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

How many fps do you get? Because 8870 uses the HD4000's bus, and some software may not see the 8870 even if you are using it.
Besides, is it a demanding game or an old one? Because if it's not very demanding, I think it will use HD4000 in any case if it's enough to run it at best

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Please help, just installed a Samsung 840 pro, trying to boot from a flash drive for installation. Leaves window "Recovery please wait", reading from a flash drive, then restart and again the same thing. What do I do?

 

My daughter got this laptop a few weeks ago, but she's been having a few really annoying intermittent problems:
1. The trackpad will stop responding for a second or two at a time.
2. The "right mouse button" spot on the trackpad isn't very responsive (or maybe the correct spot is just really small).
3. The keyboard will act as if the ctrl key is pressed for no reason.

I tried the different drivers posted here and in the trackpad thread, but nothing has helped. It's now on its second visit to Samsung repair. If it keeps acting up after this, they'll offer her a replacement. I know I've seen the first problem mentioned and I think the second. Is anyone experiencing the third? Is there a s/w fix for this or is her laptop defective? She has the NP880Z5E which we purchased directly from Samsung.

 

Hey all,

I did a clean install a few weeks ago. Now I wanna go back to the recovery image I made using the Samsung app.

Unfortunately I can't install the recovery app because the I am deleted the recovery partition when doing a clean install.

Any ideas how I can make a new recovery partition or install the Samsung recovery app without it so I can restore my image from usb?

Thanks for the help!

 

I remember someone who had the same Ctrl problem. Try searching this thread and the "introducing" one if you can. Tonight I should get to a laptop and will search as well

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

I remember someone who had the problem with the Fn key. He just had Fn lock on.

 

I just installed Ubuntu 13.04 with UEFI.
Try this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI (run boot-repair if you couldn't load windows/ubuntu)
The only problem I met was that the installer couldn't detect windows 8 so I had to "do something else" when allocating drive space. So I allocated 8GB for swap and the rest with option ext4 mount point /.

 

I will try beta 2 tonight, but both 13.5 and 13.8 were significantly worse for me playing XCOM enemy unknown. Very choppy at medium settings and generally sits around the 22 fps mark
Also the screen is deeper and darker in colour when i upgraded the driver.
Was very smooth with the factory driver.

 

Is anyone out there actually getting the 8 hours of battery life that the computer was advertised with? On average I was only getting about 3-4 hours, 5 if I have brightness down to 0.

I ran powerfg to generate a report and its showing that connected standby is not enabled and that my capacity has fallen from 91Wh to only 66Wh. This seems strange because the laptop is plugged in over 80% of the time. The report indicates that there has only been 15 cycles.

Any thoughts?

 

RESCUECOM’s 2013 Q2 Computer Reliability Report released :thumbsup:

 

Use HWiNFO's sensors to monitor the battery drain. You need to get down to 10W or below and the CPU utilisation in Task Manager will need to be less than about 5%. If you have a web browser open then animations and unwanted Flash content can cause a significant CPU load.

Is Battery Life Extender enabled or disabled? If enabled, disable it and fully charge the battery.

Then, if BatteryBar or HWiNFO show battery wear of more than a few percent, run the Battery Calibration in the BIOS (which fully drains the battery)then recharge the battery fully and recheck the wear.

John

 

If the backup you made was a Bootable Factory Image backup on a USB stick, then you want to boot that stick and let it re-install on the disk: In BIOS (F2), disable Fast Boot (and possibly disable SecureBoot, though some reports indicate it may not be necessary). Then save settings and reboot. Press F10 to select boot device and boot from the USB.

When you are done and everything is running again, you can change Fast Boot and SecureBoot in BIOS back to enabled.

Let us know if that works for you

 

Did you change any BIOS settings along the way? In particular SecureBoot or OS Mode Selection? You may have to disable Fast Boot in order to even boot that USB stick -- but that doesn't sounds like your problem. Also, you may have to disable SecureBoot in order for it to run. But OS Mode Selection should remain on UEFI OS.

If none of this works, I wonder if maybe the Recovery backup didn't work right. We have had a few reports where creating these backups took a VERY long time (hours) due to problems with the USB stick. When users tried a different USB stick, everything worked fine.

Did you try booting the USB before you swapped in the SSD, and did that work?

 

It does indeed sound like something could be wrong with that trackpad. Hopefully Samsung can fix it or replace it.

If you haven't already, make sure you check the trackpad thread (linked below) which contains much of the useful discussion here about this. Lately it seems several users were able to solve issues by installing the latest driver from SW Update. But before that, some users preferred older drivers and others preferred newer ones.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...hronos-np700z5a-trackpad-discussion-only.html

Please keep up posted

 

These samsung 840 evo SSD's are looking awesome! Glad I eventually decided to wait a bit with buying the regular 840. Now I just need to wait a bit until they're available in Belgium and buy an external usb 3.0 enclosure for my HDD.

