I’m trying to create a Windows 7 installation (to overwrite a Windows 8 installation) on an ASUS X401U. I’ve disabled UEFI Secure Boot and updated the firmware to the latest available (313). I’m using a bus-powered external DVD drive with an Win7 Ultimate ISO file verified against the MSDN-published CRC, so unless my burner malfunctioned, it’s not the disc.
I tried this again with two USB drives using Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool, one directly as the tool creates it, and one which I used xcopy to copy all of the files over to a drive formatted as FAT32, as UEFI won’t see NTFS. The FAT32 drive fails in the exact same point at which the DVD-based install fails. Of note, Ctrl Alt Del does nothing at the point where it crashes, so I’m reasonably confident that this is a crash and not just a pause while setup scans available hardware.
I’ve reattempted again using both USB3 and USB2 ports, no evident change occurred.
How would you recommend that I overcome this issue?
Thanks in advance for your help.