13.3" Samsung NP900X3C with Ivy Bridge CPU

yes, sorry re-reading my post maybe the question wasn't clear. How do i check to ensure defragging is turned off properly in windows 7 with SSD

 

Look under Computer Management > Services and Applications > Services. Disk Defragmenter should be disabled. If not, you can disable it in properties.

John

 

Hi everyone,
I'm on a x3c running w7. I've noticed that heavier sites like engadget or espn, tend to lag when doing simple functions like scrolling on the machine. Will upgrading the ram help at all in this issue? Do other people notice the lag? Thanks and any help is much appreciated!

 

Nope. It is because they are using Adobe Flash.

Besides, you can't upgrade the RAM even if you wanted to.

 

Anybody got any ideas?!?! It's driving me a bit crazy...!

Thanks

 

1. Turn off all the system sounds.
2. In the volume mixer selectively push the different audio sources to minimum and see if the sound disappears. This should identify where the sound comes from.
2. Mute the speakers which should stop any noise. If it doesn't then there's a hardware problem.

John

 

Guys, I just bought an X3C A05US, I wonder if the crucial m4 msata ssd will fit in the machine:

Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD3 mSATA 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

or similarly here
Amazon.com: Crucial m4 256GB mSATA Solid State Drive CT256M4SSD3: Electronics

 

by the way, the crucial drive is on sale at least today at newegg.com for USD 169.99. just ordered one. now hopefully i can follow the guidelines in the sticky SSD upgrade thread and swap it in successfully...

 

Yes. It will fit.

You can see the mSATA SSD in the internal photo in my NP900X3B review. There's more about the m4 in this review and there's more about doing the upgrade in this thread.

John

 

whats the highest resolution supported on the external hdmi ? 1080p ? or can it go higher ?

 

1080p is the maximum supported by the micro-HDMI interface specification, which Samsung adhered to.

John

 

Is it me or does anyone find the Sandisk SSD extremley slow.

For example opening eclipse takes around 12 seconds on my 4 year pc [Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and Crucial M4 SSD]

Whilst on my laptop it takes around 30 seconds. Seems like quite a bit of a difference even though people are saying the Sandisk SSD is rubbish.

I even think it may even be quicker on a laptop which uses a mechanical hard drive.

Also the cpu should make that much of a difference. Both PC's are running a clean install of Windows 8.

 

Seriously, this laptop is a piece of $hit!!!
Ive had this for two days now..

Touchpad is useless, random clicks, impossible to rightclick using thumb, senstivity issues and now my touchpad freezes and stops responding after a few sec after logging in to windows.
THIS HAPPENS EVERY TIME, ITS AS GOOD AS DEAD. IVE RESTARTED 10 TIMES.
I cant use this laptop to more as it freezes, keyboard is working, but not touchpad

Also, the WIFI is a joke. Im so pissed off.
Its impossible to get above 45mbps even with cable, YES EVEN WITH CABLE.
Im actually getting way better speed wifi than by cable.

I got 70mbps from my ISP and gets 40-45mbps wifi, and 25 max via cable.

My old lenovo t61 with agn4965 easy gets 70mbps wifi.

The ssd is also a joke!!!

You all here seems to have problems, whats happening? How can they make such a crap pc?

 

Are you running the Samsung factory image?

 

I read in the german c't magazine (which is quite reputable) that Disk Defragmenter can be left on. Apparently, Windows recognizes that it is a SSD and does not defragment, buy when Disk Defragmenter is left on, a TRIM function or something is carried out.
I am not sure what is right now.
Any comments?

 

You can always verify this yourself.

1. Open an elevated command console
2. Run fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
3. Verify DisableDeleteNotify = 0 is returned

See Fsutil behavior for a full explanation of the command and result.

Most of the SSD makers also have utils and UI to check the SSD status return codes.

 

Some more comments from my side.
Here is a link to the article I mentioned in c't Magazine (in German).

SSD-Optimierung unter Windows 8 | c't

I says that Windows 7 disables the defragmenting for the SSD. But Windows 8 leaves the Drive Optimization active. When it recognizes a SSD, it does not carry out the defragmenting, but it does TRIM.
But you should check if Windows 8 recognizes the SSD as SDD, and not as a magnetic harddrive. According to the article, if the SSD is not recognized as SSD, it should be recognized after running the Windows Experience Index.

