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

Guys did any of you get this laptop with P03ABU bios already on board so without need to update it?

 

Not quite - the basic letter layout is the same, but a lot of the punctuation and symbols are moved around - partially for historic reasons and partially to accommodate the £ sign on the UK keyboard.

 

UK keyboard -- the historical reasons, I mean

 

Well sorry to contradict you but you do find International/US layout however you want to call it in countries that aren't deemed worthy enough to get their own specific layout.....in example my country Romania. All laptops coming here are with an US keyboard.
I was hoping maby there are some other countries such as mine where this laptop is already being sold as i was very thrown off every time that i tried to switch to a different keyboard
If not i guess i'll be going for the italian version since it's a qwerty and the closest thing i can get except the punctuation marks.

 

Bought an np780z5e coming from an Envy 17 1181nr. screw that envy man, this is a million miles better. I still can't believe the genius' at HP put the heat intensive graphics card under the palmrest. but seriously, 10/10 would make this decision again in a heartbeat. its just really well done, my only gripe is the left shift button is tiny but i'm sure i'll get used to it

 

Weird...I went into Recovery (F4 at startup) to clone the factory image to an SSD, but it says that the cloning failed without giving me an explanation (256GB drive, so plenty of space). Can I use the Factory Image option? Do I need to select "create boot disk"?

Also, unrelated, I keep getting error -7 when trying to update the touchpad driver through SW Update, and now my sound doesn't work (troubleshooter says "hardware changes may not have been detected" but obviously that's nonsense). Updating the sound driver with SW Update gives error -10. What do these errors mean, and how do I resolve them?

Edit: A reboot fixed the sound problem, but now I'm being hit by spotty wifi connection, which I think is a problem other people have had. It seems to be working fine now, though, after doing the troubleshooter three or four times. Is there a driver update I should do?

 

Anyone else seeing loads of updates in the SW Update? One of them is the "Graphics Driver" - if you install this, you will also then have to reinstall the AMD drivers, otherwise you lose the "Switchable graphics" option.

EDIT: turns out to just need a reboot, don't need to re-install AMD drivers

 

Best thing is to use the Recovery tool in windows (I think F4 gives you the same thing!), using a 32gb USB drive, create a factory image with "Create boot disk" selected. This should work fine. Then you can install your SSD, go into BIOS and turn off UEFI and fast boot. Reboot, go back into BIOS and choose your USB device as the boot device. When re-building the image onto your SSD, make sure to drag the C: drive slider to the full remaining space on the drive, otherwise you'll get a C: and D: drive (unless you want that!), follow all the prompts and you should be back up and running within a few minutes, it's really quick.

Error -7 and -10 happen with either network errors or incompatible software - a reboot usually fixes the incompatible software issue, network issues is just a question of retrying the Samsung servers are frequently overloaded when new SW updates come out.

I and many others have had wifi issues, it seems to be drivers, and depends how lucky you are, try both the SW Update drivers and also the ones from the Intel site, I found an install of the Samsung version, then the Intel, then back to the Samsung seemed to work - but could have been a coincidence

 

Unfortunately, I don't have a 32GB USB drive. Is there no way to just clone what I have on the HDD onto my SSD, or at least get the factory stuff on there without needing another drive?

Edit: Huh...even though it said the clone failed, the drive has 19.4GB worth of content on it, and looking at that content, it looks like Windows stuff. Do you think it might actually work if I booted from it, even though it said it didn't successfully clone? How would I boot from a different drive in UEFI or whatever?

 

I am confused - what are you rebuilding the image onto your SSD with, the Flash drive. Will this also give you the recovery data so that you can recover to factory defaults at a later point if you should wish.

I am goign to be trying this this weekend, I have never done something like this before, and on reading posts over the last couple of days on this board and the discussion board, I am getting more woried.

This is what I want to do - Make an exact replica of my current HD, about a week old ( only two things that I have self installed has been Civ V and Lightroom 4) on my 512 SSD (have a 840 pro coming in today). I would like to be able to recover to Factory Defaults by using the f4 key and/or the samsung recovery program).

