Asus S56CA-WH31 15.6" Ultrabook Teardown, integrated SSD hack, and OS install hack

Greetings!

I recently got a great deal on an Asus S56CA-WH31 15.6" Ultrabook during the Cyber Monday sales on Amazon. This is a fairly new Ultrabook from Asus with an integrated 24GB mSATA SSD + 500GB 5400rpm HDD hybrid setup, newer 22nm i3 or i5, 4GB DDR3, Intel integrated graphics, and Windows 8 Standard OEM. It's a very decent machine, considering the very low price it is/was being sold for (I had gotten mine for $459, refurb). I posted a more comprehensive review on Amazon, which can be read here: MifuneT's Amazon review of ASUS S56CA-WH31 15.6-Inch Ultrabook



A lot of pros and cons to the Ultrabook, but it didn't stop me from tearing into it and making it better. Pretty happy with where it's at after a little tinkering.

Among the things I've done/addressed so far:
1. Teardown the machine to determine end user serviceability, increase amount of RAM.
2. Upgrade integrated 24GB mSATA SSD to 128GB
3. Bypass the SLIC 3.0 BIOS to prevent it from auto inserting the Windows 8 Standard OEM key, so I could perform a clean install of my own Windows 8 Pro copy+license.

Among issues I am still working on/trying to work around/hack around:
a. UEFI and/or Secure Boot blocking bootable USB thumbdrives, many bootable DVDs.
b. Windows 8 install keeps picking up Standard OEM key from BIOS, unless using hack workaround detailed in #3. SLIC 3.0 BIOS, UEFI, Secure Boot can't be disabled, despite clearing keys and disabling options in BIOS.
c. BIOS options very, very limited.

Among things I'd like to change, if cost of modifications didn't make it such a bad value proposition (cost significantly outweighs the benefit):
i. Change 15.6" LCD panel with one that has better viewing angles, gamma, resolution, etc
ii. Change webcam camera sensor to one of higher resolution, better low light condition clarity

In the following posts I'll be going over the teardown and mods with pictures and captions. Hope this helps other owners of this Ultrabook and taking it from "entry level" to awesome.

 

1. Teardown the machine to determine end user serviceability, increase amount of RAM.

Increasing the amount of RAM available is usually the easiest of mods to do and the first of any that most laptop users undertake. Adding an extra 4GB (PC3-12800 DDR3 CL11 1600Mhz 1.5v) is very easy on this laptop, requiring the user to only remove to screws that hold the RAM+HDD cover plate. I like that it is just one single plate to access the extra SODIMM and HDD. Unfortunately, if you want to replace both SODIMM sticks, you will need to remove the entire back cover, since there just isn't enough clearance to get the other stick in or out.

Before any computer disassembly, don't forget to discharge any static that may be present on your person.

After removing the two screws holding the RAM+HDD cover plate, you'll have a lot of other screws to remove, which is pretty straightforward. This is how the Ultrabook looks with the RAM+HDD cover plate, battery, and drive bay removed. The red circles denote all of the screws you will need to remove, these include all screws for cover plate, back plate, and HDD. Some of these are of different sizes, so make sure you set them aside in a logical way where you won't forget where they went.



The drive bay screw is covered by a tiny square piece of adhesive backed plastic. Use a small precision flathead screwdriver to remove it and set it aside, or toss it, alternately. You will need to remove the hard drive and associated screws holding it in before you can remove the back cover.

Before attempting to pop off the back cover, carefully disconnect the small connector to the right of the HDD (red, black and white wire).

Once all screws are removed, you will need to carefully pop the plastic back cover plate off. Gently work your way around, starting with one of the corners by the display hinge. I find that a nylon guitar pick works very well (better than fingernails) at safely getting in between spaces and acting as a prybar. Work patiently and carefully in popping the back cover off. I didn't have any plastic pieces break while removing the back cover on my laptop.

This is how it looks with the back cover off:



As you can see, there are a few end user serviceable parts of note. In particular is the Wireless Network Adapter, and the tiny mSATA SSD. Overall, it appears that the S56CA is exceptionally easy to service, with the DC jack (above right from the corner of the heatsink fan) not having any creative wire routing to wrestle with, should you ever have to replace it.

