Help - Samsung NP700Z5C rollback to factory state (from W10)

Hi everyone!

I own a Samsung Series 7 Chronos NP700Z5C-S03PT that I bought with Windows 8 installed from factory. With time I went through all of the updates and I now have Win10 (part of the free automated Windows upgrade process). Unfortunately, the laptop has been lacking performance lately and I really feel that I'd like to restore it to its former glory. The thing is, I know how easy it is to brick these puppies. So, I come for a bit of help!

How should I go about the process of rolling back the whole thing to factory state (Win8)?

- All the original partitions seem to be there but I can't see their names anymore and it appears that they are somehow empty (1x 500Mb; 1x 300Mb; 1x 24,20Gb; 1x 1.01Gb);

- I have file copies of the "REC2" and "RECOVERY" partitions (their content), as well as image copies (Clonezilla) of the "SDA3", "System" and "Windows RE Tools" partitions. I also have an image of the USB Admin Tool.

- I have the latest BIOS and I can, currently, access it with no problems. =P

So... Any help for this endeavour much appreciated!

 

Hi @Cris_PIM,

It's great that you are so well prepared. That means you should be able to get back to factory state one way or the other.

The easiest way would be to F4 boot into Samsung Recovery Solution and restore to factory from there. But I am guessing that SRS will not load after you installed Win10. And even if it DOES load, the restore is likely to fail.

In the past, we have seen that simply re-installing the original Windows version (in your case Win8) was enough to make SRS work again. You don't have to install drivers etc, just the bare OS in order to make the boot files compatible with SRS again.

But here I am assuming that the contents of the SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 partitions are intact, which you indicate they may not be.

Given that, here are my suggestions, in order of preference:

1) Do you have a Bootable Factory Image backup on a USB stick? Running that should allow you to completely re-image the drive back to factory state. See this post.

2) If your Clonezilla image is a full disk image of the entire drive (which it sounds like) then restoring that should be simple and safe. If it is separate images of the individual partitions, restoring them won't get SRS working.

3) Use your USB Admin Tool to re-image the drive, which will create a blank disk with empty (but otherwise functional) SRS. Then restore the file contents to the SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 partitions. Now you should be able to F4 boot SRS and factory restore.

Details of these procedures (particularly #3) are in the guide linked below:

Backing up and re-creating Samsung Recovery Solution

All of these will wipe the contents of the drive, so make sure to backup user files first.

Also make sure to update to the latest BIOS before you start, if you don't have that already. (Some people might say it's better NOT to be on the latest BIOS, because updating is an easy way to unbrick if bad things should happen. But fact is, if you are able to boot Windows (as required to update BIOS) you can also unbrick in other ways.)

Also make sure you first disable Fast BIOS Boot, and probably SecureBoot, to make it easier to boot from USB -- both for these procedures and in case something goes wrong that prevents you from entering BIOS (knock-on-wood).

Personally, I would probably just re-install Win10 instead of spending time getting back to a factory Win8 installation. And I wouldn't even bother with SRS at this stage. But that's your decision.

Good luck. Please keep us posted on your progress

 

@ Dannemand, thank you for the helpful pointers!

Hmm, indeed, F4 doesn't work anymore. I can get to W10 recovery options and a myriad of other stuff but all of those are W10 menus.

As for the partitions, Windows Disk Management tool tells me that all of them have 100% space available. In other words: empty, I guess. So, simply re-installing W8 according to you wouldn't do much as well...

I don't have a Bootable Factory Image backup on a USB stick nor do I have a full disk image of the entire drive. I only have Clonezilla images of individual partitions ("SDA3", "System" and "Windows RE Tools") which, according to you, won't serve me much. I also have the image of the original USB Admin Tool.

The "SAMSUNG_REC" and "SAMSUNG_REC2" I have as file copies, NOT as images.

So, I guess that I am left with trying to re-image a USB stick with the original USB Admin Tool image that I made with Clonezilla, and then using that to re-partition everything, correct? Which should be done with Fast BIOS Boot, and SecureBoot disabled. From there, I'll have to use a LiveCD to copy over the contents of "SAMSUNG_REC" and "SAMSUNG_REC2" back to their original places and hope that all the files that should be there WILL be there so that I can use F4 again to restore W8 using SRS.

Is it just me or there is a whole lot of potential for things to go wrong?

