2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E)

Can u please tell me under which folder do i change the data name, for featuretestcontrol in 0000 or 0001

 

Hi everyone!

This is my first post on this forum.

I have a two-year-old NP770Z5E-S02SE. It has a nordic keyboard that is not working properly. I have had this problem for about a year but I have coped with it. Now I need the pc for work and need to get the problem fixed.

So, the problem is that 90% of the time some of the keys are not working. The problem is on the left hand side of the keyboard (keys ESC, §, TAB, F1, 1, q, a, z). However Caps Lock, Shift, Ctrl, Fn, <, Windows-key and so on do work. I have tried to clean the keyboard with pressured air, but it didn't help.

Has anyone had similar kind of problems with their keyboard? What should I do? The warranty has expired.

Thank you in advance.

 

Ok, as promised I tried tonight (after a 24 gig pre-download that took about 4.5 hours, plus another half an hour for decompressing), and YES it runs at 1920x1080 on the 8870M Had not the time for tweaking and stuff and basically only wandered about the wastelands up to a place named Concord, found Dogmeat already and did some easy fights in the Commonwealth against Bloatflies and Molerats. I left everything at min settings for the moment and measured framerates with FRAPS, as I found no way to get an fps display otherwise. With this setting,the game gives me framerates at about 40 to even 50, dropping to 25-30 fps during fights. Even at min settings, the game looks not bad IMHO and runs fluidly enough, cant tell for more complex settings and fiercer fights yet, but its better than expected. FPS even went up maxing at 50 inside the streets of Concord. So, its not exactly a pro gamer experience, but decently playable at least, I would say.

Note that the launcher obviously only detects the HD4000 and suggests 720p. AMD switchable graphics didn't automatically detect the game for some reason, and at first it seemed not to work, with Dogmeat jumping in steps and everything really sluggish and all. Things changed very much for the better after manually adding the following files to Switchable Graphics settings:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Fallout 4\Fallout4.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Fallout 4\Fallout4Launcher.exe

The launcher twice resetted the settings to 720p again, but on the third attempt it kept the 1080p resolution for good, this is an issue that earlier Fallout games had too and can surely be remedied, I think (by setting fallout.ini to read only, if nothing helps). As some of the graphics options obviously dont eat up too much power, I will slowly go up from there, but I could well live with the current state, too.

YMMV, of course

HTH,
-- Chris.

NB. That new console-friendly interface, namely the Pip Boy and the dialog options with all those nasty arrows and stuff are the most annoying incarnations of any Fallout game I played, but one should get accustomed to it over time. And what may have ridden the developers to change the keyboard settings (q instead of v now for VATS mode, for instance, TAB to exit out of terminals, but possible only on top level), is beyond my reasoning.

 

I would try disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard ribbon cable where it connects to the mainboard. Sometimes a contact oxidises with loss of connectivity. If that doesn't work then you probably need to search for a new keyboard. This can be expensive because it is probably integrated into the palmrest and is sold as a part called "unit housing top". Or you may find that someone in China is selling the basic keyboard for a more attractive price. However, you then have to separate the existing keyboard from the palmrest and glue in the replacement.

John

 

Thank you for your answer! I'll try these. I will let you know if it helped or not

 

I am having this same issue. I tried doing what you suggested, but it didnt work.
Is this how its supposed to look?

 

Out of interest, have you tried running it at high quality settings with a resolution of 1366x768?

 

OK, tried that as well, default settings on "high" with no additional tweaking. Framerates are NOT higher (between 25-40, measured via Steam now), but the scenery looks better, mostly due to better lighting and possible the Extreme textures that come with this setting. As this setting enables the God Rays, performance seems to depend on the daytime too now (fps go down at noon and up in the night) and might go down to about 20-22 on rare occasions, but not lower. On this setting, you can still play fluently and it's fun, but in the end, I think I'll stick with 1920x1080, because the game looks good enough too and seems to run a tad more stable fps-wise. I'm at level 6 now and had no (technical) problems in a rather fierce fight against a group of 5 or 6 raiders accompanied by a Death Claw.

