Was able to fix it: first I grabbed the EC.LMF HP file that someone was kind enough to host (google it), then I removed express cachce with “ECWin10Cleanup” from asus, THEN I installed the 64 bit lenovo expresscache (1.3.118), finally, before rebooting I renamed the ec.lmf file there ec.lmf.bad and copied the hp EC.lmf file into the directory.
Upon reboot I now have a functioning SSD cache (a few hours later, 5 gigs of the cache is used )
WOOT says I. Woot.