15" Series 9 NP900X4D discussion

I would add that slightly sticky keys on these notebooks can often be fixed by running the blade of a very small screwdriver around the gap between the problem keys and the holes the keys sit in. The clearance between keys and holes is quite small and any muck can make the keys reluctant to spring up.

John

 

How can I update the Intel HD Graphics 4000 driver ? SW Update gives me only v. 9.17.10.2963 but Intel offers v. 15.33.30.64.3958. If I run the Intel driver installer I get a message that I should use the computer manufacturer version. I tried to do a driver update from Device Manager but it didn't find a suitable version from the Intel installer files.

Is there a newer version in SW Update for some specific laptop model?

edit: solved by googling

Turns out, I wasn't doing the right trick with Device Manager update: http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558749190911446231/
Update Driver... > Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer > Have Disk... > [extracted driver folder]/Graphics/cigdlh64.inf > Next, Done!

 

Hi guys!

I think I want to upgrade my SSD on my X4D. I currently have a SAMSUNG MZMPC128HBFU-000 drive.. I want to upgrade it to a Samsung EVO 840 or something like that (mSATA). Is it much of a difference in speed? I have also upgraded my ram to 8 gb - dual channel (low voltage).

 

You should see some improvement in performance and can compare the information here with your current SSD. A 128GB SSD might well be short of space and can't undertake its garbage management properly which would further impair its performance.

John

 

Also a heat request here.

My notebook gets noticeably hot between the "samsung" logo and the keyboard. When touching it I can barely endure it with my finger.

I noticed that also one fan is running. is this normal?

 

There is only one fan in the X4C / X4D. Is it getting noticeably noisy when the computer is hot? The hot area you mention is where the fan blows the air through the grille on the heat pipe.

Is the heat occurring all the time or only when the computer is under heavy use. You should check the CPU utilisation (in Task Manager), speed (using HWiNFO), and the temperature (using HWiNFO).

John

 

Hi all,

I not-so-recently saw my X4D RAM go from 16 to 8GB. I had 8GB installed when i bought the laptop, then bought another 8GB and installed it. That worked for a while as 16GB in dual-channel, and then here i am with only 8GB recognized, and of course single channel.

I think i remember reading about someone with the same issue blaming it on a bios update, after which recognition of a second RAM board not identical to the first was became less likely to happen. Do you guys know anything about this, and/or about how to get my dual-channel back without buying new memory?

 

The BIOS update that caused these notebooks to be very fussy about RAM was released a long time ago.

We never managed to figure out a rational explanation and criteria for what RAM will work and what won't. I would suggest that your first figure out which module is working (CPU-z will tell you) and then test the other one in another notebook in case the module itself has died.

John

 

Wow, that predates me buying the laptop. It was definitely working for several months, and i did all the updates SW update was recommanding, so it definitely doesn't look like the bios issue could explain that. I'll have to look into that later then. It's really not a big deal in the end, the only thing i'm missing is the dual channel mode, and all that does for my use is marginally improve the fps in a very few games.

Thanks John! Very helpful as always. Since we're here, there's another question i wanted to ask for a long time. You published two ssd hard drives reviews based on this laptop, and since i'm still stuck with the smaller and slower U100, it is very tempting to go down that road. One step i'm afraid of and you juts casually mention in these reviews is the cloning of the old onto the new hard drive. Is it really as simple as you imply there? Just sit and wait?

Also, you mention using a device to -i guess- connect an mSata drive through a usb port, and do the cloning that way. I don't have one, and I only have my one laptop, I was thinking of going this way: make a bootable usb stick A, then clone old SSD onto a partition on an external usb hard drive B. Turn everything off, open the computer and swap the SSD's, boot from A and from there clone the image on B onto the new SSD. Is this scenario doable/risky/ridiculous in your opinion?

 

I think this can be done with Samsung recovery. I KNOW it can be done with clonezilla (by saving/recovering the full disk image).

 

SRS 6 with the Windows 8 notebooks has the cloning capability. I'm not sure about SRS 5.

I've usually used Acronis directly cloning onto the new mSATA SSD in an mSATA-USB adapter. This breaks the F4-recovery link on the new SSD but I then delete the recovery partition (Minitool Partition Wizard is recommended) in the knowledge that I've still got the original SSD which can be cloned again if Windows falls over.

Some SSD manufacturers provide a free cloning software (eg Samsung's data migration software) which anyone can download but it will only work if it detects the required brand of SSD as the target.