My laptop has an Atheros/Broadcomm wireless adapter and I've had very good experiences with them, as far as their compatibility with routers and certain wireless network penetration testing software. Some laptop manufacturers put in hardware locks to prevent other wireless adapters from being installed. I don't have any spare laptop motherboard wireless network adapters on hand to test if anything else can be installed.

The 24GB mSATA SSD is the most interesting to me. It is a very short SSD card, but it is clearly evident that there are holes present for the longer, standard sized mSATA SSDs of larger capacity.

With the back cover removed, that top SODIMM is now accessible to swap.

While I usually recommend using IC Diamond 7 on all laptops, I have had zero heat issues with my i3 Ultrabook, so I haven't felt compelled to repaste.


In my next post, I'll detail a small hack/mod to upgrade the dinky 24GB mSATA SSD to a standard sized card.

 

I decided on this upgrade because the benefits of Fast Boot, Instant On, Fast Resume, and other Intel IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) features that speed up access are of negligible value considering the high read speed of new SSDs and the overall efficiency of Windows 8. I would rather have two readily accessible SSD drives that I can read/write to and bear with an agonizing extra 2 seconds of waiting. Having the OS on the mSATA SSD gives me the luxury of easily swapping in other drives, as the HDD bay is easy to access (2 screws), and the secondary drive won't need to have an OS installed on it. The OEM setup has the OS installed on the 5400rpm drive, with a cache copy on the 24GB SSD for quick access. You cannot boot if you remove the OEM 500GB 5400rpm drive and try to boot on just the 24GB drive. This mod is a matter of simplicity and utility for me. Others may like the speed of the OEM setup and opt for just changing the 5400rpm drive to an SSD. That works well too, but overall storage capacity is limited.

2. Upgrade integrated 24GB mSATA SSD to 128GB

There is only one screw holding the 24GB mSATA SSD to the motherboard. Once removed, set the screw aside and the mSATA SSD will pop up, just like a stick of ram.

I'd like to install a larger capacity, faster, 128GB mSATA SSD. Problem is, there is nothing to securely mount the longer card. As you can see, there is only a standoff for the shorter 24GB card.



Here is a comparison between a standard sized mSATA SSD (bottom), and the 24GB integrated SSD (top) that came with the Ultrabook. Those are 4mm nuts and corresponding screws to the right. They were not part of the laptop. I had pulled them from a bag of extra fasteners I had handy. I was considering gluing the nuts to the other holes where standoffs should go, as they are about the same height...



Test fitting the 128GB Crucial mSATA SSD, a problem arose. The standoff used to secure the 24GB integrated SSD is getting in the way! The standoff will need to be removed.



** WARNING **
Removing the standoff that secures the OEM 24GB mSATA SSD to the PCB will instantly void the warranty. It won't damage the computer, as long as you are careful, but you can consider your warranty gone once you do this. To remove the standoff, I used a pair of bent nose pliers to firmly grasp the aluminum standoff, taking GREAT CARE not to scrape, contact, or otherwise disturb any part of the PCB or motherboard circuitry; once the standoff is grasped, twist clockwise or counterclockwise (again, CAREFULLY), and it should come off, relatively easily. You don't need herculean strength to twist it off, just firmness, and finesse.



I was at first going to use some 4mm nuts to glue to the open holes so I could mount the longer mSATA card, but this removed standoff will work perfectly. To affix it to the new mSATA mounting point, I used Krazy Glue on the bottom of the standoff, applied with a wooden toothpick (I held the standoff with tweezers). I purposefully didn't use too much glue, in the event that I ever want to remove the standoff again and return the Ultrabook to it's factory setup.



The Crucial 128GB mSATA SSD fits perfectly, secured to the standoff using the screw that was set aside earlier. I double checked to make sure no parts of the SSD were making physical contact with the motherboard. You absolutely want to make sure that nothing is touching or rubbing the PCB, lest you risk shorting/destroying your motherboard and SSD!

