New
#1
Unable to update windows, only legacy USB install works.
I am problem solving a friends Asus x541ua (I7-7500U, 8GB,) laptop, its battery would not charge. It was running windows 10 20H1, to start i tried reinstalling the battery drivers, after this i tried to update windows to 20H2. This update kept failing at around 30%. The laptop would just lose power and restart. It does not lose power at any other time.
So believing this could be a faulty hard drive i created a bootable UEFI:USB for update 21H2 and did a clean wipe formatting the harddrive and reinstalling windows from the USB. This install went well until the point where after restarting, and booting from the harddrive the windows splash screen shows setting up devices 100% it then says windows is starting and then i get the message:
"Windows setup could not configure Windows to run on this computers hardware" and the computer restarts.
After many attempts changing BIOS setting i went back to my old windows 10 legacy USB. Version 1511. This installed perfectly and is running well, however it is also unable to update to 21H2 using the USB or windows update. It always fails by powering down and then is unable to recover the update and has to revert back.
After this i took a closer look at the bios and noticed the version was for a slightly different model, BIOS version 306 for the Asus x541uak. I have checked the back of the computer and the serial and it is a Asus x541ua, however under system info windows sees it as a Asus x541uak. Could this be stopping windows from updating? Is there any other possibility before i take the risk of forcing a new bios onto the system?
Thank you for any help
edit: I should say i understand MBR and GPT drive setup. The drive was deleted and i allowed windows to format it for the UEFI installs. After install i check and windows had setup the drive correctly with 3 partitions GPT.