John

 

OK, so doable, but a little bit of research before buying stuff and opening the laptop.

Thank you guys!

 

So can anyone confirm whether 1.35V RAM works with P10ABK yet or not? I've been running 1.35V since I got my np900X4C, and I want to make sure everything is optimal, but without this answer, I've been stuck at P08ABK for a few years now.

 

I have a Samsung NP900X4D laptop with UEFI version P02ABK which detects "Windows Boot Manager" as an only bootable device in "Boot Menu":



I have loaded the UEFI setup defaults and disabled "Fast BIOS Mode", but I'm still not able to boot from any other device, e.g USB or PXE or SD card. I found a similar problem here. I also removed the CMOS battery for few minutes which did reset the UEFI settings, but unfortunately the "Boot Menu" still does not list any other bootable devices. Please let me know if any additional information is needed.
Has anyone seen such behavior? How to fix this?

 

P02ABK is a very out of date BIOS. The most recent is P10ABK. Samsung have produced more than the usual number of BIOS updates for these UEFI-enabled notebooks because of various bugs and vulnerabilities to bricking.

However, the challenge is to load the new BIOS now that you have problems. However, people have been in worse situations and eventually resurrected their notebooks. Perhaps first read this thread then this (the Z5C has a very similar BIOS to your X4D) and finally this.

John

 

Thanks for the reply! I have access to Windows Command Prompt(seems to be part of Windows recovery) where I can access the FAT32 file-system on USB flash drive and execute utilities for x86-64 architecture(executables compiled to 32 bit Windows will fail). Am I correct that as a next step I shuld run sflash64 /patch /cvar which clears the BIOS viariables/settings and if this does not help, then execute sflash64 /n /s /sa /ips /file latest-BIOS-image.rom in order to upgrade the BIOS? If yes, then where could I find the sflash64 utility and image for P10ABK BIOS version? If I select the Firmware download in Samsung support site, then it provides me 2.1MB BIOS update file, which I extracted, but it does not contain the sflash64 nor the ROM file. Looks like this Samsung System BIOS update will download the sflash64 and BIOS image, but as I can't boot into OS in my NP900X4D, then maybe some NP900X4D owner could download the sflash64 and BIOS image files for me and upload those to some file-hosting

 

You want to identify, download and extract the latest BIOS update file for your model, following the exact steps in isosunrise's guide in the roll-back thread. Then copy the extracted contents to a folder on the SSD or a USB stick or memory card -- anything you can access from that Recovery command prompt.

Then use the sflash64 /patch /cvar command to clear the corrupted NVRAM. If there is no sflash64/32 in your extracted BIOS update package, WinFlash should work as well, according to reports. Some BIOS update packages only have afuwinx64, for which we don't yet have a confirmed way to clear the NVRAM.

Once you (hopefully) have been able to do this, I recommend you reset BIOS (F2) to default settings, after which the computer should start behaving normally again, including boot devices.

As John pointed out, you should probably update to a more recent BIOS, particularly if you want to install Win8.x or newer. You can indeed do that from the command line as well (as you indicated) and that in itself will usually clear any NRAM corruption.

@Fitztorious' thread ( here -- the 2nd link in John's post) has the most exhaustive discussion of this problem and its solutions. There is a summary in post #7, but much useful discussion was added after that summary as well.

 

Thank you for all those instructions! As I wasn't able to identify the latest BIOS update file for my NP900X4D-A02EE, I downloaded the one for my current P02ABK BIOS: ITEM_20120927_713_WIN_P02ABK.exe. I extracted the exe file and copied SFlash64 utility to USB flash drive which I used in cmd of Windows recovery. However, the SFlash64 fails with "ERROR 220 - Failed at power status check! Status = 171.":



I tried with both AC adapter connected and with AC adapter not connected. Has anyone seen this before? Maybe I should try with a newer SFlash64 version? I tried to find the latest BIOS update for my model, but the URL in isosunrise post did not work for me. I tried with:

HTML:

http://sbuservice.samsungmobile.com/BUWebServiceProc.asmx/GetContents?platformID=A02&PartNumber=AAAA

 

I wonder if the problem might be that the Windows Recovery environment doesn't have the necessary drivers to support access to the BIOS and NVRAM, and that is why SFlash64 fails. You could try SFlash32 instead, or WinFlash (if that is included).