 

Putting the laptop back together, the new, longer, faster, larger capacity mSATA SSD looks like it belongs! Everything fits, just like OEM! You now have a large capacity SSD integrated to the motherboard and a spare laptop SATA slot to do as you wish!



The last thing to tackle is performing a clean install...of something other than Windows 8 Standard OEM. It's not as easy as one would think.

 

I'll post a follow up tomorrow detailing how I did a clean install of Windows 8 Pro (factory default is Win8 Standard OEM) and bypassed some BIOS level restrictions that seem to be evident in all of this new "Windows 8 Certified Hardware" that were dogging me and kept autoloading the OEM keys, even though I had my own Pro license key.

 

With Windows 8 now out, prebuilt computers and notebooks that are deemed "Windows 8 Certified" adhere to certain security protocols on the BIOS level that make installing an OS other than what came with the machine increasingly difficult.

Problem areas and some preface:

SLIC 3.0
SLIC 3.0 is software licensing information located on the BIOS. Other versions of SLIC have been around several years, but all Windows 8 computers must use 3.0, which has keys that are unique to each machine. SLIC allows OEMS to have the keys autoloaded during the OS installation process, which helps to streamline manufacturing. It seems like a logical thing, on the surface. Previous versions of SLIC assigned one single key to volume license hundreds of thousands of machines, and they keys, installed via BIOS hacking, were widely abused by software pirates. The problem arises with SLIC 3.0, because Windows 8 installation procedures will ALWAYS pull the keys from the BIOS and then default to that version during install, since Windows 8 media is not specific and includes all versions on the same disc. Again, this seems logical on Microsoft's end, to limit the number DVD images they must produce. In practice though, this prevents users who own legitimate copies of Windows 8 Pro and its license key, from easily installing their Pro OS on "Windows 8 Certified" hardware that is preloaded with lower versions of the OS.

UEFI & Secure Boot
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a protocol that has also been around for several years, but with the release of Windows 8, carried the increased "security" of Secure Boot, which prevents unsigned bootable media from interfacing with the OS, hardware, or firmware. This function is supposed to make PCs more secure, by disallowing BIOS level exploits that use things like the memory space (ie: Konboot) to accomplish some task. In reality, this is limiting user's ability to control their hardware and limit what OSes they install. Due to the increased restrictions of Secure Boot, I have not been able to use any USB thumb drives, including those created by the official Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool, to boot directly from USB. Bootable DVDs are also required to be signed, and it appears that modifying a signed, legitimate ISO (ie: Windows 8 installation ISO, downloaded from MSDN) by inserting a file, completely prevents it from booting anymore. Additionally, popular boot media with legitimate tools and OSes that I like to use, like Backtrack, Ubuntu, and Partition Magic, are no longer bootable. I haven't tested it yet, but I have a feeling that I can no longer boot Memtest either. I don't mean to preach, but if Windows 8 Certified laptops and desktops are this restrictive via Secure Boot, it does not bode well for the PC industry.

Evaluating ASUS' BIOS in the S56[/SIZE]
It's an understatement to say that the BIOS settings the Asus S56 are poorly documented. There are very few options to change. Even when I went into the Security tab, went into "Key Management" and deleted all of the stored certificates and keys (they can be restored to default), disabled "Secure Boot Control", and played with all variations of all BIOS settings, no matter what, I absolutely could not get my Asus S56 to boot from any USB thumb drives, or unsigned or otherwise modified bootable DVDs.

Fortunately, I found a workaround
I found a bug in the Windows 8 install process that provided me with a workaround to allow me to finally install my copy of Windows 8 Pro, rather than having to stick with Windows 8 Standard OEM. This bug involves the ei.cfg file that Microsoft removed from Windows 8 install media. It was a configuration file that allowed you to specify which version of Windows you wanted to install. You cannot simply modify the Windows 8 install ISO and add the ei.cfg file, as mentioned before, the DVD will not boot. The bug I found, is that during the install process, Windows 8 install still does a cursory check on all accessible drives for the ei.cfg file, even though they intentionally removed it from all of their install media. The cursory check Windows 8 install does, also includes USB drives that are attached. I had a custom ei.cfg on my thumb drive, which Windows picked up, which finally allowed me to select my OS version!

