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

Let me know if you find one. I'm not all too happy with mine. It's bulky and super loud (I didn't even know laptop PSU's like that ever come with a fan).

I have the non touch version so I don't know if it's relevant but I can't do that, it feels secured.

 

Too bad they didnt sell the non touch version in Holland.


I was thinking of this PSU. NB Q120 PLUS | NB Q Series | Adapter | FSPLifeStyle

 

I agree, that's not normal. Windows should assign a drive letter automatically when you connect a drive -- assuming the drive has existing partitions on it with formatted file systems. If it's a brand new drive, you may need to initialize it first (in Disk Manager) and create partitions. Let us know if it is a continued problems with other drives you connect.

I noticed you've recommended this one before, and finally got to try it out the other day (to create an ext4 partition on an SD card for my Android phone). You're absolutely right, Minitool Partition Wizard is a great tool, far better than than EaseUS (which is heavy on bloat and self-promotion, loads itself on every boot, and has caused a few problems for me in the past. I'm a fan!

 

Hi Mick, welcome to NBR.

I agree, hybrids can be a good alternative to a small, but affordable, OR large, but expansive SSD.

1. Connecting external high-res monitors: Check the discussions here and here and here and here and here including links in those posts. I remembered the discussions, but had to google site:notebookreview.com/samsung dannemand 2560 hdmi in order to locate them.

2. Auto Backlight on Silver Keys: This is one of Samsung's more unfortunate design choices -- and one of the few improvements they made when they re-branded Series 7 Chronos as Ativ Book 8 -- with very few other changes. My understanding is it works as expected when you update to the latest BIOS. Do use the advice in the opening post of John's BIOS Update thread to do it safely. Also, check the link that John gave you for more tips on the Settings app.

 

That Device Manager looks normal to me, and should not in itself cause BSOD. For wireless drivers (including WiFi and Bluetooth) check the advice and discussions in the thread linked below:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/727499-wifi-remedies-samsung-laptops.html

As for Audio drivers, I would stick to the ones provided by SW Update. But when you install Graphics drivers, that will add HDMI audio drivers as well. Use the ones provided by SW Update (for ease and safety) or the exact steps provided in the opening post of this thread (for performance).

If you keep getting BSOD, I would definitely do a factory restore and see if the problem is still present. If there is a hardware defect (such as bad RAM) you need to have it repaired, or you could spend a lifetime testing drivers and still not solve it. You could try re-seating (or removing) the RAM module in the socket in order to test that.

 

Is a 3dmark11 score of 2205 normal for a NP780 with 8770m? I used SW to bring the laptop up to date, and I am running 13.10 drivers. I am plugged in and have every possible setting on maximum performance. Seems really low to me not to mention 3dmark11 listed my GPU as a 8750m. What gives? I believe pranktank mentioned he's been able to achieve a 3dmark11 score of 3500-4000, does the 8870m make that much of a difference?

 

yes, it really does. its a much better card

 

I am having two issues that i cant seem to figure out. I'm hoping that someone has had similar issues and has found easy fixes.

1. I am having very odd video glitches on pretty much ONLY the windows 8 tiles and apps. In desktop mode, its fine. Anyways, i get like black flashing boxes, disappearing areas in the apps (like app icons in the store disappear and flash, etc) it makes the apps pretty unusable, but like i said it works great in desktop mode. I am using the 13.6 beta drivers

2. Audio (volume) issues. When using desktop mode, and browsers mainly... the audio moxer will auto reduce the volume of certain applications. For example, i will be watching a video through google chrome, then it will get really quiet, and i will check the audio mixer, and the level or that specific app will be about 10%. this also happens with some games, etc.... Is there a feature that makes the laptop auto-adjust?

thanks guys, this is a great laptop and these issues are pretty minor, and im sure can be remedied with a little help

 

Going from 13.5b3 to 13.10b solved these issues for me.

 

im on 13.10 now, and dont seem to get these anymore

any idea what the sound issues could be?

 

Unfortunately I had the problem also with an external drive I had formatted with the ATIV Book 8. Anyway, after some intensive googling I found out an easy and permanent solution, and as I thought it was a matter of enabling something somewhere. I'll write it here just in case someone else needs it:

open command prompt
type diskpart
type automount enable

problem solved :thumbsup:

 

Great, thank you for sharing that. How the heck Automount was ever disabled in the first place is a mystery. But good job there solving it!

