ASUS R500A Windows 8 to Windows 7 Nightmare

I've been pulling my hair out for days now trying to find a working solution to downgrade a brand new ASUS R500A notebook from Windows 8 Pro to Windows 7 Pro. The client has software that will not work with Windows 8, and thus must have Windows 7 installed.

At first I thought it was an issue with the Secure Boot option in the bios. That was disabled first. Yet nothing I have done has gotten me anywhere closer to getting a clean Win 7 install on this laptop.

I've also disabled pretty much anything I can find in the bios, usb 3.0, anti theft, legacy usb etc. and it makes no difference. Also changed the hard drive setting from AHCI to IDE and again just hangs at the very first logo you see "Starting Windows". So it only just makes it past the initial dos loading bar.

I've also taken the hard drive out and deleted all the Win 8 partitions, to no avail. Formatted the hard drive as a blank NTFS drive, still no change.

At this point all I have left to try is to take the hard drive out, install Win 7 on it in a desktop or some other machine, then put the hard drive back into the notebook and hope it will detect the new hard and work.

Anyone else dealing with this issue thus far? This model of notebook isn't new, and is 1yr old now I think, so it does work with Win 7.

 

what are you booting from? have you tried to boot from both dvd and USB? i feel like i just saw a similar issue around here somewhere (or at least somebody whose install was hanging at the same place), but don't quote me on that till i find it.

Sent from my PI39100 using Board Express

 

Matt, have been booting off DVDs. Some original OEM discs, others burnt from the official ISOs. Same result all around.

I had no luck with installing Win 7 onto this hard drive whilst in another computer, then placing back into the laptop.

Also found out from ASUS today they will not support this. Pretty staggering really when this model of notebook is close to 1yr old and originally came with Win 7 on it. They've certainly lost me as a customer.

EDIT: Ok tried another method of doing a fresh install of Win 8 Pro, then while in Windows, running the Win 7 Pro install. It then does an install before rebooting. Alas, it stops at the exact same spot again, of the pusling Windows logo, whilst the txt says "Starting Windows". I was willing to live with a not so clean install of Win 7 ontop of Win 8, but that doesn't work either.

 

are we sure this isn't drive failure? have you tried to nuke the drive or run anything similar? what kind of drive is it?



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EDIT: ninja edit. wait, so you can and have successfully installed W8 on this drive? i thought you had formatted it and now couldn't get the installation to start...

 

I've run DBAN on it successfully and also Acronis True Image, which has an option to wipe a drive. It formatted just fine when I put it into a workbench XP rig. It also installed Win 8 just fine as well, and I deleted all the paritions during that setup step, so it could re-create them all.

This doesn't look like a drive failure to me, rather a chipset IDE/SATA controller issue or something. Loading into safe mode, it stops after loading the system32\drivers\disk.sys file.

 

what type of HDD? the whole similar-results-on-a-different-machine thing throws a good wrench into this.

 

To simplify things...

I can't install Win 7 on this hard drive, when it's residing in the notebook. No method works that I've tried thus far.
I can install Win 7 on this hard drive if it's in another computer, which in this case was a workbench system.
I can also install Win 8 onto the hard drive when it's residing in the notebook.
I've taken the hard drive out and formatted it fine on another computer via SATA and USB to SATA.

So the issue here is why doesn't Win 7 install on this hard drive when in the notebook? And the only conclusion I have is that the hard drive isn't the issue, it's a chipset, interface or bios problem.

The HDD is a Fujitsu 500GB SATA 3.0, 5400rpm drive. Doesn't seem any different than any other drive I've replaced or worked with. Will try again tomorrow with maybe a workbench HDD in the notebook, but I'm sure the same result will occur, no Win 7.

At this point, the best I can do is get Win 8 back on there, and we'll have to order a different brand of notebook for this client. Looking at the notes on the ASUS website concerning the latest bios version which this laptop has, there is mention of fixing an issue with Secure Boot. Thus even if you turn it off in the bios, it's possibly still active somehow. It's almost acting like back in the old days when you were installing Win95/Win98 and had the boot sector virus protection setting enabled. On some computers you'd see a square text box flash up in the middle of the screen asking if you wanted to give boot sector access by pressing Y or N. But other times you'd see no box or text at all, and thus would not even know or be able to press the Y or N, and the install process would pause at this point indefinitely. Feels like it's doing something similar to that.

Once it tries to load the system32\drivers\disk.sys file it stops. The hard drive light stops and nothing happens. Even the Windows Logo stops pulsing. Will try once more on this step and leave it for a few hours to see if it somehow gets past this step, but I've had it there 20mins at times and it does nothing. Should only be taking a few mins on this step anyway.

