13.3" Samsung NP900X3C with Ivy Bridge CPU

Upgraded my msata ssd with a samsung 840 evo 1 tb version. Reinstalled windows and cant seem to find a touchpad settings.
There is a slight delay after selecting things.
I remember vaguely that there was a setting in touchpad settings and it was gone in windows 8.1 driver. There was a way of getting into the "advanced touchpad" settings but cant seem to find that or remember how I did that back then.
Anyone know how to fix this?
I dont want to disable drag&drop entirely, just the delay after the selection.

 

Our accumulated wisdom about the Elan pad is in this thread.

Theere are two different pad control panels in the installation package. Both are stand-alone programs which you can run. I think there's also a registry hack that unlocks more features. You might have used one of those previously but memories fade with time.

I use the Google site-specific search string such as "site: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/13-3-samsung-np900x3c-with-ivy-bridge-cpu.656442/ elan" (which will find all the mentions of "Elan" in this thread.

John

 

Thanks, I just remembered it had to do with the driver download package so was downloading that. I used swupdate for drivers, that why I couldnt find the etd config file.
Thanks!

 

The Elan driver should be downloadable with SW Update, though it may not automatically offer the best version for you, in which case you have to look under other models.

Again, the thread linked by John has most of the info here about Elan touchpads, including discussion of different driver versions. The AB9+ Owners Lounge has also had quite a lot of discussion, particularly in the last 6-9 months.

Once you have the Elan driver installed, ETDAniConf should be available to further tweak the touchpad settings. See the posts here and here for more details of that.

 

I thought I was smarter than everyone and that I would desolder the RAM chips to upgrade them since SMD doesn't scare me too much.

Silly me, they're BGA and I'd be a fool to try to work on that.


I'm posting the pic for your information since I never found it on the internet:

 

Thank you. We knew it was dual channel DDP RAM but I never tried to look under the perforated metal plate.

John

 

You're welcome.

Since I can't upgrade my RAM, what mods (hardware - which SSD? - and software) do you guys advise me to do to gain performance-wise?

I'm still running Windows 7.

 

Samsung EVO 850 msata 250-1000GB plus a fresh install w/ latest drivers if you've accumulated some clutter. W8.1 an option...but no more intel rapid start lid open

 

I would add that a replacement SSD is particularly likely to give a benefit if you have the Sandisk U100 which has particularly poor performance.

John

 

I remember I had installed a 15" driver for the touchpad because it was performing much better than the 13.3" version. Are there other hacks like this one?

Yeah...I'll stay with 7.

Absolutely.


What about a SWAP partition? Is it better to deactivate it altogether?

 

The touchpad and settings programs are largely interchangable between the Samsung models and some are certainly better than others. Dannenmand has a pretty comprehensive list here. You want to avoid some of the bloated drivers Samsung provides, wifi/bluetooth/graphics should all be pulled from Intel.

I don't usually disable the page file as Windows doesn't like it (BSOD). But I set the starting value as low as it will go (200MB on 4GB). Or you could use a larger page if you have a lot of RAM intensive programs (or chrome tabs). People used to worry that paging would reduce a SSD's longevity, but nowadays you have to write petabytes so it's not a concern.

 

Hum...I was planning on cloning my current drive and running the recovery rather than installing a Windows 7 (which I don't have) from a USB stick.

Is it going to be an issue (provided I uninstall Samsung bloatwares afterwards)?

 

I have almost always gone the cloning route (you will need an mSATa- USB 3.0 adapter). You will most likely break the F4 for Samsung Recovery Solution but that won't work with a clean install either unless you jump through the hoops to create the recovery partition. Intel Rapid Start (if you use it) should work with a cloned drive - it can be a fiddle to get it working with a clean install.

However, I'm not neurotic about having a clean Windows installation - I just uninstall the obvious bloatware.

John

 

No that should be fine, if you just want to transfer your settings and programs to the new drive. Reinstalls can be a hassle in that regard. If you did want to go that route though, W7 isos can be freely downloaded and your product key can be extracted with a finder if you can't read it from your power adapter. I AM a bit neurotic and always do a clean install .

If you have an external USB hard drive you could use clonezilla to migrate the system, it will retain F4, but not sure that's relevant once your out of warranty. I don't think I would even bother doing a restore from recovery, it would probably take hours to get current on old windows updates which the iso already has.

