Issues with N56J

Last week I bought an Asus N56J, particularly because it had a Intel 4-core inside, which might allow me using it eventually to edit video with Avid.

But I was disappointed on some issues, and I would appreciate your help on how to go about them:

1) It does not allow installing Windows 7, particularly because it has no W7 drivers.

2) The Bios setup is quite tricky, and I would appreciate to know the correct settings for each item.

3) I tried a fresh W 8.1 install, but it didn't work too well. I'm thinking of making a mirror copy of the original HDD.

4) Is there some diagnostic I can run on it that might solve some mistakes I have done trying to make things better?

5) I made some changes and installed some programs, like Start Menu 8, to make it look like Windows 7, which I'm more familiar with. I do not like the way things are handled in Windows 8.

 

Which drivers? Many should be native to Windows, rather than retrieving them from Asus.

You don't need to do much with it. You may need to disable Secure Boot and change UEFI to Legacy/CSM to install Windows 7. Apart from that, make sure you will be booting from your installation media (USB or DVD) and make sure the time and date are correct.

Asus does officially support Windows 8.1 on this machine. What went wrong?

Microsoft has general purpose tools, but this really depends on what mistakes were made.

Nothing wrong with using a reskinning program like Start Menu 8. Lots of people use alternatives for getting 8 to look and function a little more like 7.