Strange issues with CMD and File Explore (solved!)

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My ASUS T100TA is showing its age but runs Windows 10 Home 32-bit 2004 OK until recently.  I found I couldn’t run an elevated Command Prompt (or Powershell) and File Explorer just said ‘Working on it’ forever and did not display and files or folders. After a couple of days, I decided to do a clean install.  This made things worse!  The touchscreen and audio stopped working.  I always have to install drivers from the ASUS site to get the audio and hotkeys working.  Some drivers are for Win 8.1 but worked fine.  But this time not.  I also found I could not add a standard user.  The Microsoft Account window stayed black.  In despair, I tried installing Win 8.1 but had the same issues.  I tried to install Lubuntu but my laptop would not boot from the USB stick.  So I did about my fourth clean install of Win 10.  This time I did not add any ASUS drivers.  In Device Manager, I saw at least ten ‘unknown devices’ under ‘Other Devices’.  This prompted me to look for drivers in Windows Update.  Lo and behold, there were many Intel, ASUS and other Drivers offered.  I checked them all and installed them.  Now everything is working again.  some drivers failed the first time but installed on my second attempt.  All ‘unknown devices’ have gone from Device Manager.  19 drivers were installed!

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Persistance paid off, good you got it sorted albeit time consuming.
Looking like oem device drivers are becoming a thing of the past on 10, in favor of the control regimes ‘in the name of security’ forecast for WaaS.(MS driver signing compliance)
OEM device drivers were the safest way to go on previous versions, it seems that’s changed with 10 henceforth.

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WSmross

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I still can’t add users even those who already have a Microsoft Account.

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FWIW, I’ve done several clean installs of various Windows 10 versions on old laptops and it’s always done a decent job providing drivers.  I’ve never needed any original drivers.  One clean install was to an HP desktop and it worked well also.  I really can’t remember what version of Win 10 I used for the first clean install to old hardware, but the most recent time was about a year ago, maybe a little less.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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