One odd thing is that the launcher settings seem to interdepent, ie. you cannot disable God Rays on high settings, but didn't go into this further. IIRC God Rays and shadows are the most GPU-eating features, other options don't seem to have the same effect.

All in all, the game looks and possibly performs at least as good as Armored Warfare on CryEngine 3, and that one is said to be rather efficient. I cannot say playing Fallout 4 on my desktop pc is more fun than on the laptop, even though that one has considerably more horse power (the CPU makes no noticable difference).

HTH,
-- Chris.

 

@ativ8: Thank you for testing

 

I use my NP780Z5E quite heavily and play a bunch of games on it. After struggling for (literally) years to get all my drivers working properly, I've been extremely hesitant to upgrade to Windows 10 for fear of breaking them all again. In particular I've had a lot of trouble with the Radeon 8770- I seem to only be getting the HD 4000 and even replaced the motherboard to still get the same problem. I've been wondering if anyone has upgraded the NP780Z5E in particular to Windows 10 and what luck or lack of luck they've had with the Radeon card.

 

Windows 10 1511 update breaks screen brightness again. FeatureTestControl fix still fixes it.

However, it now needs to be set to F048. FFFF locks the intel GPU to 350Mhz clock, disabling its clock up to 1200Mhz, which is necessary for 1080p60 playback on youtube.

 

Has anyone figured out why battery life substantially drops after upgrading to Windows 10? I've updated my video drivers, use minimal brightness, turned on Battery Saver early, use Silent Mode, disabled Cortana and background apps -- and I STILL get around 3-4 hours. This is in comparison to the 8 hours with Windows 8.1 a few months ago.

 

No clue. Try leaving it on overnight. After big updates, Windows spends a long time re-indexing files for search. That eats a lot of disk and CPU, both of which consume a lot of power. Until that's done, your battery life will be bad.

I just updated to the 1511, and power consumption is ~16W unplugged (plugged in stats are bugged and report <8W). It was also around the same for windows 8.1 for me.

 

Is the dGPU running or switched off? Programs such as HWiNFO or GPU-z should be able to show the dGPU status.

The AMD switchable graphics appears to be a headache at the best of times and the Windows 10 driver update system increases the challenge of finding, and keeping, the drivers which enable Optimus to work properly.

John

 

I've a drastically shorter batterylife as well, but according to HWiNFO my dGPU is not the problem. The problem seems to be in the processor package itself, since the average usage is about 10W when doing absolutely nothing at all. The dGPU isn't utilized according to HWiNFO, but it could still sipping power as well ofcourse. Maybe trying some different Intel drivers could make a difference.

I've also another response from Samsung support. There answer was that Samsung is still working on new drivers, but somehow I don't believe that.

 

What CPU speed is HWiNFO showing when the computer is on idle?

I'm wondering if the CPU isn't dropping down to the lower power C states. ThrottleStop can show what is happening.

John

 

With a fresh booted completely idle system with maximum power savings (airplane mode, Samsung silent mode on, battery saver, minimum screen brightness and Power Saver energy profile) my statistics (averaged over a few minutes) are as follows:

- Core clock: 1.2 GHz
- CPU Package Power: 7 W
- IA Cores Power: 2 W
- GT Cores Power: 1 W
- iGPU Clock: 350 MHz
- decharge rate battery: 17.7 W

ThrottleStop measures about 1% of the time in C0 powerstate, while the rest of the time (99%) it measures that the CPU is active in the C7 powerstate, so that seems to be fine as well.

I'm not sure if the IA and GT cores power are included in the CPU Package power. It seems that the CPU is throttling down properly, but I can remember that under Windows 8 it was using less power (can be wrong). However, if the CPU is truly using 7W, I'm not sure where my system is spending another 10W (which seems to be a lot!). My guess is the external GPU.

