At first glance, it seems that there is no problem with your computer. The problem is how you installed the version you chose. You just did it like you were used to do and didn't consider that you now have a modern system where you can no longer use ancient/stone age ingrained methods. Updating your knowledge and skills is what you need to do. And this until the end of the life, every day, every hour, every minute and every second.
I would not be surprised if the seller didn't accept your rma because you did this yourself. And no not all drivers are onboard on the ISOs specially for specific modern and very new hardware.
"like I was used to do" was 3-4 years ago, when I still used an optical disc drive to install a customized Win7 install disc on my desktop PC. Since 2020, I exclusively use USB flash drives when installing either Win7 or Win11 So, tell me: WHAT do You consider "ancient" or "stone age", when someone uses the latest Rufus + a very up-to-date installation image of Win11 and "burns" it onto a USB flash drive What would be the "modern" method, then? I *do* expect Win11 to come at least with basic/generic drivers in order to ensure at least rudimentary out-of-the-box support for touchpad, display, audio and network connection - and I also mentioned, that the ASUS employee (whom I described the problem en detail) was also surprised about the defunct touchpad during W11 setup screen... AZ
I downloaded all available ASUS drivers for my specific device already beforehand (before re-installing W11) I *could* have integrated the "missing" drivers using DISM and other MS deployment tools (yes, I have multiple experiences with them), but I did not because I was expecting W11 to come with the minimum required drivers out-of-the-box BECAUSE up until now, this was always the case when (re-)installing W10/11 - in fact, as I've already stated in my OP, this is the very first time I'm confronted with such a situation; up until now, there was never a defunct essential component (like a touchpad) on ANY mobile device when I installed W10 or W11 AZ
Then why did you ran in all those problems? (rhetorical question). ps, whatever deployment tool you use it will use dism to integrate the drivers. Good luck with the laptop
Modern (and way faster method) method is deploying the image, with a tool like winntsetup.exe or dism from the command line Way more modern method id doing the above in a native vhdx 1990s setup in 2023 is good for in place upgrades, and people stuck with the past methods Speaking of drivers, Win11 comes with a way smaller selection of drivers than we were used to. To keep the install media (and the installed system) smaller. Windows update takes care of most of the missing drivers, you need to give it enough time online to figure out what's needed and to download and install them. Aside that, the lesson here is NEVER FORMAT!!! Do in place upgrades, and if you need a fresh install just install in parallel on a native vhd or a different partition. No data loss risk, the old system will not be destroyed so all the drivers can be taken form it in a couple of minutes, and the old OS will be there if something goes wrong with the fresh installation. There is always time to delete it when you're sure that the new OS is 100% fully functional, and all your old data are moved to the right place.
In my experience, using latest rufus on laptops with full UEFI & disabled CMS is not so good. Just use the native fat32 flash drive method using this tool: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...-install-esd-install-swm-creation-tool.78925/ As for drivers, there will always be cases where windows ISO/setup will be missing some basic drivers on certain laptop models.
If you only want to change the Windows edition, just modify the activation key (of cause you have to activate after obtaining the new edition). I followed this procedure with an Asus vivibook 14. After setup i created a local account and deleted the MSA, activated with MAS and run KMS_VL_ALL to activate MS Office. I used the same method for a Samsung note book.
Never use such crap. They make almost impossible to migrate an installed OS if you need to upgrade to an AMD machine or downgrade to an older Intel one. Standard NVME (or AHCI) drivers is all you need.