Help Please NP-R519 black screen

Hello all, I have a small problem with this laptop my son has,

Samsung NP-R519
Win 7 32bit
1Gb ram (I know)
160Gb HD

The laptop does not boot, black screen.
I have so far

Power on, pre test powers ok, Bois loads, just at the point of the hard disk spining in and data reading into ram it stops ,the output right there, black screen, on but black and will not boot.

Ive tried the recovery, no go . . same!
downloaded a win7 recovery ISO . . . Same! logs state Hard disk and RAM ok.
Done a check and recover to the boot up , . . same!

All the checks are saying ok, hard disk, ram, bios but for some reason it doesn't seem to recognise the drive as a boot drive. When I ran the win7 recovery there was one screen when it selected the available systems residing on the hard disk, it recognised the Win 7 installation. Even repaired it (or tried). I've even done another DVD backup of the system (latest)
But the damn thing will not boot?

I thought perhaps there is a BIOS update and yes there is, Im running 08CI and there is a 09CI but when I download it it's only available for a working windows PC so I cannot install it.

Can someone give me a little advice here please,.

thanks for reading otherwise,

Phil

 

Have you tried safe mode? I've seen bad drivers cause that. Your OS could also be bad.

 

Cannot get to Safe Mode, it completes BIOS then . . . . . nowt!

 

You spammed F8 during POST?

You may just need an OS reinstall, back up your data and if your recovery partition is in tact hit Ctrl + F11 during post to start recovery. If that doesn't fix it, if it's still under warranty might have to ship it to ASUS..

 

OK Surrender! This thing has me beaten!

If someone has some ideas can they throw them into this problem as I have tried all efforts to breathe life into this brand new machine.

My son had this from a shop which is now gone! As it resided at his Moms house they never (even though I told em) backed up the Win 7 OS!

However I dont think that is the problem here, I can access the HD.

As this Laptop has had scrappy start in life I was intending to stick XP on it and throw the cards in with Win7 (or as I like to call it 'The Cullendar' on account of the fact the OS leaks information to just about every Oligarth on the planet).

But now Im experiencing the same phenominan(?SP) on the XP boot disk? I have nLite and I have slipstreamed ALL the drivers from Samsung for the lappy and burned a disk but its restarting when I use it. I assume it maybe because the Controller for the HD is wrong but there is no driver. Ive taken out the HD to find the Model Number :Samsung HM160HI but I cannot find anything else, driver, forum, write-up, nothing!

This Laptop is showing signs of a BIOS problem I think but I'm having real problems getting this thing to boot from anything so I can flash the BIOS. I included a copy of the BIOS to flash AND a copy of Samsungs Hard Disk Checker so I could use them if the XP disk booted!

The Machine is 64 bit, would this require some special boot arrangement I'm not aware of? I assumed that it would not matter for Legacy reasons!

Anyone with any suggestions would be welcome, I need someone to brainstorm this with someone as Im stagnating over it now.?

thanks for reading,

Phil

 

First off, when you're trouble shooting don't use nlite.

Second, does a live CD/USB Ubuntu install give you problems?

If it does, then the notebook needs to be returned or sold for one with more stable hardware.

Can you try a different RAM module in it? How about a new HDD? If you have two RAM modules, have you tried each stick separately (and tried them in each slot - assuming you have two RAM slots)?

If exchanging the RAM and/or HDD shows the same problems, then the motherboard or gpu has a glitch which you won't be able to fix (unless you can replace them).

If the simple steps above (RAM, HDD) don't solve your issues (and stop using nlite during troubleshooting...), simply get rid of this unit - too much trouble to troubleshoot otherwise for a problem you most likely will not be able to fix without replacing the M/B or gpu.

Good luck.

 

I used Nlite because I needed to build the drivers into the XP install disc.

Don't these computers need the controller driver for the HD on the CD?

I have not tried Ubuntu yet, so perhaps if you feel this is the route to go!

The reason I think its BIOS is there is a new BIOS for it. The samsung site gives no reasons for the upgrade that I can find.

The proceedure for the boot is

ON > BIOS loads with F2 for BIOS options and F4 for system recovery(will not recover with this method)
If you press nothing then the system would load at this point alas all I get is Black Screen
If I press F8 I do get all the choices however none of them will assist if the system is not runnning into memory!
Ive checked the memory with a memory checker and its stating that its finished checking and all is ok .

Can anyone suggest an UPDATED boot CD so I can get to run the BIOS UPDATE exec - I will do the Ubuntu but if I can get the Bios updated I would be happier -

 

i guess not

 

Did you even try the live Ubuntu method yet?

That will at least let you know if the hardware is stable (I would not attempt to update the BIOS on a known unstable build/system).

Good luck.