 

I think BGA guys would be able to do that for you.. Ask around. On thinkpad forums bunch of people got their faulty NVIDIA video cards fixed.

 

Hi all,

I have a NP900x3c and have a problem with the battery and/or charger which I am hoping to receive some guidance on and is described in some detail below:

I recently stepped on the charging cable accidentally while it was plugged in, breaking the angled connector and hence was unable to charge the battery.

Instead of buying a whole new charger, I opted to buy just a replacement connector and soldered this in place of the broken old connector, as this was easy to do and meant I could keep the nice slim original Samsung AC adapter.

However, at this point, I made a foolish error: When I plugged in the newly soldered connector into the laptop, I noticed the charging light on the laptop did not come on and instead the blue light on the AC adapter started flashing. I immediately unplugged it and it dawned on me that I must have inadvertently swapped minus and plus poles when soldering the cables.

After un- and resoldering the right way round, I plugged the cable in again, and everything seemed to work ok, i.e. the AC adapter lit up blue as usual, the charging light on the laptop came on orange and the battery icon in the desktop corner red "plugged in, charging".

However, the laptop isn't actually charging, i.e. the battery percentage is slowly decreasing slowly, even when plugged in!

Obviously, something has broken as a result of my "fix" and I think it is fairly safe to assume it is at least one of the following three components:
- AC adapter
- Battery
- Power connector inside laptop
- Charging electronics inside laptop

I have not yet replaced any of the above but have made some multimeter tests, based on which hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction:

- No-load voltage at the plug connector is 19V, as it should be. (measured at the newly soldered connector when it is not plugged into the laptop)
- Load voltage is also 19V, as it should be. (measured at the soldering points, when cable is plugged into laptop and battery icon reads "plugged in, charging".
- However, there seems to be no current flowing to the laptop, as the ampere reading when plugged in is actually zero! (measured after unsoldering the plus cable and multimeter acting as "bridge" for current. The battery is at about 50% and the charging light and message "plugged in, charging" is on when this measurement was taken). This also suggest the load voltage reading above of 19V isn't really under any load...

Also, the laptop does not turn on with the battery removed, but I am unsure if this model is designed to be able to do this or whether this is a fault. If the former is true, this would point to a faulty charger and/or something inside the laptop.

In a nutshell, I am unsure if the zero ampere reading (instead of the expected 2-2.1A) suggests a faulty charger or faulty charging electronics (i.e. the charger not being able to "send" power vs the laptop not being able to "receive" power)? Also, I am unsure if the fact that the battery still seems to power the laptop ok (while not being able to be charged) suggests the battery is ok or is charging a separate "function" from discharging?

Any suggestions / clues / prior experiences on the above would be greatly appreciated in advance of me deciding which components to replace and in what order. Also, any information on how to replace the fuse of the reverse polarity protection in the NP900x3c would be much appreciated...

Many thanks in advance and thanks for reading!
Matt

 

If you had the polarity reversed then you have probably killed a component in the power circuit in the computer. It's probably a 10 cent part but you will probably need a good electronics specialist to find the dead part and replace it.

Many electronics manufacturers don't bother with reverse polarity protection even though the cost would be minimal.

John

 

Hm ok, thanks John.

So you don't think any of the symptoms above point to a faulty battery or a faulty charger but squarely to a faulty component inside the laptop?

Also, perhaps any views on whether the NP900X3C should run with the battery removed?

 

There are three possible reasons why the computer doesn't work without the battery: (i) it's designed to not run if the battery isn't connected; (ii) the PSU has a problem; or (iii) there is a dead component in the power circuit in the computer.

I can't improve on my previous diagnosis that, if the input power polarity was reversed, then a component has died. Killed, rather than faulty, but the result is the same. That the notebook runs on battery power shows that most of the electronics are OK. The problem lies between the power socket and whatever chip decides whether to charge the battery.

John

 

John, after some further testing (incl. swapping PSU, battery and power connector with another np900x3c laptop) I can confirm you are right, i.e. a power related component on the motherboard must have died.

Now I have a few questions with regards to fixing this:

1. Is there a resource available where I can identify any fuses on the motherboard which may have blown, e.g. a service manual identifying all motherboard components?