Here's what you'll need:

• Windows 8 installation DVD (unmodified), retail, or a burned copy from an ISO downloaded from Microsoft
• Windows 8 installation ISO
• Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool free, from Microsoft
• USB thumb drive, large enough for the Windows 8 installation DVD (4GB is fine)

1. Burn a copy of the Windows 8 install DVD (assuming you purchased a key, and didn't buy the retail DVD) using your favorite image burning tool. I prefer ImgBurn.
2. Open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, select the Microsoft Windows 8 installation ISO as your source file, hit Next, and then select USB device. Select your thumb drive and then "Begin Copying"
3. Once your "bootable" thumb drive is ready, open it in Explorer and navigate to the "sources" directory.
4. Using notepad, create a new Text file. Name it ei.cfg. The contents should be as follows:

[Channel]
volume

[VL]
1 ​

5. Save the file and exit.
6. Insert the Windows 8 installation DVD, as well as the Windows 8 installation USB drive you just created (with the added ei.cfg).
7. Reboot. Your notebook will boot from DVD and take you to the Windows 8 install interface. Hit "Install Now".
8. You'll now be presented with the choice of what version of OS to install. Remove the DVD. When you select the version and hit next, installation will occur from the USB!
9. Enjoy being able to use the OS you paid for, on the machine you also paid for that didn't want you to install anything other than what it came with.

There you have it. This workaround defies all logic and sensibility, but it is the only way I could figure out how to install Windows 8 Pro over the Asus S56 Windows 8 Standard OEM. Interesting thing is that if you skip activation and check the key in Windows System, you'll noticed that Windows still pulled the OEM key from BIOS. This workaround forces the installation of Windows 8 Pro. Strange and infuriating. I'm still working on how to disable Secure Boot and the stored SLIC 3.0 keys for good. For now, this is as good as it gets, I suppose.

 

You sir, are a genius. How did you come across the SLIC 3.0 workaround? The preloaded keys/BIOS lock has been an increasing issue with a lot of people.

 

It was practically by accident.

I wast testing a bunch of variations of the Win 8 Install ISO (modified, unmodified), on a bunch of different thumbdrives to see what would catch, as well as modified and unmodified install DVDs. At one point, I had 3 USBs all attached to the computer, with an unmodified install DVD loaded, when I was presented with the long sought, desirable screen to select which version of the OS I wanted to install. When I proceeded, I noticed the thumbdrive was flashing with activity, rather than the DVD and I had a total Eureka moment, which I then reproduced. I yelled "OH MOTHERF***!!!!" at the top of my lungs at like 1 in the morning when it happened. It was pretty awesome.

The BIOS key is still there and Windows still pulls it, but luckily, this "Force Install" hack creates a conflict and refuses to recognize or accept the key, without the usual pattern of defaulting to installing Standard OEM.

Right now I'm following the work of Peter Kleissner, who has been working on bypassing the Secure Boot and UEFI. Last year he found a workaround to install a rootkit, but Secure Boot and UEFI still remain uncracked and continue to be an issue.
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/n...tkit-said-bypass-windows-8-secure-boot-111711

 

Great thread MifuneT!
I'm thinking about buying this laptop and was wondering about the RAM, Is it originally 1x4GB or 2x2GB? Also wondering about battery life, is it any good?

Sorry for the slightly OT post, but I hope you can help me

 

It comes with 1x4GB (Hynix) PC3-12800 DDR3 1.5v 1600Mhz CL11. I get about 5 hours with regular browsing and web video use, which is pretty respectable.

 

Thanks for the great answer!
Then I'll just order 1x4GB ram extra. Would say that 5 hours is pretty good for the price and the thickness of this notebook. Will definitively order this one before christmas to bring it around when traveling.

 

Hello,
I would like to ask you a couple of questions:

1. installing the new 128gb SSD, are you able to install the OEM OS on it?
that is, if I make a pendrive recovery image of the OS (the 16gb one), i'll be able to install the OS from this pendrive directly to the 128gb SSD instead of the normal HD?