Another thing: if at any stage I reach a dead end what do you think would be my best option (considering I can format the HDD and install stuff by then) - wipe the whole thing, create just one partition and install W10 from scratch? If so, should I worry with BIOS signatures/certificates, etc. that are/have been pre-loaded/saved? The Secure Boot section in the "security" tab of the BIOS has some stuff that appears to be custom for the current Windows (and it frankly confuses me a bit).

Thanks once again and sorry for all the questions!

 

Hi again, @Cris_PIM,

You are correct that the Win10 Recovery is not what we are looking for.

I am puzzled what could have messed with the contents of your SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 partitions, and I wonder if indeed they are still intact, just not displaying as such. So I wouldn't completely rule out that you could try with a quick Win8 install to see if SRS re-surfaces.

Since you're already planning to wipe everything (I assume you have your user files backed up) you are free to experiment a bit here.

But yes, otherwise your understanding is correct of the process to start over with Admin Tool. And it's actually simpler than you would think when you have the correct procedure (the guide I linked). Admittedly, it's been a few years since I last did it, and maybe my mind has neatly encapsulated and packed away the painful bits

Since I last did this with SRS5/legacy BIOS mode, I cannot tell you what will happen with the BIOS SecureBoot certificates when you start over this way. There is a possibility that Admin Tool will work with SecureBoot enabled; you can try that first. Or maybe searching here will yield some answers to it, though I don't remember seeing it in the Samsung forum. Or maybe this (I just Googled, I haven't read it myself.)

In any case would I re-enable SecureBoot before F4 booting SRS to perform the factory restore.

Also, I would use WinPE or the command prompt in WIndows Setup (Shift-F10) to restore the SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 files. It will probably be fine with a LiveCD, but it is one more OS to potentially mess up your NVRAM.

Oh, and DO perform that BIOS update first. In addition to getting you on the latest version, the update itself will clear your NVRAM, flushing out any gremlins ahead of this procedure.

That's all I can think of. I am afraid I'll be gone all weekend, so won't be able to answer questions. But there is a ton of posts about this in the Samsung forum. The one I linked gathers most of it.

You'll be fine, I am sure

Edit:
Oh, yes, if all fails, just wipe the disk and install Win10. One of several guides in our Windows forum should help with that.

Edit 2:
Something else, and important: When you disable SecureBoot, make sure you stay in UEFI mode ( OS Mode Selection=UEFI OS). We've had reports of it changing OS Mode Selection on its own just by disabling SecureBoot.

 

Soooo... I'm back!

After a LOT of time without actually having the time to go through the procedures (and headache), I finally set aside a day (which ended up being 2 days) for the matter. Here's the rundown on the whole thing:

- Successfully re-imaged the Clonezilla image I had of the USB Admin Tool into a new pen;
- Due to momentary distraction, I though I'd be downgrading to W7 instead of W8 so I disabled SecureBoot and changed OS to CSM mode. In the process, it seems that I lost the customised W10 signatures that seemed to be in the UEFI. Or so I guess... Either way, not sure if it affected the whole thing that much;
- With the Admin Tool I tried first to just fix the MBR to see if F4 function would come back. It didn't;
- Went ahead with partitioning and installing recovery area using the tool, after which I immediately noticed a different Samsung boot screen, with wrong proportions (as if it was squashed or if the monitor resolution was wrong). The "Phoenix" Bios logo was also present, along with a bar instructing to either press F2 for bios or F4 for recovery. I don't actually recall having seen these before (but it had been a looooong time anyway). F4 did bring SRS back (with nothing to recover from yet). But I had lost access to bios/uefi. F2 would do nothing at this point;
- I had previously set up the boot priority for USB HDD first (I knew I would need it), so I booted Zorin OS (that's what I had lying around) from a USB pen and copied my backed up contents of SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 to their newly created designated partitions;
- Restart. SRS. Recovery point dating from 2012! Whoop! Went ahead and tried that. Got an error telling me that the target partition didn't have space. Strange. So I messed around a bit and eventually found my way into the tools section (not sure now if this part was again done from the Admin Tool or if just inside the normal SRS environment), where I eventually saw that the iSSD was somehow partitioned and marked as active (probably adventures done by my now defunct W10);
- Deleted the iSSD partition using the tools provided and went back to the normal SRS page, where this time the recovery did indeed start!
- 99% took a lot longer than the rest, and then. Restart. Boot... Nothing! Error message saying that all boot options had been tried. Just when I thought all was done.
- After thinking and rethinking on what could be the problem, I decided to unplug the battery and clear the CMOS. This somehow corrected the resolution of the boot logo. If it did any other thing, I'm not sure - I still didn't have access to the bios/uefi;
- Booted up Zorin OS again and, using GParted, completely wiped the whole disk & iSSD, leaving everything unpartitioned;
- Admin Tool again, new partitions, new recovery area, new MBR fix. Then, directly re-copied SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2 from my backups using the provided command line;
- Back to normal SRS, this time the recovery got going straight away without any error or need to mess with the iSSD like before. And this time...