So from this I learn: SSD Defragmenting/Drive Optimization: under Windows 7 Off, under Windows 8 On.

 

Very few people have had any issues with the machine. I suspect you may need a reinstall of windows/drivers. I will agree the wifi signal is not very strong, probably only good enough for casual browsing and not streaming. You should have no problem with the ethernet if that's what you're refering to, I get the typical thoroughput for a gigabit connection. Really am not sure where your speed results are coming from, but if you're actually getting 70mbps from your isp, wow, not that anything requires that much bandwidth. I will agree the sandisk ssd is subpar, but it is always good practice to read a site like this BEFORE purchase. Many users have replaced their ssd with a crucial 256gb msata with good results. As is, it would be appreciated if you tone down your rant, remember no on this forum sold you the unit, but they can be very helpful if you are civil.

 

I had this exact same problem with my X3C. I updated the sound drivers and the problem completely went away. The latest realtek driver is 6.0.1.6699 from 8/7/2012. Samsung's driver download site incorrectly lists the date as April.

 

I'm assuming "by cable" you are referring to the ethernet adapter? If so, there is something wrong with either your X3C, drivers, ethernet adapter, cable or router. Here is the speedtest that I just ran from my X3C with ethernet adapter ...

 

Hey Guys!

I've got this beauty for a week, i love the lightweight design, display is awesome. However i had(have) some issues. The wireless adapter(or its driver) is far from the flawless, occasionally it simply doesn't connect to the saved AP(router), sometimes just disconnects from that. I've replaced the WiFi driver, it's a bit better now.
What about the RAM? I can see in the Task Manager that most of the time 90%+ of RAM is taken by many many applications. I've read about Intellimemory, which loads for ex. the browser into the RAM in order to run that faster. How can i release some memory, becasue i assume the system would be faster if there will be more available RAM?
Last thing is the CPU. The idle is only 800MHz and i think that's the reason why applications response a bit slowly. Can i adjust the idle somwhere?
Mine's got the Sandisk U100 SSD. Starting up and shutting down is amazing, below 10seconds. I haven't read trough the 170+ pages, could you please explain why everybody says that this SSD is crap and should be replaced?
One more thing: how can i update the BIOS? I couldn't find any app for this.

Thanks: Kirby

Edit: Ok, i've just found on page 161 a discussion about Intellimemory. I removed it, now the free RAM is 2.5GB instead of 4-500MB. Cool.

 

FYI, for those of you like me, who want more than 256GB.

Mushkin shipping 'world's first' 480GB mSATA SSD in January for $500

 

You could leave the CPU in maximum performance power profile but you might find no noticeable improvement while heat and fan noise increase. However, you may find that now you have shown Intellimemory the door then other programs load faster.

See my review of the Crucial m4 mSATA for a comparison with the U100. Basically, the U100 has a decent read speed but chokes as soon as reads and writes start to queue up. You may have encountered this while Intellimemory was running and you tried to load another program - RAM probably needed to be dumped to virtual memory on the SSD.

See the first post in this thread for my recommended method for updating the BIOS.

John

 

John, thank you for your comment, i guess i'll get a Crucial m4 mSATA drive soon... The results you measured are more than convincing.
I've found Samsung's BIOS updater app, but there's the latest BIOS on my X3C now.
You're absolutely right about CPU speed(heat and noise). Basically everything goes fine and smoothly, i played today an HD(1080p) film without stalling, it is weird, i was watching the CPU speed during the movie and it didn't go up from 800MHz.

 

Note that the updater program is dated April 2012. Run it and it will check your current BIOS against the latest available (you might have figured that out, but it has confused some people).

Normal DVDs use H.264 encoding for which the decoder is built into the Intel GPU.

