

dalchina · 20 Nov 2018

those 2 groups of icons popup. How do I get rid of the groups?

- do you mean something on the start screen (start menu)? - perhaps a screenshot would help.

Note: you may well feel much more comfortable with a free start menu many here use: was Classic Shell (free) - now Open Shell.

No tiles, but does everything and more than you are used to with proper folder and drag 'n drop support, cascading menu if you want it, Win 7 style look (skins)...

reble · 21 Nov 2018

I took some pictures of the laptop screen with my cell phone camera. But the phone won't talk to win 10 Home 64bit via the USB cable. I tried a different USB cable, no change. And I can't find the win 10 home drivers for my Alcatel Flerce 4 model 5056N cell phone. So I can't upload the pictures to my laptop so I can post them. By the way the phone talks to the laptop just fine when the laptop's OS was Win7 Home 32bit. I am probably going to sell this Asus X541N laptop when I get my Dell laptop back from the pawn shop. I don't like this Asus laptop. 1 I have to take the whole laptop apart to get at the memory, the hard drive and the optical drive. There is no bottom covers. 2 the problems with the bios. The bios only sees the hard drive, not the optical drive.
I have to make a correction to my statment about the built in optical drive. The built in optical drive will play audio cd's and cd's with files in it. But the internal optical drive will not see or play DVD's of any kind. It doesn't matter if it is a data DVD or a movie DVD. I am thinking that's why the bios won't see the internal optical drive. But I still can't get my phone to talk to the laptop via the USB cable. If I had a way to boot from the optical drive I would dump Win 10 and put Win 7 into it. To me Win 10 is a pain in the neck.

Steve

dalchina · 21 Nov 2018

Installing a current OS on what may be an older machine is clearly a risk - unspecified territory.

For full easy access to rear I recommend Clevo (via PC Specialist here in the UK).

Try3 · 21 Nov 2018

Steve,

The "Password reset disk" is all that there is ["password reset" not "password recovery"]. It is less effective than writing the password down on a piece of paper.

A PRD is only relevant for local user accounts not MSAccount-linked user accounts [for which you would go to the webpage When you can't sign in to your Microsoft account].

The PRD is actually a single file user.psw written to a USB that does not need to boot. You connect it if you get your password wrong and the login box displays the PRD prompt for you. You could try copying the file to a CD to see if a CD can be read by the wizard that kicks in when you enter a password incorrectly but I'd guess that it cannot.

Denis

Bat 1 · 21 Nov 2018

OK I'm a bit confused but that's nothing new

When I Google "Asus X541N laptop" I find a 2017 Model that came with either a Apollo Lake P4200 or 7th Gen Intel i that should have come with Win 10 Home installed. Your posts seem to say that, and then You installed Win 7, then re-installed Win 10. Is that correct ? If you were able to install Win 7 you should know that in BIOS you would need to disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy -AKA-CSM and then your optical drive would show up ? Can you post the complete Specs and explain What you did and How you did it ?
.
NOTE: When I'm in a hurry to post pics I take with my iPhone I upload them (automatically) to the cloud, then just access them there on the screen and take a snip to post.

Steven Campoli · 21 Nov 2018

abit of a long shot but in Disk Management do you see the optical drive? is their a drive letter assigned to it? do you see it in windows explorer?

Bree · 21 Nov 2018

reble said:

This is about an Asus model X541N laptop OS win 10 Home 64bit that I up for free from a pawn shop owner that I know. He couldn't get the previous owner's Microsoft account off the laptop and he can't sell the laptop without the previous owner's account removed. It was a simple job to remove the previous owner's account.
But I have 1 problem. In the bios I can't get the laptop to see the onboard optical drive, like if I have to put in a self booting cd or a dvd.

Depends on the bios, but some systems won't show the optical drive as an available boot device in the bios unless there's a bootable disk in the drive.

As the X541N appears to have been supplied with an OEM Windows 10 pre-installed, the simplest 'clean up' before selling it on would be to do a Reset. This would reinstall the OEM customizations and drivers as well as Windows - effectively a 'factory reset'.

If your PC came with Windows 10, apps from your PC manufacturer will be reinstalled.

Reset Windows 10 | Tutorials

reble · 12 Dec 2018

1st off this is a model X541NA not X541N, my bad on that. Bat I never put Win 7 on the Asus laptop. It came with Win 10 Home 64bit. I lost the paper with the Windows 10 logon password on it. That why I am trying to run a self booting Windows password bypass. The prog that I have works on my Dell Inspirson 15-3541 laptop OS Win 7 Home 32bit. I tried the same self booting prog on an other Asus OS Win 10 and the prog on the cd booted up just fine I am a newbe when it comes to Win 10. I was told on the CD that this prog will work on XP to Win 10. I now have the bios seeing the optical drive but it still won't boot to the cd. Fast boot is disabled, the optical drive is #1 in the boot order, secure boot is disabled and there isn't launch CSM anywhere in the bios. I went over the bios with a fine tooth comb, no CSM anywhere.

Steve

Here is some screen captures
Dropbox - bios ez mode.JPG

Dropbox - bios ez mode.JPG

Dropbox - main,advance.JPG

Dropbox - security.jpg

Dropbox - secure boot.jpg

Bat 1 said:

OK I'm a bit confused but that's nothing new

When I Google "Asus X541N laptop" I find a 2017 Model that came with either a Apollo Lake P4200 or 7th Gen Intel i that should have come with Win 10 Home installed. Your posts seem to say that, and then You installed Win 7, then re-installed Win 10. Is that correct ? If you were able to install Win 7 you should know that in BIOS you would need to disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy -AKA-CSM and then your optical drive would show up ? Can you post the complete Specs and explain What you did and How you did it ?
.

NOTE: When I'm in a hurry to post pics I take with my iPhone I upload them (automatically) to the cloud, then just access them there on the screen and take a snip to post.

Bat 1 · 12 Dec 2018

Once you disabled Secure Boot did you boot back into BIOS and see if the CSM option appears ? May have to search all the options. You also might have to have the USB or ISO installed at that time ? I see a few threads on The Linux Forums but they all died before anyone posted they solved the problem.