2. the SSD in this laptop is used as a chace...which is the option to use it as a normal hard disk? i don't want to use it as a cache partition

3. i would like to install the bluetooth module that is not present in mine laptop...could you tell me where should I install it and where to find a compatible bluetooth module??

Thank you very much!

 

1. It's possible to install the OEM factory image if you upgrade the 24GB mSATA SSD to 128GB. If you replace the 24GB with a 128GB the 128GB will appear as a regular drive, so backup, recovery and imaging tools can restore to the mSATA.

2. To turn the 24GB mSATA SSD cache drive into a conventional drive, you need to make it recognizable. By default, it is a GPT partition with a special OEM flag that prevents it from being modified or altered. Using an elevated command prompt:

diskpart
select disk [YOUR DISK #]
select partition [YOUR PARTITION #]
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001​

Doing this will make the partitions accessible, so you have the option to delete, reformat, and/or make new volumes. I wound up deleting all partitions on the 24GB mSATA. Be aware that there are recovery and OEM partitions on the 24GB. Backup if you think you may want them in the future.

3. I think the Bluetooth module is integrated into the WiFi adapter. I believe this laptop uses a hardware "whitelist", so you will likely need an exact part number for the wireless network+bluetooth adapter card.

 

thanks!! so how do i backup the 24gb ssd??

abouth the wirless card, how can i discover the right model to buy?

 

There is a wealth of information on the internet. I recommend doing a lot of research prior to undertaking any modifications of hardware or OS. If you're not confident about how to do things, it might be better to leave it alone, until you have a better understanding of hardware, software, or protocols.

Popular drive backup tools are Partition Magic, EASUS, Paragon Drive Backup

As for the Bluetooth wireless, I have a feeling your laptop has it. It's just not obvious. Look in System -> Device Manager. It should show your current wireless network adapter and any associated bluetooth devices.

 

Thanks for all of the information! I just bought this laptop and registered on this forum to ask you:

Can the 24gb SSD be removed altogether? I plan on swapping in a 120gb SSD as my main drive, so the 24gb msata drive would be kind of useless you think?

 

The 24GB SSD can be removed altogether and you can just run with a single drive. If you do the hack I detailed, you can install a better mSATA drive + have an extra hard drive slot available for whatever you want. The Sandisk 24GB mSATA is woefully slow, compared with modern SSDs. It is still useful if you do decide to keep it- you can maybe set it up as a conventional drive and have your browser cache, windows pagefile, hibernation file, and other cache type files write to that disk, rather than your main SSD, which can result in greatly extending the life of your main SSD (most frequent data writes will go on the 24GB). Granted, it's kind of a moot thing to do though, as modern SSDs can last a very very long time.

 

Excellent post MifuneT!

What are the main differences between mSATA SSD's and SSD's? Which one is better?

In amazon they have basically the same price (around 108 dlls)

Amazon.com: Crucial m4 128GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive CT128M4SSD3: Electronics

Amazon.com: Crucial m4 128GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2: Electronics

Thanks in advance

Roberto

 

I didn't have a guitar pick to open the case, so I used an old credit card, in the end 2 or 3 plastic teeth broke in the process hehe.

After installing 8gb of Kingston HyperX (CL9) and modifying the graphics memory to 512MB my base score improved from 4.8 to 5.6 (Graphics is the lowest subscore).

Happy new year to all.

Roberto

 

Roberto, just form factor. Regular laptop hard drives use the regular 2.5" drive size, which accepts the standard connectors (can be used in laptop, or desktop), whereas mSATA aka micro SATA is a very small form factor that is usually used for integrated drives on motherboards. The two drives will likely perform the same, but mSATA is only for use in changing the laptop's integrated drive.

 

Hi,

Do you know of any dependability issues of using the 24GB SSD drive as the primary drive for the OS?

I've been racking my brains trying to install Windows 7 (64bit) on this thing and using the expresscache/Intel rapid start-storage SSD caching.... It just doesn't seem to work as fast as when I install the OS directly on the SSD.

Any suggestions? I don't think I'm setting up the SSD/caching setup correctly. I did disable Fast Boot in the Bios... everytime I try to enable it, Windows can't load....

Thanks.