John

 

Thx, i did that and those were the same release. I have figured that out :0)

 

Hi there a few questions on the 900X3B now running W8 after all the necessary updates:

1. Where is the light sensor physically located for adjusted both the screen and keyboard backlighting?
2. How can I disable automatic adjustment of the screen brightness, it goes up and down out of sync with actual changes in light conditions so is quite annoying
3. My 2 finger scroll is highly sensitive in some applications, particularly outlook... how can the sensitivity be adjusted?

I've looked in all the options I can think of and can't work out how to do any of the above, I have the latest utilities and drivers via the SW update... so looking for help!

Many thanks!

 

1. To the left of the "New SERIES 9" Logo on the top left of the keyboard.
2. Under the advanced settings of the power options menu.
3. Control panel/touchpad/advanced settings.

 

The keyboard backlight sensor cannot be disabled, correct?

 

I believe turning off the adaptive brightness renders it useless...

 

Not on my NP900X3D.

It's rarely a problem. I do however have one setting where it would be beneficial to have more discrete control. The cube I am referring to is rather dark so I have a lamp. The lamp is on the left side of the cube so the sensor thinks the rest of the environment is bright. I would like to turn off the sensor while using that cube.

I can always put a piece of masking tape over the hole or something, but I'd rather have software control.

 

Have any of you tried the latest ELAN driver 14.1.3:
ELANTECH Drivers

I have had an annoying issue on two of these notebooks (A02US & A04US). It behaved as if the one-finger drag and drop was enabled despite being turned off everywhere I could find. The symptoms were very erratic. Simple tasks like single tapping a tab in a browser would result in the tab staying selected and thus dragging the tab when I went to move elsewhere. Same behavior for icons in taskbar, tapping icons on desktop, etc. Only work-around I had was to disable the tapping functionality and live with the click - which was pretty annoying given how loud the clicks are. I should say this was not a stock image but I did have the latest touchpad driver from Samsung's SW update utility.

In any case, this new driver seems to have finally resolved that issue for me and I am back to touch. I have only been using it a couple days but so far I have not had that issue occur once. Fingers crossed.

 

Hey Guys!

I've experienced a strange phenomenon today. Three or four times when i opened the top of X3C and woke it up, after a few seconds i've got a blue screen with the following text at the bottom:
"Kernel stack locked at exit"
After the W8 have restarted everything went fine. I googled this message and every article says it is probably caused by one of the devices or its driver.

Has anybody run into the same recently?

Thanks:

Kirby



Edit: ok, i've figured it out why this happening. I sent my XC3 to sleep mode while a pdf was opened from my Google Drive storage. When i woke it up, the blue screen and then restart has always happened. After i saved the pdf to the SSD the issue has disappeared.

 

Not exact. I've tried the HDMI on Dell 2408WP, which has native resolution of 1920X1200 and it works just fine. The problem is when I plug into my newly purchased Dell U2711, the max resolution becomes 1080.

 

Over the past week I've also been suddenly having quite a few Wifi problems. Even though I have full signal strength websites are either not loading first time and I have to repeatedly refresh the site for it to load fully.

I've not made any changes to drivers, settings or the router, can anyone help please? It's really frustrating and it happening even right beside the router.

I'm using Windows 8 and have the latest October 2012 drivers.

 

Thanks, I've been having same issue.

However after installed these driver I no longer have 2 finger click (use it for middle all the time). Am I missing something or is the feature removed?

 

No, I noticed the same, no two-finger click. So I reverted back to my previous drivers.

Per

 

I've always liked the Series 9, but I was wondering if it is the wrong time to jump in the current Ivy Bridge model since Windows 8 has been released? I've been using the Zenbook Prime, and while I feel like the Samsung is probably better overall, I can't really justify the price difference and getting into it right now. Maybe a touchscreen model will follow???

 

Something is probably coming with the way Amazon has been discounting these lately.

 

New models will likely be on full display after Christmas at CES in January.

 

Hello,

unfortuantely this issue still hasn't disappeared. Sometimes when i open the lid and the system wakes up, there are a BSOD with one of these two messages:

1., "Kernel stack locked at exit"
2., "Reference by pointer"

What it could be?

Thx!