 

hi Pranktank, I did exactly this. put in the 840 pro (which I could just buy in holland, maybe you can get it from one of the stores here aswell? indeed external 3.0 enclosure and tadaa! Awesomeness +1TB external HDD

 

Hmm, I was waiting for this at the last event, and Haswell did not come, but they did update the 770 to the 880 "Ativ Book 8" which had some nice little updates. I'm glad I waited for that but couldn't be bothered to wait any longer for haswell, and am so happy now I didn't. Will have an eye out for the Unpacked event though. tnx

 

Thanks for the responses on my daughter's trackpad issues. For the first service call, we got it back with the notes "software problem performed reset". I was PISSED! I have 2 degrees on computer science. I tried all the software fixes myself, and of course the problem recurred. I'm hoping they actually do something this time, but unfortunately she's leaving for college on Tuesday and I don't think we'll get ti back on time, so she'll have to bring my laptop with her and we'll have to trade eventually. I'll have to test it out when it comes back and ask for a return if it isn't fixed, unless someone here knows of fixes.

I'll keep you posted.

 

I also have the problem of the CTRL key being stuck sometimes. If you find a solution, let us know!

 

Thanks a ton for the input! I gave those steps a try (already did it before but what the heck... ), and it improved my wear to about 12% (~80Wh). Still, seems like a lot of wear for just about two months of use.

I edited my power profile to try and restrict the hardware use as much as possible, but just word processing and youtube still seems to be draining 15W or more. Oh well, its good enough. My only worry is that this battery is going to wear out before the year is up.

Another issue I notice occasionally is the laptop gets very hot when its asleep. I'll come home from work and the fans are on full power (with the lid closed!). It does not resume and I have to do a hard reset for it to respond... seems like a serious issue, and a search of these forums seems to show problems but no solution.

 

From my tests it happens when there is a high load on the network - downloading games on Steam for example kill any control I have over the trackpad.

 

The service people for any brand struggle with the obscure problems. It can sometimes help to tape an explanatory note over the keyboard which explains how to replicate the problem and the steps you have already taken.

Let's hope that the technician understands things this time around.

John

 

Everything maxed out, it runs at 50+ FPS, and the game is not demanding at all. In fact, if while running the benchmark I happen to switch to the desktop then back to the game, the benchmark ends reporting over 235+ FPS. I find it kind of odd that you can't choose the GPU in this game ._.

PD: It is a fighting game, son anything under 60 FPS is close to unacceptable (Frame data is vital in Fighting games to be played properly)

 

I'm having this pretty weird problem, where my laptop acts exactly as if it is disconnected for a second every 20 seconds when I'm playing a really CPU and GPU intensive game. The battery light is green, then goes out with a massive frame drop and when the light goes on again it is orange and the frames go back to normal again, meaning the pc was running on battery for a second. The problem intensifies when I overclock. Is it my PSU that can't handle the load? I'm using an aftermarket one, not sure if it happens with my stock one too. I always have BLE enabled.

 

Is that a 90W PSU or higher rating. Are you using the Samsung GPU settings or higher values?

It might be interesting to run HWiNFO in the background writing a log file with the sensor values relating to power (CPU, GPU and battery) at, say, 100ms interval.That ought to show if the battery is being used to supply power. You can then inspect the log file after you have seen a few of the orange lights.

John

 

Oh I should have mentioned that, 120W. It happens in both cases, but a whole lot more when overclocking.

Good idea. I'll try that. Thank you!

 

Thanks!
Turns out it wasn't a bootable image... silly me. Anyway just did a clean install again and everything works perfect.

Thanks for the help.

p.s. I wanna monitor my laptop performance, temp, fps etc. What program do people use?

 

For FPS I use fraps, hwinfo64 for everything else.

 

Hi guys, I just installed Crysis 2 and tried to play it running at 1360x768 to increase FPS but I cant manage to scale the screen to full screen so Im getting 1360x768 with black bars around the game. Anyone know how can I force the scaling option? I already tried Screen Resolution>Advanced Configuration>Graphic and Multimedia Control Panel>Scale but the only availabe option is keep screen scale instead of scale to full screen. Also I tried some suggestions to lower the resolution and change the scale option (which only appears when the computer doesnt display the native resolution) nonetheless when I change to the native resolution the scale option changes to keep screen scale default. Any thoughts on this?

 

Try right clicking on the desktop, select Screen Resolution, select resolution and move the slider down to 1366 x 768.

John

 

The problem was a flash drive, I had to clone hdd an external usb 3.0 adapter. Copied on a 35gb SSD for some reason instead of 16 as usual, but everything works, including the F4.

Advise the stick, which is 100% working in the recovery?
After testing the SSD in CrystalDiskMark3_0_2f, I found that the write speed 4K blocks is slightly lower than the rest, about 50-55mb. The reviews are usually from 80 to 130. This is a normal speed or with my SSD is something wrong?

 

Hi John, obviously that’s one solution but I don’t want to change the resolution every time I play Crysis. Because my desktop becomes a mess with all the icons I have. I want Crysis to be rendered at 1366x768 to get some extra FPS and I want the drivers to scale that resolution to the native 1920x1080 of the laptop when I enter the game. This works if I choose any other resolution than the native because Intel drivers give the option to scale to full screen but once I return to the native resolution the option disappears.

 

Great, good work. Thank you for the update.