Martin

 

Thanks OP for all the info and pictures !
Just purchased this laptop for my wife and looks like it will be great project for me as well
Did you leave the hard drive in the laptop as well or you using only the mSSD drive?

 

To MifuneT,
Thanks for the patience to spend time and explain the difficulties anyone would encounter if they needed to boot their system from an external bootable device. I just acquired an Asus UX32VD-DH71 which should share the same UEFI and secure boot implementations with your laptop. I would ideally like to do a clean install of Windows 8.I imagine I should expect same technical difficulties such as yours. However, I see other people talking about doing a clean install without mentioning any complication on the way. For example threads started by EmJayPrice and wmh408 on this forum could be mentioned. I am planning to replace the internal HDD with a SSD and I wonder if I will get into trouble. So I am confused and would like to have a more clear idea of the procedure before starting.

 

Congratulations for the your excellent series of posts.

I found at Amazon a mSATA drive the seems to have a hole in the “right” place so as not to need the removal of the standoff. Do you think this is so?

Amazon.com: Kingston SSDNow mS100 64GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive SMS100S2/64G: Computers & Accessories

 

MauroS - That SSD should work nicely, but I would make sure to double check that there are no clearance issues.

raminux - There shouldn't be an issues doing a clean install when changing HDD to SSD. Just the usual/occasional search for drivers after the installation is finished.

lifeisfun - I'm just using the 128GB mSATA SSD only, but if I need more space I'll install an additional drive in the freed up HDD space.

teslatradeup - The 24GB mSATA SSD is a very slow performer. That OEM Sandisk is probably one of the slowest SSD's I've ever used. Granted, it's still quite a bit faster- as far as read speeds- than a regular HDD, but write speeds on the 24GB are not too great.

 

Hello,

I recently bought this also I computer.Io but I have a intel i3 3217U.
Do you think maybe you can change it with an Intel i5 3317U / 3517U Intel I7? .
Although I think it is hard to find online.
I'm sorry for not perfect English!

Thank you!

 

This is not possible- I think the U designation means Ultrabook and these processors can't be removed or swapped out-- they're microsoldered onto the motherboard help keep a super low profile. I thought of doing the same thing also

 

Sorry to be late to the party. Just some questions though, is the HDD/board SATA I, II, III? And since the OS is installed on the HDD, would you have to clone that onto any other drive that you may want to use in order to get around the security features of the boot process, or is it tied to the physical HDD?

 

This was a phenomenal thread. thanks. question: have you been able to use widi on this? i tried and tried and was eventually told that it would not work because the wireless adapter is atheros vs intel. any thoughts? thanks.

 

You'd need to have the appropriate Intel Centrino wifi adapter to use it. AFAIK, Intel has yet to license the tech to other wireless adapter makers. The laptop has the right cpu and integrated graphics to support it, just not the wifi adapter. I have an Intel Centrino Wifi adapter in one of my other laptops-- if I have some time in the next few days, I'll see if the Asus accepts alternative Wifi adapters.

 

Thank you for going into detail here. I especially appreciate your instructions regarding the WIn8 pro install. Am I reading this correctly that you cannot install Ubuntu on this laptop? Has anybody found a workaround?

 

You don't need 2 seperate discs. Just make a ei.cfg with the code from the OP on one install disk. It should be fine.

 

Did you ever get a chance to see if an intel adapter would work in place of the atheros .... in order to facilitate widi ? also, this computer didn't come with bluetooth....at least i can't find it and the 'turn on blue tooth" is greyed out out in settings. is there a way to add blue tooth after the fact, other than with a dongle. thanks again for all the help you've put up for this computer.

 

I am interested in this as well! I am a long time linux user and would really like to install Arch Linux if I get this laptop. I'm looking to order today.

 

I´ve upgraded my S56 with a Samsung 840 SSD 250GB and 2x4GB Corsair DDR3 Ram. Now i´m searching vor a 9,5mm Super Slim Blu Ray Burner and i want use the Arctic Silver 5 to cool down the cpu and the gpu. Can you tell me how i came on this components and do anyone knows a 9,5mm Blu Ray Disc Burner?