2. Can anyone guide me with/to experience of replacing motherboards on this (or similar) laptops?

3. If I do replace the motherboard, would anything prohibit me from swapping it for one from the np900x3e model which has a higher performing CPU soldered onto it while keeping the same dimensions?

Many thanks in advance for any info!

Matt

 

Thanks for the update.

You can get the Service Manual from SamsungParts.com. However, while this should give you all the information needed to replace the mainboard, it is unlikely to give detailed info about the layout of the components on the board. Tracking down the dead component is likely to involve trying to follow the tracks on the board and closely examining / testing individual components. There must be people who do this for a living (see here for example).

I don't recall anyone putting the X3E board into the X3C but do remember that someone who put an X3E FHD display into an X3C discovered that the display resolution was hard-coded into the BIOS. They did succeed in fixing this problem which you could well also encounter. I doubt if the increase in the CPU speed would be sufficient to be noticeable. If you have the Sandisk U100 SSD then replacing that with something newer and of higher capacity is likely to give a noticeable difference (but don't think about this until you have got the computer working). The NP900X3B mainboard might also fit and wouldn't have the potential display resolution problem.

John

 

I am pretty sure the boards are different between my X3B and X3G (one model older and newer than your proposed switch). The fans are in different locations if I remember correct.

 

My 850 EVO was feeling pretty lonely on the shelf but I finally received my mSATA to USB3 adapter

I didn't think that was possible with OEM licences. As a matter of fact, they won't let me download it from here because it was provided by Samsung.


The cloning procedure is tougher than I expected. Since I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to do a clean install, I wondered what would cause me the less hassle:

• Clone the Samsung Recovery partition (how!?) and reinstall from it;
• build a fresh Win 7 install with a clean iso (but where should I download it from and will my product key work?).

EDIT: I'm running samsung recovery solution 5 and my 850 Evo is in the laptop! It seems Samsung's migration tool was able to copy the recovery partition and keep the link with the F4 key. If it actually works, I guess I'll just remove the bloatwares, update Easysettings etc. rather than doing a fresh Win7 install....

 

You're right, unfortunately digitalriver is dead in favor of this Software Recovery non-solution solution for OEM users. So it's difficult to obtain a W7 iso if you lost the disc that came with the laptop. If you did have the same version from another computer, you should be able to install with your key.

If you can get the clone to work you might just tough it out for a few months and grab a free W10 upgrade to do a clean install. Unless of course you use WMC.

 

Probably. I know for sure that the motherboard of a 900x3c/d is different from 900x3f/g. They use the same connectors and fastening holes. You could possible swap the motherbard together with the usb2/audio/mini hdmi/card reader print. That could work.

However I do not know if there is a diff from 900x3c/d to 900x3e.

 

The Fan of my NP900X3C is very noisy (it rattles) as well, except when I use the silent mode ([Fn] + [F11]).
I made sure the screws were secured but it seems it's coming from the fan itself.

Do you have any advice about sourcing the spare part?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/CPU-...est=201526_5,201527_3_71_72_73_74_75,201409_4

 

That's an X3A fan.

Did you work out which fan in your X3C is noisy - there are two?

Samsungparts.com lists a fan with part number BA31-00122A but doesn't indicate if it is left or right. However, you will see that it's the same fan for all the NP900X3B up to X3K which should help in your searching.

John

 

Thanks.

The noisy fan is the right one - the one that runs the most.

I guess the fan model is KDB0505HA wile the whole assembly housing is BA31-00122A with the left one being BA31-0012 1A.


I wonder if I could take it apart without damaging it - probably not the smartest idea, mind you.

 

That right fan part number looks correct based on the low quality photo here assuming that the right is when the computer is upside down.

I think that the disassembly of the cooling system is quite easy. You need a good Philips size 0 screwdriver for the screws fixing the bottom of the computer and either a size 0 or a size 1 for the other screws. Use the battery disconnect switch before doing any work inside to eliminate the risk of a metal tool shorting out the electronics.

John

 

By right, I ment right when you're facing the deployed screen.
It can be right when upside down depending on how you turn it over.


Here is a clearer picture if someone needs some day:



You recognize the RAM cover on the bottom of the pic.

 

That's a good photo. It's just possible to read the Samsung part numbers.

If you can find a supplier with a sensible price, I would be inclined to replace both fans to avoid the possible situation of the one that is currently OK starting to give problems in a year or so.

John