Hello Geek... thanks for reply to this.
I ended up finally getting to the BIOS, but it required deep digging in Windows 8.1 advanced settings. The instructions in the link I placed above may work for Windows 8, but Microsoft decided to hide it under a different path in Windows 8.1.
After some poking around in Windows 8.1 I was able to find the advanced configuration and disable UEFI. It was interesting that this process required 3 different reboots. Had to select that I wanted to get to the advanced config and then it only gave option for "restart" to get there. Then once rebooted to this advanced settings area I then had to tell it to disable other features which I should have written down but at the 18th hour of my day finding a possible solution I was moving forwards without taking notes to share here.
But anyways this problem in the end ended up being both Windows 8.1 UEFI Enabled and BIOS "older OS" disabled. The BIOS was also unlike any I had dealt with in the past as for instead of once in giving it a boot order for Optical Drive CD/DVD before HDD it was hidden in a tab that is titled BOOT, but it shows Priority #1 and HDD and no optical drive which is connected to USB port to set as #1 with internal HDD as #2 priority.
To get the external USB DVD-RW drive to be added to this BOOT Device Priority listing I had to go to USB configuration under ADVANCED and turn on the USB Legacy [Enabled] from the default of disabled. But the fun didnt stop there. Now I was able to add this USB optical drive as #1 in the boot device priority list under the BOOT tab, but it still would not boot...
Ok back into the BIOS which now works with the F2 key that Windows 8.1 had disabled until I went in and disabled UEFI.
Looking around and lost as to why this drive is not booting I found online this info:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/238764-50-boot-asus-x401a-windowsPlease enter the BIOS (press and hold F2 key when power on). Switch to “Boot” and set “Launch CSM” to Enabled. Then switch to “Security” and set “Secure Boot Control” to Disabled. Press F10 to save and exit.
Then finally it was able to boot off of the external DVD-RW drive to boot up the Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium OEM Disc, and then delete all the partitions on this hard drive, and then install Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium clean to the laptop. While this was happening I was downloading the drivers for Windows 7 -64-bit from ASUS with my desktop and assembling each driver info related folders for USB3, Audio, Video, Chipset, WLAN, LAN, Webcam, ... etc to place onto a USB thumb drive,
Fortunately USB 2.0 worked even though Device Manager was complaining about USB 3 driver missing, so I was able to plug this thumb drive in and copy over the 1.4GB of drivers when unzipped.
Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium installed successfully to this laptop. Only oddity for this install was that 2 of the drivers were not labelled as Windows 7 drivers but instead Windows Vista 64, although they came direct from ASUS under the Win 7 64 listing and there is only drivers for Windows 7 and Windows 8 ( 32 and 64 bit ) with no other driver support offered. And one of them had _DELL trailing in its application name, so its odd that ASUS had this driver for download, but I suppose it may be because ASUS makes mass production motherboards for HP, DELL, ... etc and so this driver was for a DELL production build but not renamed to hide that fact.
Performance wise, this laptop benchmarked with Passmark Benchmark 30-day trial better with Windows 7 64-bit than it did with Windows 8 64-bit. The CPU tested about the same, but the graphics benchmark of the GPU tested better with Windows 7 64-bit than it did with Windows 8.1 64-bit. I had written down the Windows 8.1 benchmark results to see if Windows 8.1 on this laptop ran faster or more efficient than Windows 7 Home Premium.
I also stayed up later than I should have and copied World of Warcraft to the C: drive with my one external HDD and launched that, and under the same screen res of Windows 8.1 on Windows 7, my framerate increased from 20-25 fps that I was getting with the Integrated Intel HD GPU under Windows 8.1 to now 30-45 fps with Windows 7. So the Passmark Benchmark results that I saw before running WoW was showing a real system improvement in game performance.
Most importantly of all. The gaming problem that this system had was fixed through this. I had issues with games and when using mouse and key combinations at the same time it was almost like Windows 8 as well as 8.1 would trip up when trying to hold an arrow key on the keyboard for direction to move character, and at the same time holding down the right-click and moving the mouse such as in World of Warcraft to use your mouse for smooth flight control while mounted vs use of Arrow keys and X and Spacebar to fly without smooth controls, but angled diagonal movements. So I am really happy that the install of Windows 7 64-bit on this laptop solved the gaming issue as well as improved my integrated GPU benchmark which is showing very strongly in framerate. * Also the game graphics and screen res settings were the same between Windows 8 or 8.1 and Windows 7, so its a true performance gain as a result of this downgrade to Windows 7. I play WoW on the FAIR graphics option with the slider bar for POOR, FAIR, GOOD, HIGH, ULTRA since its just integrated graphics, but this setting was the same between the prior Windows 8.1 and now 7, so it is testing apples to apples for settings. So either Windows 8.1 OS or the video driver for Windows 8.1 64 bit with this Intel HD integrated video was slowing down gaming performance of the GPU.
Only oddity that I did want to mention is that this system was bought cheap brand new for $279.00 on a Newegg black friday deal and has the Celeron 1000m 1.8Ghz dual-core with 1MB L2 and 2MB L3 cache and its actually not that bad of a CPU, but for some reason when I launch wow at first I see both cores kind of balanced with CPU monitor gadget at like 33-45% and then within about a minute or so the scale tips and it almost acts like the game created an affinity for CORE 1, with CORE 0 bouncing around at like 13-27% and CORE 1 bounching around at 80-98%. So I am going to look into this tonight to try to determine why the CPU starts out balanced and then tips to an affinity for Core 1 when no affinity was ever set up for this game and the CPU in the OS. But even though the CPU shows this type of activity, the game runs smooth with no stutter and everything is smooth. Surprisingly this laptop the ASUS X401A runs really cool even when gaming. I guess thats the difference between the AMD CPU/GPU systems I am use to and the INTEL CPU/GPU that I have here.
Lastly I was going to install the 240GB SSD to this laptop, but I decided not to void this warranty and instead install the 240GB SSD into my newest gaming desktop instead.