 

Hi all,
firt of all i want to thank Mifune for the great guide !!!! i really appretice the work you do ... really .
I don't wont to remove my 24 ssd but i want to install a normal 2.5 SSD in actual HDD bay, and move the 750 Gb 5400 rpm to a caddy on dvd place. The question is if i can restore the system by the normal procedure (press F9 on boot and do a reset factory default ) or do a fresh new install from a dvd.

Thank you

 

Hi nyphs,

i use HDClone to copy my HDD to SSD. It works perfect.

 

Hi Da Crocker,
thank you for tips i will try as soon as my Samgsung 840 arrive ... i hope tomorrow

 

ok SSD arrived yesterday.

I make a clone copy with Acronis tool and it work perfect, just on thinks, i had to disabled secure boot ....

Now my system run really fine and i had a lots of space for VM

Thank all for support

 

Hi MifuneT .

Thanks for your great job. It is very useful for us.

Can you give me some advice about how to install Win 7 Pro into this notebook ?

Is it possible ?

 

You can try enabling CSM if you have that option in your BIOS, then run Windows 7 installer.

 

I managed to install Windows 7 on this laptop from a USB stick with no issues. You have to disable secure boot and enable CSM in BIOS. My model is S56CM-SH51-CB (bought at Staples.ca) but I expect the BIOS to be the same for S56CA.

Make sure you install all the necessary drivers for Windows 7 from Asus support website including the ones in the “Other” section in order to clear all the “lemons” in the device manager.

Now, I have to figure out how to enable the SSD caching on the 24Gb SSD drive…

 

Do you try to install Intel RST ?

I think you can enable the SSD caching by installing intel RST

 

I installed Intel RST but there is no Accelerate button to enable caching on the SSD. After more research online I found that you need to enable RAID mode in BIOS for caching to work, option which we don’t have. I wonder how does actually caching work in Windows 8 on our laptops…Anyway I decided to buy an HDD caddy, install an SSD inside and replace the DVD-Rom with it.
The msata replacement Mifune is suggesting is fine but I already have an SSD lying around and I find it less troublesome this way.

 

evanigma, I registered with this forum just to respond to you. I bought this exact model laptop last week (arrived Friday) for the sole purpose of putting Ubuntu on it. I'm running 12.04 LTS and typing this on it right now. It can be done.

1. Go into the BIOS and page over to the Security tab.
2. Select the option "Key Management" toward the bottom.
3. On that subpage, select the option at the top of the page to delete all boot keys (or platform keys--I forget what it was called).
4. Escape back out to the main Security page, and now you have the ability to interact with the "Secure Boot State" option. Disable it.
5. Save changes and exit.
6. Boot from the CD or USB stick with your ISO on it.

That's all. Runs Ubuntu like a charm. Enjoy!

 

PS: Thanks MifuneT for starting this thread; it was one of the resources that pointed me in the direction that helped me to figure out how to put Linux on the machine.

 

I´ve problems with shutting down my Asus S56. A Samsung SSD is installed. Can anyone help me!?

 

What GPT attribute needs to be set to put what you outline above back to normal?

 

Just want to share the results after replacing the DVD-ROM drive with a 2nd HDD caddy which I bought on E-Bay. The caddy works fine with both HDD and SSD I tried. Currently I have installed a 500Gb 7200rpm WD black. I was even able to boot Windows from it without issues. In the place of the old HDD I installed a 120Gb Kingston SSD which made the notebook operation very snappy.
Regarding 2nd HDD caddy, I managed to easily replace the front plate with the one from the DVD drive. Also the front plate from the 2nd HDD caddy installed fine on the DVD drive and I can now use it externally with the appropriate USB to SATA cable.

 

Hi everyone!

Just got my s56ca-wh31 and did a clean install of Windows 8 Enterprise. Everything works fine and the laptop looks and feels great! However I did something i regret about during the installation of clean Windows Enterprise - I deleted all partitions via Windows installation wizard. So now I'm not quite sure if 24 gb ssd disk serves as a cache disk.

Here is the screenshot of what I've got now:



Please, advise what should I enable in BIOS or what command do I have to run to enable caching on 24 gb SSD disk.

Thanks!