I no longer have it installed. When I press the power button, there was no response: no ASUI window, no regular menu. I had no menus or even any apps running.

When turned off and the charger plugged in, at least twice it seemed to get to the point where the screen goes all white but no progress beyond that; at least once, it got to the point of ASUI's charging screen. Because of the latter, I assume the service was running. It could be that the CPU-hogging behavior you described earlier was responsible for not progressing beyond the white screen, and I just didn't wait long enough.