 

Bingo.

My first guess would be the chipset. Did the system come with 8 installed? I just spoke with one of my colleagues, and he mentioned someone requested an RMA for a related issue. The problem seems (at first glance) to be with the system build; the license originally provided with Windows 8 may be embedded into the firmware, thus causing malfunction when installing a different version.

I'm spitballing at the moment, but I think therein lies the problem. Keep us posted on any news/fixes you come across!

 

Still no luck today. Tried everything I could think of.

I'm now trying to downgrade the version of BIOS in this machine, I think that will solve the issue. However using the build easy flash option it the bios gives me an error message of the "Build date is too old". I can't find a DOS flash program for this laptop at all, and that presents it's own problems.

The bios in this laptop if I'm being honest is rubbish. It will not detect any bootable devices if they are not UEFI. Thus I cannot boot into memtest, seatools, or even a dos usb stick to flash a bios. The bios appears to access the cdrom drive before it posts. It it finds a UEFI compatible disc it will give the option to boot off the cd. If not, then it doesn't even give you the option to boot off a cd at all. Very strange & totally annoying. If this is the direction vendors are going, then we're in for further nightmares.

I did make a USB Win 7 install and it didn't detect it, so I couldn't even attempt to install off it. I found some reference on google about someone having a similiar problem and they fixed it by renaming the pcmcia.sys file. I had to boot from a Win 8 cd, then get to the command prompt before I could rename the file. Didn't make any difference. The more I think about it, I've come to the conclusion that this is possibly not a fault at all but by design. ASUS have done something in the bios to prevent Win 7 from installing properly.

 

i doubt it if the system is a year old, so everything your colleague said about the license being embedded in the firmware/bios is irrelevant here.

thanks for trying to clarify some stuff here. i took this...

...to mean that you couldn't install W7 on this drive at all. confused by a couple other contradictory things you've said. but now i see why you're fairly sure this is a hardware issue somewhere else. was this the laptop's original drive? am i correct in assuming that W7 was installed on this drive at some point? was it the customer who upgraded to W8 and now they've hired you to revert back to W7? i just don't see where along the timeline you've provided thus far this would have become an issue. there's obviously more to this. why are you trying to "downgrade" the bios? have you flashed the bios somewhere along the timeline after W7 was removed from the drive? are you back in AHCI? there's a reason why i'm asking a twenty questions.

is that legal?

 

Sounds like marketing to me. I had a system that would not accept any XP license once - from OEM discs to pirated material and so on. But prior to the format reload, it accepted the same said product keys during previous reinstallations.

Yes, if you could elucidate the timeline KK, it may help to determine the source of the cause. One thing I forgot to ask (it probably doesn't matter, given everything else you've tried) - and I apologize if I overlooked you already answering this - but when booting off optical media: did you try an external USB disc drive? As opposed to the internal one.

Well, in his defense:

It seems fair to assume, although you could be right.

 

Yes the system came with Win 8 pre-installed. However this model of notebook was originally released one year ago, and back then it came with Win 7. All that is changed during that time, is some bios updates. Since I have not found a way to downgrade the bios due to the notebook having no legacy boot options, and the Windows flasher only allowing you to upgrade a bios, and not go back a version, I cannot verify if indeed an older bios version would allow me to install Win 7. But gut feeling says it will make a difference.

I can install Win 7 on this hard drive, if I remove the hard drive, and mount it into a desktop system. Thus the issue isn't with the hard drive, or that it may have errors, rather that the notebook itself pauses at a certain point when the Win 7 install process is occurring. I tried installing Win 7 on this hard drive whilst mounted in a desktop system, then removed it and inserted it back into the notebook. This created an additional error and wouldn't even get as far as previous attempts. Having to then fix the boot sector and get it loading properly on a UEFI system isn't possible as I cannot boot into legacy mode with any device, be it cd, usb or whatever. Thus using BCD and other utility cds isn't possible either.

You ask alot of questions which are not relevant to this situation and seem to be trying to find conflicting information. So I'll answer them as best I can. It's not that hard to understand. This is a brand new laptop I am deploying for a client. The software they use will not work on Win 8, nor are we ready to have them on a Win 8 system at this point as everything else in their businesses is on XP/Win 7. The laptop came with Win 8 pre-installed on it. It should not be that much hassle to pop in a Win 7 DVD, and install that OS. It apparently is next to impossible from my attempts. I haven't flashed any bios updates either. The laptop came with the latest available version. My talking about the bios was because there are notes on the asus support page indicating the bios version I have on this laptop fixed some issues with Secure Boot. Also I can't think of anything else that has changed in this laptop since it originally came out 1 year ago with Win 7 pre-installed. Thus my reasoning that going back to a bios version before Win 8 came out is sound. However I am unable to test this due to not having a method to downgrade the bios.