Based on a recent discussion on the discussion board for this comp (oh by the way I have the 780z5e model), I was of the impression that i needed to plug my new 840 pro into a USB drive (have a SATA to USB cable) then boot and hit F4 at the samsung screen. Once in the recovery tool, I would click the "disk clone" feature and let it run. When done, follow various posts on removing back cover and HD and replace with SSD and your done.

If this is not the correct way to accomplish this or if others have experienced problems doing it this way - please let me know.

Thaks in advance.

 

Do you still have the installation media for the programs you've installed? If you do, I would STRONGLY recommend recreating your new drive back to factory settings and then re-installing them. If you don't, you can still create a snapshot of your drive as it is now, using the same tools, but you might need a bigger USB stick (and I can't guarantee it will recreate the recovery partitions, I don't think it does.

Using the USB Factory image you can create will guarantee the recovery partition is put onto your new drive just as it was on the one provided with the machine when new, so that F4 will boot straight to the recovery and allow you to restore to factory settings (or to a backup you've made) at any point.

This is a really easy process, don't worry - just take your time, read the on screen prompts, ask questions on here if you get really stuck (assuming you have access to another device that can access the internet while you're in the middle of doing this. At the end of the day, as long as you don't erase the original drive that came with it, at the very worst, you can always stick that back in and get it back to it's initial state.

You could image to the SSD plugged into an external enclosure, and then plug it in, but you may not get the recovery media working and the Recovery software provided by Samsung isn't designed to do that. There are quite a lot of instructions on these forums now about how to create the image, swap the drive and recreate the contents again (one is in the first post on this thread), follow those, and you should be good to go. If you actually read back on the pages where people discuss your proposed method, mostly it's been realised it doesn't work.

I would HIGHLY recommend creating (and keeping) a USB image, rather than trying to image your drive across using something other than the Samsung Recovery tools. You can then keep the USB stick and/or your original drive in case everything goes horribly wrong in future.

 

Thansk for the reply - if I understand you correctly the steps I would follow would be

1. Recover to the factory settings using f4 and follow prompts.
2. make an image onto a 32GB USB stick runing from the Samsung recovery program.
3. Swap out the drive
4. Upon reboot go into f2 bios and set it to but from the USB stick.
5 Boot from the USB stick.
6. Use the Samsung Recovery Program to make and image on teh new SSD
7. Reboot and f2 to bios to reset the boot priority back to the SSD
8 reload Civ V and Lightroom4

Please let me know if that is the gist

 

additional follow up - I don;t have a 32GB USB drive, will any work or do I need to by something specific?

 

Do not use the incomplete clone. An incomplete operating system could be a disaster, and there is stuff the recovery program does after copying the data image.

I had the exact same thing happen to me when trying to install my SSD. At about 97% through the copy, it said it had failed without giving a reason. However, I did the whole operation again and it worked fine the second time.

 

I'll be receiving my Chronos soon and I just can't wait to put my hands on it. I'm following the discussion about the drive swap cause I purchased an 840 pro together with the laptop and I'll need to install it as soon as I receive them (I'll probably do it straight away right after the first checks on the machine). Just a question: the screws that need to be removed in order to reach the drive, are they common ones or specific ones? If anyone could provide the right size of the tools needed for the removal, would be good, cause I don't have any tools at all where I live, and I should buy this single screwdriver (if only one is needed) to do the whole job.

Also, any advice about a good performing USB 3.0 stick that I can purchase? 32 GB of course, as I'll have to make an image of the HDD on it. I only have a 16 GB one now, which doesn't seems to be enough for the purpose. Cheers

 

Ok, I will try the clone again and see if it works this time.

 

Perfect. Should all work ok.

Any USB should be fine as long as its at least 32Gb, the image is actually not that big, but it's just a bit too big for a 16Gb. 32Gb drives are really cheap these days (I paid the same as they are now for a 1Gb drive several years ago!), so it's worth the investment - keep that USB drive safe as your recovery drive, and you can then reuse the 1tb drive that came with the laptop if you want to.

 

Series 7 chronos north america release cancelled? or is it gonna be renamed ativ 8?

 

I found a guide for optimizing SSD performance on Windows 8 Sean's Windows 8 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs

Does any of this need to be done if I just want to clone the factory Samsung stuff, and not install from scratch?