 

I was lucky enough to find a thread in Microsoft forum, but the funny thing is that I couldn't find anyone else with this laptop who had the same problem! One would think that they use the same image to setup every computer

 

Is it possible to get the NP870Z5E in the Netherlands, without losing warranty?

The only one I can find in the Netherlands is the one with a touch screen (glossy screen), the NP880Z5E.

 

Great to hear that it fixed it. Maybe a driver issue? Have you got the realtek drivers installed?

I got mine from France, I live in Belgium, and it has international warranty. As far as I know, all samsung laptops now come with that.

 

Well, i'm a technet subscriber and Windows 8.1 was released today. I'm wondering if there is another guinea pig out there who installed it on their NP870Z5E or similar as an upgrade install? I am inclined to wait until Samsung has ensured that all the updates needed for it are completed (if there are actually any incompatibilities). Anybody try an upgrade install with the official 8.1 final? Thanks!

 

I think it is well established that Settings versions prior to 2.1.x are NOT compatible with Win 8.1 -- at least not with 8.1 preview releases. My original 8.1 test results are here and others have found the same.

But as described in the Settings/Easy Settings thread, there is a new 2.1.x version of Settings out, which can be fetched by looking up the new model NP940X3G in SW Update. And as described in member Rykoshet's thread here, Settings 2.1.x appears to work with Win 8.1.

I have been using Settings 2.1.0.20 for a few weeks now. It has some important differences and lacks a few features from the 2.0.0.55 version. But other than that it works. I have NOT tried it myself with 8.1, though.

 

Please. I extremely need help with this problem. "Ghost Clicking" Once in a while the touchscreen will activate on it's own and start clicking randomly on a spot on the screen. It's really annoying and I can't do anything for the time it is stuck that way.

Thanks again,

Panser

 

Finally it appears to be a driver problem, i disabled a audio driver and so far no problems (no bsod or anything like that) , i had discarded ram issues and any ther hardware problem

 

Be interested to know from those who have installed this final version of Windows 8.1 if it has still got the default old Intel Centrino drivers that actually work rather than a more recent version

 

What is the latest Intel graphics driver out for the NP780Z5E series - just wondering as there are newer versions out for some other Samsung laptops on SWUpdate - yet the one for the NP780Z5E is old

 

Today I made some tweaks to my power saving settings, and now, when I move the mouse on the battery icon in the bottom right corner, it only shows me the percentage of remaining battery and not the estimated runtime left. Do you know how can I have it back?
I know that it's full of third party apps out there to monitor the battery, but I don't like to install stuff that I never use just to get a function that I used to have in Windows.

 

I have recently noticed that my gpu (8770m) has been throttling on me during games. To investigate, I downloaded msi afterburner, GPU-Z, HWinfo, and furmark. I have all my settings on maximum performance and I am plugged into my PSU (which is a 90w rocketfish from bestbuy 19v at 4.74A) Running furmark only, while monitoring with above apps, I noticed my avg GPU temp was 62c, my core clock would fluctuate from 650mhz to 750mhz and stabilize back to 650mhz. Memory clock stayed at 1125mhz. If the gpu is no where near its threshold why is it running lower then at stock clocks? I followed the instructions on page 1 of this thread to allow overclocking however, afterburner(version 2.3.1) does not allow me to adjust power limit, i can adjust only core clock and memory clock. Even when I do overclock to say 900MHZ core clock and 1200mhz memory clock and I apply the overclock, furmark runs exactly the same at 650mhz and 1125mhz. Anyone out there have experience overclocking the 8770m? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

you should install battery bar, its free, and awesome:

BatteryBar Pro: Windows Battery Life Tracker

basic version is free

 

wow, im surprised there are driver issues with 8.1. I was under the impression that 8.1 was more like a service pack than a new OS

 

I'll give it a try, but as I said I would prefer non installing an app just to have an estimated runtime (I'm not sure I will use all the other functions). I still hope there is a way to restore the original windows function

 