I have tried leaving things on the AHCI setting and also changing to IDE. I've turned off everything I have an option to disable in the bios as well, like usb ports, the works, everything I can change was disabled. It made no difference.

I'm not even sure it's this devious. It might just be an issue with a driver due to the newer bios on this laptop. And thus it's preventing Win 7 setup from proceeding. But you could be right also. Sadly I'm not even getting to that stage of the setup to even have a license rejected

I didn't try an external usb dvd drive no, I don't' have one handy at the moment. I have a feeling it won't make a difference. The point where it pauses, the dvd drive isn't accessing the disc anymore. Its done it pre-load then the hard drive light is flashing away doing something. Then eventually it just stops and doesn't procede. It's not a total lockup, rather it's not progressing.

The timeline is this. Ordered in new laptop for client. It's a model we have ordered any times before. This time however it came with Win 8. Previously it would come with Win 7. No worries I thought, I'll just install Win 7 Pro on it. Pop in the genuine OEM install DVD and so far so good thinking the install is working ok. But it pauses right after the initial dos loading bars scroll across the screen, and then you see the windows logo pulsing for the first time. It doesn't get past this point. At this point I tried another disc. No difference. Used my bootable Win 7 usb installer pen drive. It won't detect it. Then from here on out it's things like disabling Secure Boot, wasting God knows how much time trying to get anything legacy to boot. Still no go. Then thinking hmm, ok I'll try a different hard drive in the laptop. No difference. Then taking the hard drive out, mounting it into a desktop and installing Win 7 on it. It works. Ok maybe I can put it back into the notebook and it will load and re-detect the changed hardware. Nope that didn't work either. Then thinking the new Win 8 compatible bios was the cause, but finding this a roadblock as I cannot downgrade the bios. Also spending countless hours on google finding various solutions to the initial pause during setup symptom I am having. None are successful. Also a very frustrating experience dealing with ASUS on this as well. No help on getting a downgrade key, but mostly they said this was not covered under warranty in terms of me trying to install Win 7 on it.

Thank goodness I cloned the HDD before I attempted all this. I re-cloned it back yesterday and it's booted back into it's original Win 8 pre-install state. We can sell this to another customer, but the drama is any new laptop we get now could potentially have the same issue.

Thus if any new desktops or notebook we receive dont have an option for legacy boot, I'll be sending it straight back. Although this isn't the cause of our issues I feel not having that ability has totally crippled our ability to problem solve.

 

Between this and all the steps you've taken, I can only arrive at one conclusion: BIOS lock. Someone else I explained this to said the same thing. Microsoft is REALLY trying to push Windows 8, and although I could certainly be wrong, it really sounds to me like a marketing strategy.

 

Downgrading the BIOS might make sense.

Flashing from windows sucks, but have you tried using winflash with

Code:

winflash /nodate

You have to cd into the program files directory for winflash first

 

If this is the face of things to come for the wintel platform, we're in for some harsh times. Locking hardware to a specific OS is madness. It could be a bios lock happening, but who knows at this point.

ALLurGroceries, oh that's interesting to know. Due to the amount of time I've spent on this system and not getting anywhere closer, we've moved on from it. Next step is to either somehow make the client specific programs work in Win 8, and or try out some of the shell replacement techniques, to make Win 8 more like Win 7 with a proper desktop. I'm not willing to try a bios flash on this unit due to not having any fallback. I'd half expect the bios flash procedure to work, then be prompted to reboot. Then see nothing on the screen due to the bios flash actually not working correctly. But it's still good info to remember for next time in being able to bypass the date check.

 

What shell replacement techniques? Are you referring to skinning programs that just place their own UI over the Windows one? If you have a link on a how-to, I'd be intrigued to read it. At least if you go that route, any "irreversible" damage you do to the OS can be resolved with another format + reload.

 

Looks like you nailed it, ALLurGroceries. Found this thread while looking to downgrade an Asus N56VZ from Win 8 to Win 7. Asus website includes all drivers for Win 7, but I too was beating my head against the Secure Boot configuration. Decided to download the original BIOS for this unit and use the command prompt for winflash /nodate. It allowed the reverse flash with no problems.