 

Did anyone else lose the ability to control the brightness of their screens after the graphics update? nothing happens when I press the fn + f2/f3 keys or if I try to adjust it via the settings menu on the start bar(bar with the start button on the right of the screen). If anyone knows how to uninstall the update or revert windows to a previous state? I know its not broken because if I plug in my adapter the brightness increases

 

No, just look at Stevesterès post from the Introducing thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...es-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-519.html#post9176191. However, I would try running recovery from inside windows as the f4 version is a bit sucky.

 

use samsung magician to optimize ssd

 

Go to your device manager, graphic cards, right click on hd4000 and your radeon card and click on activate. Then reboot. Now it should work.

 

i have no problems with the new graphic card drivers, but i cant install the new usb 3.0 driver. anyone else?

 

USB 3.0 driver won't install for me either.

 

For me neither

Gesendet von meinem Nexus 7 mit Tapatalk 2

 

Windows 8 actually won't load USB storage devices on the 3.0 ports, but they do provide power. (2.0 ports work fine.)
The 3.0 ports only work if I plug-in the device then restart the device.

 

Thank you this worked perfectly. Any reason as to why this happened?

 

Great, great computer and thanks all contributors for this thread.

Two issues:

1) HID-mouse, namely MS-3 from FUNC, unable to install when plugging into one of the USB 2 ports. It did work briefly before updating everything available from Samsung and updating Windows 8, now it's dead but still working on an ASUS running on an updated Windows 8.

2) Graphic cards driver, reads "AMD Radeon HD 8800M Series" - hm, why not 8870M and why doesn't steam recognize the graphics card even though I set the Steam-client and all games on high performance in Catalyst Control Center? Also, is there any way to detect what version of Catlyst I'm running?

Would appriciate any ideas on the above. The first issue is a real problem, the second issue just makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Cheers.

 

Do you also get the compatibility warning from windows?

 

The 8870 is part of the 8800 series, so that information is technically correct, in the same way that a polar bear is a kind of bear. It's just not completely specific.

As for the detection, someone wrote (earlier in this thread or in the other thread) that the switchable graphics thing doesn't let anything detect the dedicated graphics, and will automatically activate them when necessary.

 

I have a series 7 np780z5e-s02ca. I can't use function lock and the numpad simultaneously. the 0 has a popup menu function registered to it. what i want is to be able to use function lock and have the numpad enabled without having a popup menu every time i click 0. also is there a program that gives you num lock notifications?

 

I am working through SSD conversion 17" 770 and have a quick question: When I go to Recovery to make an image on flash drive, I click on the factory image button in bottom left. It tells me the file size is 11 GB and change. I keep reading from different ones here that the file is over 16 GB. Is the "factory image" button the correct way to do it, or am I screwing up? 4 GB seems like a pretty big difference for different models.

 

NEED HELP

I have completed items 1 - 4, when I went to boot from my USB, rather than loading windows (which is what I expected) it went into the samsun recovery program. It sees my 512GB SSD I just installed (at 476.9GB) and says after recovery I will have C: with 34 GB and a D with 425.2 GB and a sligtly grayed area that i assume is the rest of the drive and will be ht enew recovery area. Do I just hit recover or should I realocate between C and D?

 

How much battery life are you guys getting from your Chronoses? I'm getting projections of 5-6 hours, on Samsung Optimized, with screen brightness at about 1/5th of maximum, volume at 16, and doing web browsing, which seems a little on the low side given the promised battery life of 11 hours. Maybe the SSD will help with this?

Also, cloning fails again (breaks at 53%, no error specified beyond "failed"). I used Recovery from inside Windows this time, but it just restarts and uses the F4 one. Is it possible to use Factory Image instead (with or without the boot disk option) to simply rebuild the system and backup partition from scratch rather than try and copy it, which is clearly not working?

 

At the bottom of the window about disk size, in the Recovery software, when youre running it booted from the USB, is a slider you can use to change the sizes of C and D. If you drag it all the way to the right, you get a full disc size C drive (apart for the Recovery and boot partitions it creates) but more importantly, no D drive.