Does the battery bar monitors IN REAL-TIME your battery discharge rate? 'Cause mine only from time to time.....to be able to see the "real" discharge rate I have to use either HWInfo 64, or another nifty tool I found the other day -- "BatteryInfoView"

But what I would really like is to have my battery bar -- bought version to give me real time readings...|

 

i understand. its a really nice app though, and runs very unobtrusively and has a nice design. ive been using it for like 5 years now

 

Guess what? BatteryBar helped me understand what the problem was
I must have been sleeping, because I didn't notice that my battery was 100% full; I've seen that when I unplugged the laptop, BatteryBar took some time to calculate the estimated runtime left, so I thought that maybe Windows worked in the same way...and it does After one minute on battery my icon showed again the estimated runtime left

 

Reply to my own post stating that it seems newer Intel drivers now come with 8.1 and that they are showing the disconnection issues plaguing Centrino users and this time there is no older driver to roll back to.

 

I am having a problem with the recovery and backup on my 780Z. When I try to either create a factory image backup or a normal backup i get an error which says factory image not found or disk not found!

The laptop works just fine otherwise but I always like to have a backup of any factory images etc so that if anything happens i can restore it to its original settings.

The strange thing is that if i boot into the recovery programme (using F4) then it does allow me to make a backup of both the factory image and of the current C: drive onto a usb stick, although the C: drive backup took nearly 2 hours to copy around 20Gb when the recovery programme suggested it would only be 30 mins. Is that normal or does it mean the backup wasn't done properly and may not be usable.

Will these backups have been created properly as I am really nervous that if i use recovery to restore to what looks like the original restore point and it doesn't work I will have no way of recovering the system.

Also, I wonder if this has anything to do with the store i bought it from doing a "factory restore" when i bought it (they had used it as a demo system). When I collected it first it wouldn't boot into windows with an error saying windows didn't install correctly. The second time it all seemed fine although it had already been set up with a user account by the store rather than being left at the "factory" state. I was a bit miffed at the time but they said they were trying to be "helpful". To be honest when you heard the conversations they were having with other customers it's a wonder some people know where the power button is ("oh, i thought closing the lid means it had shut down"....!!!!).

Thanks

Rob

 

Just an update on this. I bought the Win 8 Pro upgrade from amazon, ran the "add features" programme, entered my new product key and it all worked fine. Upgraded with no hassles at all.

So looks like you don't have to stump up for the MS online upgrade at twice the price.

Rob

 

Thanks - i'm already using that newer version of setting. Other than that, is everything else working okay? I presume that the Samsung Recovery image remains at 8.1 but MS's reset/refresh would be updated to 8.1? Thanks for all ypur help!

 

That is how I would recommend doing it anyway: F4 boot Recovery and create a Bootable Factory Image Backup on a USB stick from there -- NOT from within the Recovery app in Windows. Based on reports from others, I would expect that one to complete in an hour or less -- although it will depend on the write speed (class) of the USB stick. If others can report their approximate times, it would be great.

Your concern about the integrity of the backup is understandable and prudent: Restoring from a bad backup (overwriting a good Recovery in the process) would really suck! It is exactly the discussion we had last week in the Series 7 Ultra thread, starting around here.

In there I suggest creating two different kinds of backup if you intend to delete Recovery on the original disk -- as many Series 9 and 7 Ultra users do, in order to free up space on their original 128/256GB SSD. For Series 7 / AB 8 users who swap in an SSD, it's not as critical, because they can fall back on the original HDD (assuming they keep it intact).

Of course there is no telling what the store guys could have done, if they were not familiar with how these Sammies work. But if everything works in Windows, I would assume all they did was a factory restore from F4 -- which is OK.

 

OK, great. As I recall from my own tests, it was only Settings that failed. You can check my test report (same as linked before) because I honestly don't remember -- and I wiped 8.1 Preview after I was done testing it.

It would be great if you can post your updated 8.1 findings in that same thread (which has kind of become our collective Win8 thread, even though it's titled Series 9). If so, please do link it here.

Also, notice member sne's recent post here in the Settings thread.

 

Hello Panser. I have to commend you for your disciplined and patient posting about this -- staying safely within our rule of at least 24 hours between bumps. Thank you for that!