Too bad HWiNFO doesn't have more info about the dGPU, like temperature values.

 

HWiNFO does provide more info on the dGPU if you click on sensors in the main menu. Mine stays at around 45-50C. GPU utilisation keeps switching from 0% to suddenly being at 99% but I can't seem to find the cause. Does anyone know how to find out what is activating the GPU?

 

After I've upgraded the dGPU drivers with the latest beta from AMD I've now also access to temperature values and is also around 50 degrees C. dGPU utilization is now also at 99%, sometimes 0%, but core clock is not at the highest value.

 

I have not had any issues with the Radeon card in my NP780Z5E after going to Windows 10. The only two issues that I have had is that we lose the ability to adjust the screen brightness (a possible solution is on page 575 of this thread, look for "FeatureTestControl"), and the battery life is considerably worse under Windows 10 than Windows 8/8.1 for no apparent reason that anyone can find.

 

Figured it was the GPU utilisation causing the battery drain but now you mention it my power consumption is still pretty high when its not activated at all according to HWiNFO. Hopefully someone somewhere will find out the cause of the problem soon because this 4 hour battery is killing me on long journeys.

 

If it's not the dGPU leaking power then the next place to look is the GPU and check if it spending most of the time in lower power C states when idle. ThrottleStop will show this information.

John

 

Sorry for lack of knowledge here, I've downloaded throttlestop but got no idea how to search for that info, don't suppose you have any pointers?

 

Start by reading the Throttlestop guide.

John

 

Just tried the new amd crimson driver. So far so good. Although there's no noticeable performance improvement for any of the games I play. IMO its much more stable. It fixed the annoying alt-tab fps drop bug for me. I have yet to encounter any bug performance wise (the control panel and the other raptr software that came with it are still kinda buggy).
Edit: I run windows 8.1 and installed the full driver

 

I also updated to the latest AMD Crimson driver (15.30-1025) and lost brightness control, tried reg editing "FeatureTestControl" entry to F000 and F048, but still nothing. Anyone has any idea to what value it needs to be switched to now?

 

After updating to the latest Win 10 (I think it's update 1511?), I have lost brightness control and it's driving me insane. I've tried the Samsung brightness patch as well as looking for the FeatureTestControl value in RegEdit (this actually seems to crash RegEdit for me. All I ever get is a "Searching the registry" dialog box and that's it) but I can't find anything. Help please!

 

Try reinstalling Samsung setting? Updating Samsung setting to 2.0 was the only thing I did after installing the driver. I did not experience any issue with brightness control. But yeah I am running windows 8.1...

 

Sometimes regedit bugs out and can't find that key for some reason. You may have to manually find it. I think I did. Also, I think the key needs to be set under the registry entry for the intel GPU, not the AMD one, but I'm not totally sure about that last point.

I installed Crimson, and my brightness remained fine. Fixed crash in Civ 5 when running in Full screen mode.

For those who have high battery usage unplugged, try cleaning out the laptop fans. I took off the back and did a quick clean with compressed air, and my usage hovers around 11-12 watts idle now. Used to be 14ish.

(In other news, the Crimson overclock settings seem to be great. I push core clocks to 850 and power limit to +20%, and everything stays fine. Make sure you clean out your cooling so that you don't temp throttle/reach 95C on demanding apps. My experience is to not touch memory clocks. It bugs out and sets the minimum allowed clock to the overclock value, even if GPU is in low power state. Low power is normally 300 core 150 mem, after tweaking to anything, will be 300 core, 1125+ mem. Only way to fix the overclock bug is to reinstall the drivers.)

 

Is your idle usage under Windows 10 or are you still running 8.1? 11-12 watts sounds perfect! And which laptop model do you have exactly?