I imaged the drive first, just in case the Win7 install failed. Booted right to the Win7 Pro DVD, and it moved right along. No more hanging at the pulsing Windows logo.

Next step was choosing "Custom Install" and deleting all the GPT partitions (this is why I imaged FIRST, just in case).

FTW! Windows 7 Pro installed!

As an aside, these computers come with Windows 8, NOT Windows 8 Pro; so technically the downgrade to Win 7 Pro is not supported by MS. However, you can upgrade to Win 8 Pro for $39 and get a license that way. All of that being said, you can enter ANY Win 7 Pro key and validate it through the automated phone service.

 

Hi,

I too have the same issue with a client. Did you use the BIOS 200 version? How do you flash the bios from boot up as I can't get windows 8 to boot up at all now?
Thanks

 

The problem I faced was that due to the R500A not having any legacy boot option, I wasn't able to get into any OS via booting off CD. Not even memtest, sea tools, acronis etc. Unless there is a way to make a UEFI boot cd that loads into proper DOS.

If I could have booted into DOS, I would have tried the bios downgrade and I'm 99.9% certain it would have corrected Win 7 hanging at the pulsing Windows Logo part.

 

How can I boot to flash the bios? I deleted the partitions and formatted the hard drive. It goes around in circles. Windows 8 tries to repair but fails. I figure it is because I deleted the partitions. I am in a real bind now because I have two days to do this in. I need to flash the bios urgently. Can you please help me with this? thanks

 

I think the BIOS was 204 or so. It was the first of three releases for that model. I was still able to boot into Windows 8 at the time.

If you are unable to boot to Win8, try going into the BIOS and setting defaults, then go to Boot Secure and get it out of Setup and back into User mode. To do this go to the PK section and have it use the Standard PKs (I think), or something like that. This takes it out of Setup and into User mode. Then see if you can boot to Win8. All of that being said, this is why I imaged (or actually cloned to another drive) prior to tackling the project. Nothing like bricking a $1400 laptop b/c a client wants Win7. I didn't want that.

Also, I had to fight a little with MS to get an activation code afterwards b/c I used an OEM Win7 Pro disk from another mfr. Next time I will stick with official MS media, and any MS product key. They really don't care what the key is, as long as you are using an official MS media (or download from Digital River via MyDigitalLife). I will then use a product key from one of our machines which has a non-OEM, official MS Win7 Pro install. It will save lots of time and phone juggling with MS.

Good luck!

 

Is there a CSM option available? Try enabling it.

This is how it's done on the U500vz/Ux51vz: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...00vz-ux51vz-owners-lounge-18.html#post8957429

 

Exactly. I lost hairs as well to put win 7 on my win 8 ux32vd. Solution :

- To enable default win 8 just disable CSM and enable fast boot
- To enable win 7 or launch usb boot key, disable fast boot and enable CSM. You can also remove the boot manager in the boot priority. It will directly boot on win 7

 

To OP or anyone else interested, a fellow Notebook Review user has posted a workaround - maybe someone can play with it to get it to function for a Windows 7 downgrade installation as well. (Credit goes to MifuneT and his source(s).)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/698920-installing-windows-8-pro-over-standard-oem-your-new-win8-certified-notebook.html

 

This new UEFI secure boot sounds like a nightmare. It looks like the linux foundation was also trying to get the UEFI "secure boot" keys so that they can install linux on these newer machines. It looks like the windows 7 install was hanging because it was not giving the UEFI firmware the "key" so that it could continue.

Another thing that is weird is that i have a UEFI bios on my u36sd and on my desktop board (m5a97 evo), but i never had a problem booting to any device.

 

From what I understand, it has to do with the newer SLIC 3.0+.

"Some BIOSes contain a "SLIC" (software licensing description table), a digital signature placed inside the BIOS by the manufacturer... This SLIC is inserted in the ACPI table and contains no active code. Computer manufacturers that distribute OEM versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft application software can use the SLIC to authenticate licensing to the OEM Windows Installation disk and/or system recovery disc containing Windows software. Systems having a SLIC can be preactivated with an OEM product key, and they verify an XML formatted OEM certificate against the SLIC in the BIOS as a means of self-activating (see System Locked Preinstallation)"

Source: BIOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I　just bought R500 last Friday, I got Windows 7 Enterprise clean installed on my laptop today.

 

i have a r500vd and had the same problem as the OP the way i got mine downgraded to win 7 was i had to use an old OEM windows 7 disc has to be an OEM disc because of the UEFI quite a hassle IMO