The fact that you haven't received any responses, I take as a sign that your touchpad problem is not a common one. To me it sounds like a touchscreen defect, but I am no expert at that.

I would recommend you backup your data (and your Windows image, if you want), F4 boot Recovery, and perform a factory restore. If the problem is still present after the restore, you can assume it is a hardware defect, and contact Samsung or the store to arrange for a repair. They will likely request a factory restore anyway, in order to verify the problem before issuing an RMA.

On the other hand, if factory restore solves the problem, you can assume it is software or drivers or file corruption. You can either start over working on that factory installation, or restore your Windows backup and try to find a solution -- at least knowing you're not wasting your time trying to fix a hardware defect.

Let us know how that goes for you. Oh, and a belated welcome to NBR

 

I have the 8770m version as well, and it exhibits almost the exactly the same behavior with the stock PSU. I experience the same throttling in games, and cannot find a way to enable increasing the power limit through afterburner. However, when I set a higher core clock, it will fluctuate between that higher core clock and the 'baseline' of 650mhz. I can't recall if the memory clock stuck or not. I'll do some more testing in the next couple days as I haven't really played around with the latest drivers and afterburner yet. I doubt the laptop is bumping up against the 90w limit, so if there was a way to move that power limit slider, I think that would fix the problem.

 

Finally gotten the Coolermaster USNA 120 universal laptop adapter which has a rating of 120W in a rather small form factor, retailing for about USD$100. Going to give my games a spin later to see if the throttling stops. =)

 

The throttling is mainly due to 90W adapter not being able to supply the wattage the notebook needs to keep up to the actual performance of the GPU.

 

I agree with you. The 8870m suffered from the exact same issues, putting the power limit at +20% is an almost solid fix, even on a 90W psu. The only time I saw this throttling recurring was with BF3 where both GPU and CPU are pushed to the limit, or when overclocking. If the 8870m can manage to stay at its turbo clock on 90W, the 8770m definitely can too.

The 120W psu just makes sure the GPU never throttles, not even with overclocking, which was near impossible to prevent when overclocking on 90W. I think the 8770m should be able to achieve the same stability on 90W.

 

hey pranktank,

how do you put the power limit on +20% (sorry for the noob question)

 

With the powerlimit slider in msi afterburner or asus gpu tweak. Not a noob question . Even if it was, that's where this thread and the forums are for, questions and discussions.

 

Thank you so much for a reply. I just did a factory reset. I've been creating restore points after each update. Letting it sit and using it for 12 hours to see if the problem still continues after updates. Thanks again, I'll keep it updated.

I had a concern. I play some steam games which could cause errors in the initial installation of each game? Some games are outdated and were released in the XP era. Could this also be a source of the problem?

Thanks again,

Panser

 

I overclocked my 8770m to 950/1200 and in game they do hit those clocks for a second and then settle down to 650/1125, repeatedly. Despite the increased clocks I noticed no performance gains. Now if only we could enable the power limit...................................I'd be in heaven.

 

Do you have a link for me then?

 

No joy with the new 120W power adapter. My GPU still throttles, still getting the same performance in every games I've played. Worst, the 120W adapter does not have proper grounding and is giving me the shocks due to the metal palm rest... Zzz

 

To where I bought it? I bought it from Fnac France but they seem to not sell them anymore.

 

That's really not good. The newest Intel drivers exhibit the frequent disconnects on my notebook and the original MS drivers are the only ones that don't. I wonder whether this is with upgrading the wireless card over. The 6235 clearly is a POS.

 

I took the dive on my Surface Pro and all went well. Byron's report of the ongoing WiFi problem is very discouraging. I'm going to wait a day or so before upgrading my Samsung. How frustrating.

 

I am not a gamer myself, but I cannot imagine that having these games installed could cause your touchscreen to misbehave in other apps. (BTW I wrote touchpad in my last response, although I DO realize it's your touchscreen. Muscle memory...)

Yeah, I agree. Those who have taken the plunge with Win 8.1 and have WiFi problems, I would say try the other suggestions in the WiFi remedies thread (if you haven't already). And try the latest Intel-provided Driver Only driver, now that there is no rolling back to the original Win8 driver. But do follow the recommended uninstall and rollback procedure first to get rid of PROset junk and old registry entries.