 

Same thing here. Interestingly, I lost the brightness control after the second time I rebooted my computer after installing the Crimson drivers. The first mandatory reboot was fine. Unlike you, however, I could find all the FeatureTestControl entries and they were all FFFF as usual. Tried F048, F000, and even accepted my helplessness and suffering to The Buddha, but still my laptop display lacks the brightness control.

Would some kind person who has installed the Crimson drivers in Windows 10 with the latest November update (and who is having no problems changing their display brightness) do a registry search for FeatureTestControl and post what the value is? Thanks!

 

sa

ROTFL - stupid Windows. It winds up that both my monitors were disabled in Device Manager. Reenabling them fixed the brightness problem.

 

With the November Windows update I lost brightness control and the registry was crashing. So I installed another registry editor and search FestureTestControl and edited manually via regedit replacing values for F048. Its working so far.

 

Why all of you is modifying the register key ?
After done the windows update, into Samsung update app it appears the new patch for brightness control.... I blame usually Samsung for bad support, but this time the things are working !

 

That patch doesn't always work.

I have to use the reg editor. In the last update one of the FeatureTestControl entries was changed so I changed it back to FFFF and that fixed it. I get very nervous when I see another windows 10 update for this very reason.

Speaking of samsung software I noticed in samsung updates the intel ME interface driver is downloadable but it isn't in the "essential" category. Is it necessary or will it lead to another registry hack???

 

Hello Experts:

I have a question. I have a NP780Z5E-S01UB laptop. I am finding that often when I close the laptop, it doesn't go to sleep, but that isn't all. It also gets EXTREMELY hot. I think something got cooked, since now, often when I pick up the laptop or put undue stress on the frame on either side (ie pick up by a corner), the touchpad will quit working, and requires a reboot to come back.

I imagine something will have to be replaced, and was hoping someone could provide thoughts. I'd be inclined to think the motherboard, but am not certain. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I would start by taking the bottom off the machine and disconnect the touchpad cable, make sure the contacts are clean and reconnect. Also give the internals a close examination for any evidence of heat damage and check that all the screws that hold everything together are tight. Is the keyboard also affected - it may share the same cable with the touchpad?

Don't use Windows sleep unless you are 100% sure it is working properly. I've had a lot of problems with it over the years and the problems can be very difficult to trouble-shoot (often a malfunctioning driver). Event Viewer > System Log may give clues. If you haven't upgraded to Windows 10 then this may be a reason to do so as it effectively an OS reinstallation which should fix whatever is the problem although it may re-occur in time.

John

 

Thank-you John. I haven't noticed issues with the keyboard specifically. I will look at reinstalling the OS and check for heat damage.

Again, thank-you.

 

So, lots of time have passed, and still I cant reach the same battery duration I had before updating from windows 7 to windows 10.
Anyone has come to a solution to this problem?

 

Hi fellas,

I'm in deep trouble with my NP870Z5E. couple of days ago when I was working on 3d design, windows suddenly popped up a warning saying that "windows recovered from graphic card stopped responding" (or something like that). and all the graphic card related programs were crashed. After that same thing happened couple of times and I decided to reinstall Ati drivers.

At the time I was using 13.12 firmware of ATI but re-installing didnt solve the problem and then I installed latest Ati driver, same thing happened. Then I tried latest whql driver which is 14.4. It was the last thing I was able to do. Then PC never opened successfully. After windows loading screen there is nothing, just black screen and PC fan goes crazy in a minute. I removed my SSD and re-installed original HDD but problem persisted.

Btw I was using windows 7 nad most annoying detail is warranty is expired with only 20 days :/

I highly appreciate comments and instructions.

 

Sounds a lot like what happened to mine. Your gpu is probably dead
I can refer you back to a similar situation and what I wrote there.

 

Hi Guys, nice to see there's an owner's lounge for this model. I've been using my trusty workhorse for years and it's still the best laptop i ever had.

However, I've been puzzled by a very, very ennoying sound problem that appeared either since the update to Windows10 or a BIOS update to version (P04ABZ) i did at pretty much the same time.