As for getting the latest BIOS version, your platform ID is ABK (not A02) yielding the following URL:

http://sbuservice.samsungmobile.com/BUWebServiceProc.asmx/GetContents?platformID=ABK&PartNumber=AAAA

This shows you that the latest BIOS update is ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe which can then be downloaded with the following URL:

http://sbuservice.samsungmobile.com/upload/BIOSUpdateItem/ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe

You already know how to extract it, as described by @isosunrise

For others who might see this: All of this downloading and extracting of the BIOS files can be done on any computer. Just be careful NOT to proceed with the actual flashing once you've saved the extracted files.

 

SFlash64 v1.3.25.13-1.2 worked:



Now I'm able to select devices from Boot Menu:



Thanks for all the help! However, if I would like to upgrade the UEFI from P02ABK to P10ABK, then can I do this from this very same Windows Recovery cmd if my BIOS update does not contain the ROM file and contains only the P10ABK.cap file:



Can I run sflash64 /n /s /sa /ips /file P10ABK.cap?

 

Excellent, well done unbricking your Sammy!

If you would be so kind to add a brief post about it in Fitztorious' unbricking thread (the one I linked earlier) that would be great. You can link back to this discussion so you don't have to repeat it all.

As for updating the BIOS, that .CAP file is definitely the actual BIOS file in your case (while it is a .ROM file in others). But I have never done that from the command line myself, so I cannot confirm those command line parameters. The parameters you list are indeed the ones frequently reported here (sometimes working, sometimes not) although some were able to flash with the much simpler SFlash64 /n /exit /file <BIOSfile> (see here).

Those parameters were found by trial and error by users who wanted to roll back their BIOS (which requires some persuasion) whereas you're doing a simple BIOS update.

Have you tried simply running the BIOS update file itself (ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe)? It may not run from that command line environment -- but I would definitely try that first. Alternatively, you can make (or restore) a simple Windows installation OR run WinPE from a USB stick, then run the BIOS update file from there.

But this is all getting quite off topic for this thread. It belongs in either John's BIOS Update thread or isosunrise's BIOS rollback thread or Fitztorious' unbricking thread.

Once again good job with the unbricking!

 

I was not able to run BIOS update executable( ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe) itself as it seems to be a 32 bit program and Command Prompt in my Windows Recovery environment supported only 64 bit executables:



However, I fixed my Windows 10 installation and executed ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe there:




One question- how did you know that my platform ID is ABK and not A02?

 

Yeah, I suspected that Recovery Command Prompt might not be able to run the full updater. Rather than 32 vs 64 bit I think it's a matter of missing Windows APIs. That command prompt is just the bare bones.

But you managed to install Win10 and update through that, so all is good. Once again well done. And thank you for posting about it in @Fitztorious' unbricking thread where I am sure it will help others.

"Platform ID" should really be called "BIOS family" and is usually the last two or three letters of the BIOS name. In your first post you mentioned you had P02ABK: "P02" is the version number and "ABK" is the Platform ID (BIOS family). So "ABK" is what you insert in that URL to get information about the latest BIOS version. Again, @isosunrise covers that in his rollback guide.

 

Hi everyone,

The keyboard on my 900X4D suddenly started acting up after 3 years without a problem. Right now, it basically just has about 1/3 of its keys not responding, at all, while all the others respond just fine. I don't think it's windows related because the same keys are unresponsive in the boot and bios menus, plus right now I'm typing on this same laptop with an external keyboard hooked up. I imagine there could be some sort of setting i somehow triggered (looking online I came up with the potential destroying power of a hidden numlock), but then in my understanding it should affect the external keyboard too...

Something weird is how i got here: one day it all worked normally, the next I wake the laptop up from hibernation mode, and instead of what i describe above, some keys produce (very reliably) 2 characters. Stuff like 'a+' when hitting 'p' just once. About half a dozen keys had a similar behavior. Then after a day or two it went to the situation described above, with keys either working normally or being entirely unresponsive. In between I tried a bunch of random things, like trying to get dust out from under the keys while the laptop was turned off, or switch keyboard layouts from the windows 10 settings - not sure any of this could have any effect.

Any idea of what I could try here? I can't imagine getting a new keyboard in is easy, you basically would have to dismantle the whole thing and i do not trust myself putting it all together as tightly as it needs to be for such a device.

I'm still pretty happy with my 900X4D, especially since there doesn't really seem to be something on the market right now that ticks all the boxes that matter to me (low weight+large 15" screen in a tight form factor+matte and bright for outdoors+not too bad to my taste in any other field). It'd really suck to have to put it aside just because of a keyboard malfunction! plus, I just threw 250£ at it to up RAM and SSD, which probably wont even be usable in another laptop...