 

Touchscreen reduces the stated battery life, but not by half (samsung quote 10 hours for touch models, I think), I get about 8 hours of real use on battery, with the 780z5e s01uk, which is identical to yours but with only 4gb soldered RAM (I.ve upped the total to 12gb, but it made no difference to battery life). Have you enabled battery saver mode? That would reduce your capacity to about 80% of the normal amount.

As for your cloning, are you using the factory image created on a USB drive, are you trying to clone your current setup, or clone the factory image to a new drive (I know you've said previously, but while replying, I can't go back to investigate)? I know it might be a ball-ache, but the general consensus is that a clone doesn't work and that a USB drive image is the only way to go (certainly the least hassle, anyway). Talk us through the steps your using and we/I will try to help.

 

please, i need help

The same happen to me. And I uninstall the HD 4000 Drivers, and 8870 drivers.

I reinstall HD 4000 drivers from Intel website, and then automatically updated from devices in control panel (find online automatically the best driver) . And installed the last catalyst from ati, the 13.5 beta. This fix the brightness problem, but I LOST THE ENERGY PROFILES CONFIGURATIONS IN PANEL CONTROL !!

And i CANT make a new one because the information from the graphic cards is not provided, i cant adjust nothing, help please, what i have done wrong ??? the only energy configuration I have is the "samsung optimized" one, and i cant modificate it Dx

please some help, i have the NP770Z5E

 

USB 3 actualization doesnt work for me, why is this ??

 

Uninstall both, then reinstall Intel HD4000 drivers from SW Update, then install AMD graphics drivers from SW Update.

Your problem is trying to use the drivers from intel and AMD and not those provided by Samsung, which are tweaked to suit this machines specifics.

 

They don't seem to work for anyone - no idea why at this stage, but it looks like a compatibility issue - remember that SW update covers all Samsung laptops, look like the wrong drivers snuck in here. Give Samsung a few days to replace or remove them (this has happened before at least once since Ive owned this laptop, though that time they were changed almost immediately!)

 

Ok guys have any of you already made same test with the new graphic driver?

 

How do you monitor cpu AND gpu temp?
Hwinfo doesn't show gpu temp, and Btw I'd like to have a systray info of both temp...

 

Weird, hwinfo64 does show it on mine

 

Thanks for the reply

 

Ah okies, thanks for letting me know, missed that part.

 

I'm taking the battery saver thing into account (so, adding 1/5th to what it gives me). Right now it says 3 hours left at 75%, but mostly because the HD4000 update has messed up my screen brightness controls and I can't change it in anything (keyboard keys, power settings). What the hell?

For the cloning, I'm using the clone to factory settings option, because I don't have a 32GB USB. Is that one not working for anyone?

 

My laptop's delivery is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon - one week earlier than the estimated date!! I can't wait to collect the package and try using this beauty.

If only I could install the SSD with a 16 GB USB stick (it's the only one I have..)

We'll it shouldn't be a problem if I used it for a bit until I get the stick, isn't it??

 

Other people had problems with this early on, I can't remember the specifics - but that's why most people are going down the USB Drive route.

I played with mine for a while before creating the USB drive and swapping for the SSD - didn't make any difference as it just creates an image of the recovery partition and makes it bootable - worked perfectly for me.
You do need a 32gb minimum USB drive though!

 

Understanding what affects the battery time involves a few experiments. Here, for example, is the variation in the backlight power consumption for my NP900X4C between max and min.



Your 90Whr (IIRC) battery holds about 70Whr with the Battery Life Extender enabled. If Samsung claim 10 hours from 90Whr then that's an average power drain of 9W. But note that power consumption is strongly affected by activity: A minute at 18W needs to be balanced by 9 minutes at 8W to maintain an average of 9W.

So your challenge is to figure out what takes the power and whether you can reduce it. First look in Task Manager. On idle the CPU usage should be no more than 2%. Run HWiNFO > Sensors or another program that shows the power drain and start making tests. See how much the power changes whether or not you have the web browser running (I use Firefox with FlashBlock to stop unwanted Flash content from using power). See the difference in power drain when you have WiFi / Bluetooth turned on / off. And there's the display power (when you get the control back (try reinstalling Settings)).

John