The problem:
- The signal for the left speaker is correctly routed to the left speaker but the right speaker signal gets routed to the subwoofer causing a muffled sound. The right speaker is muted all the time.
- Also, a loud pop/tick sound from the speakers can be heard before playing a sound. Multiple pops/clicks can also be herd when turning on the laptop what makes me think it might be a BIOS related issue.
- When a headphone is connected there are no pops and clicks and left/right channels are routed to the right earbuds.

What i've tried:
- Google google google google (and more google)
- Reinstalling Windows 8
- Reinstalling Windows 10
- On the driver side i tried pretty much all driver versions for the ALC269 chip including both Realtek's and Samsung's versions. The only speaker setup option available in the realtek application is 2.0 (though it should have a 2. 1 option)

What i know:
I know there's a new BIOS out there (P05ABU) but i can't seem to find a link to the file anywhere and i'm not 100% sure that version is for my exact model. Both SWupdate and the Samsung BIOS utility tell me P04ABZ is the most recent version.
I can't recall the previous BIOS version and i'm a bit affraid to do a BIOS rollback.

What am i running:
I have the European NP77Z07E model (3635QM/8870M),
- 12GB DDR3, (4+8GB)
- Samsung 850 SSD
- 1TB harddisk. (i replaced the Blueray drive with the standard HDD using a caddy)
- Windows 10, official including all updates.

It's the laptop i use for work with lot's of software and configuration. Installing Win7 is the very, very, very last option. (i don't have the factory image on the 1TB hdd anymore.....)

The questions:
Can anyone confirm the P05ABU version is suitable for my model too?
Can anyone send me the BIOS, or point me to a link?
Anyone herd of this problem and/or possible solution?

Help will be very, very.very much appreciated!

 

The last three characters in the BIOS name are the identifier for the notebook (or more than one notebook if they share the same mainboard hardware) which, in your case, is ABZ (you have the NP770Z7E). An ABU BIOS is for another notebook with a different hardware configuration although the similar letter sequence indicates that it will be of similar age (if you have found that info in this thread then it's the NP770Z5E family).

I can't help with the audio problem and have to wonder whether the right speaker chose to die at about the same time as you did the Win 10 or BIOS update. The easiest way to check would be to buy a pair of speakers off ebay.

John

 

Hi John, thanks for your answer and clarification on the BIOS versioning. The headphone output works perfectly and the sound fades from the left speaker to the subwoofer when I use the balance slider. Thereby, the right speaker seems to "pop" too so that indicates it's connected. Seems hardware is all in place.. it's just "something" telling the audio chip there is no subwoofer and the actual subwoofer is the right speaker.

 

I'm pretty sure it is indeed a graphics driver issue, so we'll have to wait to see if AMD or Windows solves it.

I've been using Linux lately and it seems to me that battery life is what it used to be with Windows 8.1, and I'm almost certain I'm only using integrated graphics in Linux.

 

This has me wondering if there is a setting somewhere to indicate the presence of the woofer. This could either be configured in a customised version of the audio driver or is configured by Samsung's Settings. Are you getting these from SW Update or letting Windows provide them?

John

 

Hey guys i have owned the 780z version of this laptop (8770m) and since i upgraded to windows 10 i lost my ability to overclock. Do any of you guys have a solution for this?

 

I don't think we can expect a solution from Samsung, AMD or Windows anymore. I just hope someone on this boards finds the correct driver configuration for Windows 10 and share it on this board.

 

Hey guys i have owned the 780z version of this laptop (8770m) and since i upgraded to windows 10 i lost my ability to overclock. Do any of you guys have a solution for this?

 

I feel tempted to update to the Crimson driver that was released recently, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Some other members reported updating and having mixed results, i.e. some lost brightness again, some didn't, etc. None of them were running Windows 10 if I recall correctly.

Anyone with W10 that has tried the AMD Crimson software?