Just in case it helps, here are the keys that are not responsive (on a UK layout):
erypfghjkl;\xcvbn,. + the fn, win, space, AltGr, rightClick, enter keys, and the left, up and down arrow.

Oh when I change the layout (to US or azerty or whatever), it's the same physical keys that are unresponsive (ie I can type a z but not a y on a qwerty layout, but after selecting a qwertz layout it's the opposite: I cant produce a z but i can produce a y)

Any help appreciated!

 

The keyboard is wired up in some form of matrix (eg rows + columns but may actually be blocks) so a bad connection affects more than one key. The fix you can try is to reseat the keyboard ribbon cable connector onto the mainboard. Sometimes the contacts oxidise and removal / replacement cleans them up. If that doesn't fix it then the electronics within the keyboard are dying.

The next alternative is a keyboard replacement. There used to be reasonably priced Chinese resellers of the bare keyboard on ebay but they seem to have disappeared. That route involves a but of DIY as you have to cut out the fixings of the keyboard in the keyboard surround and then glue in the replacement keyboard. The alternative is the complete unit (which Samsung call the "Unit Housing Top"). It's expensive but you could get the more reasonably priced Azerty keyboard version and develop some proactice in the removal / replacement of the keycaps.

John

 

Thanks John,

I did the keyboard ribbon reseating, and so far so good. I will get another 6 months usage out of this wonderful machine I think.

 

Thanks John, very helpful as always. There should be some sort of medal for people like you!

No luck for me on the ribbon reseating unfortunately. The connection also seemed perfectly clean to me, no sign of wear or oxidation...
When you mention affordable bare keyboards, how affordable are we talking? Trying to see if it is worth chasing them down vs. the 130£ for the whole top of housing.
(also, is it doable to look for a "for parts" second hand laptop in this respect? You don't see many of them I guess people prefer just keeping old electronics around or throwing them out straight away...)

 

Not long back the replacement X4C keyboards were this price direct from China (don't buy that one as it's for the X3C!). It seems like someone bought the remaining few bare keyboards and is looking to resell for a big profit. Stocks of spare parts for these notebooks are running low. The alternative is to buy a second hand machine, get the keyboard from it and try to sell the other parts.

John

 

I found something on amazon that looks like it would fit the bill. It might be a crappy quality but i dont know that i have a way to check that before hand...

 

That looks to be a genuine bare keyboard (it has a Samsung part number) at a similar price that the UK bare keyboards used to be available. The German keyboard layout is compatible with the UK layout although you would need to change some of the key caps (practice on the dead keyboard to see how they clip together).

These bare keyboards are the part supplied to Samsung to then be bonded into the keyboard surround / palmrest unit according to the country model. Debonding the old keyboard and glueing in a new keyboard isn't easy but it has been done.

John

 

Well that's good to hear - the genuine-ness of it, the DUI part is less appealing but heh.
They have something like 35 different layouts available from that same seller there, i just happen to have bought the laptop in Germany so i'd rather stick to qwertz - they do have the UK layout as well and they do look like they have the exact same frame.

Just to make sure: that part has keys on it right? Or am i going to have to re-use the old keys and clip them out one at a time?

 

If it didn't have keycaps (I agree that a photo of that side of the keyboard would be useful addition to the listing) then it would be a universal European layout as all European keyboards have the same physical layout. As the title says German then I would expect it to have a set of German keycaps.

John

 

Hi all,

Thanks to your encouraging comments, I finally decided to buy a replacement keyboard and go through the trouble of swapping them. It was easy enough, but took a loooong time - in not a small part because i was worried about damaging something. Here are a few pictures I took along the way, if it helps anyone:


Battery out...

circuit boards out, ready to peel off that black stuff...


which is not difficult, just go at it slowly to avoid ripping it apart. It didn't really come of very neatly and i just trashed all the stuff stuck to the old keyboard along with it. I kept the sheets I peeled off and put them back in place onto the new keyboard though.
Under the black sheets, there are screws. Some of them needed scratching through what didn't come off...
A LOT of tiny screws needed to be taken off. They require a Philips (cross) screwdriver, but a smaller one than all the other screws used on the computer. That was a bad surprise. I used the same srewdriver anyway, and it worked, but it made this part much more annoying that it had to be. I definitely recommend you get a very small screwdriver before starting this (no clue what size to buy though, sorry... it must be just one below whatever is used to get the base plate off)


So that's that. Took me a solid 3-4 hours overall, although I really took my time on this one. If I had to do it again, with the right tools, it'd be more like an hour job, and someone more handy would do it in 20-30 minutes I guess.

