re: a problem making a bootable USB drive

Caledon Ken said:

Okay, it boots UEFI.

Just clean install it.

Not to be trivial.

Use your other computer to go to the MCT tool, download, execute, create media, don't update your machine.

Boot from key and follow the tutorial.

IKR! I know, right?!? A free laptop from a pawn shop? With a locked Windows 10 account on it? The very first thing I would do is a clean install of Windows 10! There is absolutely no need to attempt to break into the user account on the laptop.

I am about to take a hammer to this bloody Asus X541NA laptop. A friend sent me 2 bootable Win 10 Pro on USB flash drives (1 UEFI and the other with legacy/csm) with product keys via next day air from Cincinnati Ohio. The package arrived around 4pm pst. It is a bit past midnight here. I just tried the UEFI drive and that bloody laptop won't even see the drive. I took my 500gig HDD out of my Dell Inspiron 15-3541 laptop and put in an other working blank 250 gig in the dell laptop. I setup the bios to boot off the Win 10 USB flash drives. Both USB drives worked just fine on the Dell. The Dell laptop has both UEFI and legacy/csm boot. I don't know what else to do with this Asus junk heap. I have never had this much trouble with a laptop or a tower before. Heck when I got my 1st cell phone, an Android model, I picked that up fast. I bricked 1 phone and 1 tablet in the process. But that's the price to pay in learning new things.

Steve

Caledon Ken said:

Thanks for the model number, manual was less than helpful. Was expecting normal Asus manual with the BIOS settings...

What language would you like?

X541NA Manual | Laptops | ASUS Global

reble said:

A friend sent me 2 bootable Win 10 Pro on USB flash drives (1 UEFI and the other with legacy/csm)

Steve

Why 2 separate USB flash drives? A genuine, properly created Windows 10 installation USB flash drive is universal. It will boot in both UEFI and legacy/CSM modes.

I reset the Asus bios to default and still no change The Asus bios still doesn't see the Win 10 flash drive.
I am thinking that the next time I have to do a partition wipe of the C drive in the Dell laptop, I have to do a partition wipe at lease once sometimes 2 times in a year when the C HDD gets full of crude from surfing the net and slows Windows down to a snails crawl, that I am going to try the Win 10 pro. The Win 7 Home DVD is starting to show it's age. Scratches are starting to show up on the DVD, I have had the Win 7 DVD a real long time and it has served me well. I just have to find out if my ham radio sound card driven digital decoding software will run on Win 10 pro The software didn't like Win 7 Home 64bit.

Caledon Ken said:

Wow... Thanks for the model number, manual was less than helpful. Was expecting normal Asus manual with the BIOS settings.

Might I suggest you enter BIOS of Asus laptop and reload defaults, save and exit. Please don't change anything. Then try booting from USB. If you have USB2.0 and USB 3.0 please used USB 2.0 port.

I don't know why he sent 2 drives instead of just 1. But that's what he did.

NavyLCDR said:

Why 2 separate USB flash drives? A genuine, properly created Windows 10 installation USB flash drive is universal. It will boot in both UEFI and legacy/CSM modes.