 

I still don't no if I have to buy a NP880Z5E, or wait for one with a Haswell cpu...
Do you guys know anything that could convince me?

What about the screen reflection (because it's glossy), no problems with direct light etc?

 

I have the same issue in some games. If possible choose Dx9 mode. That seems to work for me. Its just odd that some work fine like Tomb Raider while others put black bars around the game like World of Warcraft

 

I'd definitely wait for some new laptops to come out. I bought my Chronos in May and sometimes I think of selling it in order to buy an Haswell version (if it ever came out).

One thing that makes me want to replace my laptop is mostly the RAM, I hate the fact that the Chronos had 4 GBs soldered while the ATIV book comes with 8 GB soldered. Anyway, my suggestion. As I said before, is to wait a bit more to see what comes out. I read that Samsung will hold another event soon in which a refreshment for their ATIV books could be announced, so.. Hold on, lol.

 

Are you referring to the article on The Verge about the event of 5th September? Or do you have other sources?

 

Hi guys, How did you figure out wether your SSD 840 pro is alligned properly, if that was the term. or configured properly to get the right speeds.

atm its at an of average 140-160. Its a Samsung 840 pro 512 gb.

thanks!

 

Install and use Samsung magician tool.

 

For those experiencing intermittent touchpad odd behaviour, I've found something that seems to fix MOST of the annoying problems I've been having, particularly the touchpad locking up after a tap.
It's because the default setting for "Drag and drop" is to release after a time delay, this touchpad is so sensitive that if you happen to slightly move your finger on the touchpad while tapping or moving, it locks into this time delay.
This, of course, is by design but it's just too sensitive, so when you're doing things with the touchpad, this seems to make it freeze up during use.

To eradicate this problem, head to control panel, "Touchpad" and change the setting in the dropdown next to "Drag and Drop" to "Release after finger lift" or "Tap again to release".

This should fix some of the annoyances which seem to occur when you are using the touchpad.

 

Lol sent my series 7 in for repair and it came back with scratches and slight dents on the charger and the laptop. Samsung says they can't do anything. So much for trying to keep a $1400 laptop nice and damage free. Won't be buying from them again. Good luck to those who have to send in their laptops.

 

I put a very little piece of silver duct tape on the light sensor and now I can manually control my keyboard backlight
looks very nice.

 

Hello,
I am from US. I want mineral ash black colour. But all the stores have a grey metal colour. Bestbuy online says black, but when i ordered, it was silver. Does the ATIV 8 not have any black? the image on the box was even black...

 

I have my USB key with factory image as well as the original HDD (in original state).
Base on some informative posts I've learned that it's okay to delete the following two partitions off my SSD:

SAMSUNG_REC2
SAMSUNG_REC

I'm not sure what program other posters used but Disk Management in Windows 8 shows little information in order to ID the partitions. I downloaded a 3rd party software (Minitools) which gave me a little more information (screen capture):



The SAMSUNG_REC2 partition is easily identifiable but the SAMSUNG_REC is not. There are two other recovery partitions. I assume one is the Windows recovery partition and the other is SAMSUNG_REC (with Samsung's recovery software) I'm going to guess that the one on the bottom (highlighted in the screencapture) is SAMSUNG_REC? It's 1GB FAT32. Can I delete this as well?

Is it just a matter of deleting the partition(s) and then "extending" the C: with the unallocated space? Is there else I need to do or be aware of? I've never done this before. Thanks.

 

Can anyone answer this please? Thanks!

 

It is available in black in some countries but seemingly not in the US. As you are stuck with silver the 2013 Series 7 Chronos represents better value for money.

See the Linux thread and if the answer isn't there then ask the question again. Our small Linux community are more likely to watch that thread than this owner's lounge.

John

 

Just finishedmy order on a samsung 840 EVO 500gb SSD and an external USB 3.0 enclosure. I can't wait.

My plan is to insert the SSD, after I made a bootable flash drive (4gb) for my win8 x64 .iso. After the absolute fresh windows install, I'll install sw update, downloaded on another computer and install the absolute necessary samsung drivers. Then I'll put my hdd in the enclosure and copy and maybe cut my personal data. I'll leave the recovery partitions intact if something goes wrong and use the rest of the hdd as an external hard drive. What do you guys think?

 

I think you should tell me where did you download the .iso from , I'm also planning to do the same thing, let me know how it goes.

 

my intents exactly
just waiting for a few more days as I suspect the evo 500 will have a slight drop in price when it starts massively appearing here in Portugal

 

That should be nice

My only comment is you don't need to download SW Update in advance on another PC: Win8 includes WiFi drivers for the Intel 6230/6235 (and good ones too) so you can simply download SW Update (from here) once Win8 Setup has completed.

I'd recommend temporarily disabling Windows Update when Setup first prompts, and only re-enable it when you're done installing drivers and Windows Critical Updates from SW Update. As always, this is my recommended list of drivers to install with SW Update and the ones to install manually. You already knew that

As for Settings, you may find the newer version 2.0.0.55 under model NP880Z5E-X03CA, and an ever newer (yet unofficial) version 2.1.x under model NP940X3G.

Enjoy!