It works well, and it is taking getting used to not to have to grab that bluetooth keyboard anymore! Many thanks to you guys, and John especially as always.

I have one issue though, next post...

 

So one bad surprise was that, after reassembling everything, the computer wouldn't start. But then I plugged the PSU in and it started just fine. The battery said 80%, which is where I had left it, and I thought it was all good. Until I unplugged to take the computer to the couch - turned off.

So it can read the battery charge (and it seems like it can charge it as Samsung's battery life extender setting got turned off and I now read 81%), but it won't draw power off of it. It is the first time i disconnect the battery on this laptop, so I'm not sure whether this is normal behavior or not. Did I mess up the connection, and should I just reopen, unplug and replug that cable in? Or does the battery need some sort of reset after having been taken off line?

 

If the battery is an internal permanent one, that would be my 1st suggestion. It could be the battery too though is fully drained. If so you may need with the laptop off to let the system sit and charge for 24-48 hours. In bios have battery saving off too as his only alows the battey to charge to 80% or so and stops nas you have seen.

 

Thanks TANWare!
All sorted now, looks like.

I waited overnight, plugging power, unplugging it... Finally just opened the base plate again, took the battery connection out and put it back in carefully. That seemed to do it.

 

That would have been my suggestion: The charging would be via one line on the connector and the discharge via another (and this wasn't making proper contact).

Anyway, thank you for this detailed information. I had assumed, based on some of the other Samsung notebooks, that the keyboard was secured by melted plastic stubs, but in this notebook it's very small screws. The info here does mention Philips size 0000, 000 and 00 which are smaller than the size 0 (which fits the screws on the base of the NP900X4D). I have come across some small screws in watches.

John

 

Hey everyone,

I just "reset" my installation of windows 10 on my good old 900X4D, which all went fine. The one thing I want that I can't seem to find is samsung settings. I need it mostly to get the fn keys to work, so if a work around for that exists i'll take it. But otherwise I'll be happy to install ssettings, I just have a really hard time finding it online!

Thanks for any tip

 

Hey Garbanzo Bill.

You need to install Samsung Update (what used to be called Samsung SW Update) then use that to install Samsung Settings.

You can download Samsung Update here. (That link is also in the Samsung Forum Sticky List on top of the Samsung forum.)

Depending on the version of Windows and version of Samsung Update, it may detect your laptop model and automatically suggest compatible drivers and utilities. If it doesn't, you can use its Find Model feature to look up your model (or any model) and download compatible drivers.

 

Did you ever get AES-NI enabled on the NP900X4D? Would like to mine some crypto coin with it, but AES-NI is required by most

 

So the BIOS update .exe for the NP900X4D doesn't run on latest Windows 10 due to the certificate used to sign the exe expiring.

Since I have access to some dev tools, I've removed this signing and uploaded the exe for posterity.

https://nofile.io/f/x6Se5kvrdbZ/BIOSUpdate.exe

If someone with more knowledge can decompile and modify the BIOS for AES-NI enablement that would be awesome.

 

@jpchow: Thank you for sharing that.

In my experience you CAN run these BIOS updates in Win10 if you follow the steps quoted below:

While I have not tried running BIOSUpdate.exe this way, I would suspect it to work as well. If so, I would generally recommend that. Please don't take offense, I have no reason to suspect the BIOSUpdate.exe file you posted (and I have not checked it either) but we always advice caution when downloading modified executables from 3rd party sources or individual members.

Note that the steps above are for extracting the contents of individual BIOS update files. In the case of BIOSUpdate.exe, you just run it after using Troubleshoot compatibility, no extraction required.

Update:
I just got to my Samsung laptop, which runs Win10 1709 (Falls Creators Update or something) and was pleased to find that the good old Compatibility tab is back under Properties for EXE files. That makes it even easier: Just select Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 7. I wrote the quoted steps above before the 1709 update (1703 Creators Update) in which Microsoft had removed the Compatibility tab (or at least I didn't see it) and so you had to use the Troubleshoot compatibility wizard instead. Both methods work, though.

Note that even after setting Compatibility mode to Win7, you still have to run the file from an Administrator Command Prompt (right-click Command Prompt or PowerShell and select Run as administrator). Running it directly from Windows Explorer still blocks it, even if Run as administrator.