 

Depends on whether you want/need a touchscreen. Frankly, it seems like a gimmick to me on a laptop. If I didn't have an S9 and was able to snag a $699 one from the MS store, I most certainly would. We are a long way from haswell, so no reason to hold off for performance reasons.

 

hey everyone. i've posted here few months ago about a fan issue i'm having. also sent my 900x3c to samsung but it came back unchanged (saying they replaced the mainboard).

here is a quick video of the odd fan behaviour (turn up the volume a little bit!):
Fan problem - YouTube

- laptop is sitting on a flat and even table
- when fan is in lowest speed mode, it starts going on and off in 1 second intervals as shown in the video
- also just one of the two fans are running at this time, 2nd fan only kicks in while under high load

i've made sure that:
- fans are not covered in any way
- cleaned out every bit of dust i could find
- updated to latest bios P05AAC fews days ago

it really gets annoying while working in a quiet environment and the fan is going on and off all the time, hope that's a thing i can get resolved.

does your laptop have the same issue?

thanks in advance,
mrlocus

 

Hey all

I am planning to remove the Samsung Recovery partiton to get a bit more space on my SSD; the only thing is, I saw someone suggest that if I do this I won't be able to reinstall Windows 7 if I need to (I don't own another copy). I also really like the Fast Boot and Battery Saver features and don't want to lose them either.

Could someone who has removed the partition comment? Can you still use Battery Saver etc? Would a reinstall using only the disk Samsung provides be possible?

Haven't noticed this. I'll keep an eye out though.

 

Ideally, you should use a program such as Acronis True Image to make a full image of the SSD before deleting the recovery partition onto an external HDD. Then you can restore the whole of that image to get your computer back to the current condition (Acronis can create a bootable flash drive to help with this process). If you can't do that then you can use Samsung Recovery Solution to make a backup of driver / software and, possibly, a Windows disc (I don't know for sure since my computer came with a Windows disc). Alternatively, see this thread (and download a copy of the Windows 7 ISO before zapping your recovery partition). The disadvantage of the generic Windows disc is that you will have to activate it.

John

 

I've removed all partitions, and made a nice 'n clean install of windows 8 using an usb flash drive. Install the "Easy Software Manager" for Windows 7 or "SW Update" for Windows 8 available from the Samsung websites and it'll allow you to download and install all drivers/software which came with your laptop by default.

http://orcaservice.samsungmobile.com/SWUpdate.aspx

Did this with windows 7 before too, and everything worked including fast start etc.

 

I did this, too. Used the Samsung Recovery tools (there's a keyboard shortcut for that during boot, maybe F10 or maybe F4?) to backup the contents of the recovery drive to an external then also to export an image of the Windows 7. Reinstalled, installed Intel RST (following John Ratsey's guide) and the basic set of drivers from the Samsung site (e.g. Wi-Fi, touchpad, etc.). You can ease-up the procedure by downloading the Samsung SW Update which checks for the correct downloads and presents them to you to choose which ones you want to install (it used to be called Samsung Easy Software Manager).

Oh, you might need to press CTRL-ALT-F10 when the tools are loaded to access the backup options (the password is secos or secclx according to this thread).

Recovery Partition rebuild with F4 key enable - Page 11

Now, when you do the backup using these recovery tools, it can be used again via the same tools, so if you ever wanted to put it back, you'll need to make a bootable USB stick and put the Samsung Recovery Tools (or whatever the exact name is) on it so you can execute it and import the image.

 

I use it at 1920x1200, so it does work at least slightly higher than 1080p.

 

Actually I think if this laptop could flip its screen all the way around and have a touch screen, it would be absolutely perfect. I hope Samsung will do that in the next version while keeping everything else the same.

With these two features you basically don't need an iPad, it would make a great occasional reading device.

 

Eh, if you want a yoga, get a yoga. Touchscreens add weight and depth, neither of which I want to see tarnish the S9's functional good looks. Not to mention having a keyboard on the underside of your 3lb "tablet" is not desirable for me. I know the yoga has some kludge skin to cover it, no thanks. The only laptop/tablet hyprid I would consider is the surface, but I'll probably pick up a 7" W8 tablet when they come around instead. If samsung does add a touch screen, they will have to beef up that hinge for sure.