It worked! Upon restart, W8 boots up! Access to UEFI had also been restored by now. So, I pretty much was back to factory, just where I wanted to be!

I have been installing updates and tuning everything and I still have some minor questions but I'll leave that for another post. For now I just wanted to share my experience and dearly say thanks for all the previous help ( @Dannemand)!

Thank you A LOT, and my very best regards!

 

Good to hear, that was the issue in restoring UEFI. The problem seems from what you describe as the NVRAM got corrupted and you were stuck with the GPT primary disk. Once this happens and the iSSD initializes it thins that is the primary drive. A real pain in the you know what. But that is the main issue, once UEFI is back you can unbrick and get W8 or better running.

 

Yeah, great job there @Cris_PIM. And thanks for reporting back here.

From your description, I am almost certain that the reason your first attempt at re-imaging with Admin Tools and SRS failed, was because you had switched to CSM mode: SRS6 and your factory image are all based on UEFI and a GPT disk.

As TANWare described, the switch may even have caused NVRAM corruption that prevented you from getting back into BIOS with F2.

But in your case, it would seem that good old CMOS reset did the trick and reset to UEFI mode, thus allowing the second attempt to go through.

Once again, well done. Your persistence paid off!

 

As for those last questions, they pertain to an extra partition that I found:



Any idea on what that 452 MB partition is or where it came from? Also, I should now be able to shrink all of these extra partitions to their absolute minimum needed size using gparted, right?

...And, to the installed programs:


Would you guys give me a hand on figuring out if I have the latest versions for everything, and if I should be uninstalling any of these (some I don't even know what they are for)?

Lastly, is there any way to adjust the brightness values to which the sensor reacts when turning the backlit keyboard on or off? It seems that it currently considers "dark" to be way too bright (keyboard light will only automatically go off if I shine a light directly at the sensor).

Thank you once again! =)

EDIT: I just found out that ExpressCache isn't working as it should, it seems. The tab is present in Samsung Settings and it's set to "ON", but when I try "ECCmd -INFO", all I get is "Product licensing information is not available". If I try "ECCmd -PARTITION" it throws an error and says that the request device is not available. "EC.LMF" is in the folder, just as it should. So... What now? Any ideas? :/

 

EDIT: ExpressCache not working (see post above). =/

 

I did see your questions, and I have some answers. I'm out all day, though, will only get to it Fri night (Eastern time) or Sat.

Meantime, check the links in Samsung Forum Sticky list, since many of these are covered in various threads.

 

@Dannemand: no worries. I only bumped the thread because I wasn't sure if my edit on the post above would be perceptible.
As for searching through the forum, I have, but so far with poor luck (some of the programs I already figured I don't need, but I'm still hunting stuff around).

 

It's fine that you bumped the thread. It is indeed a concern when editing a post to add new findings, that it may not be seen.

I got a few mins now, so here goes:

1) I can think of two things that might have caused that weird 452MB partition: (A) If the size of the new Recovery Data partition (SAMSUNG_REC2) entered in Admin Tool is slightly smaller than your original REC2 partition, yet your factory image is based on the space available in that original installation; that would leave some unused space. Or (B) if you updated the factory Win8 to Win8.1, I remember reports that Windows Update would create odd partitions for use in rolling back the update. (Yet all attempts to roll back that I heard of failed; sounds like Microsoft forgot to test that bit.) In any case would I think you can just delete it and expand your Windows partition into the empty space. No guarantees, though... Personally I would go with a smaller Windows partition and a separate Data partition (see here).

2) From the list of pre-installed programs, I would remove IntelliMemory (which attempts to use RAM for caching, something Windows already does, and which other members have reported worked poorly), Intel AppUpdate Center and Intel WiDi. You can probably remove Intel OpenCL SDK as well. If you uninstall Intel ME, Windows Update will usually install it's own, much slimmer driver instead. The post here has some general bloatware advice from the Win7/Win8 era. But be careful not to mess up what is now a working installation; better leave something if you are unsure.

3) ExpressCache: Try uninstalling it, reboot, delete the partition on the iSSD, install version 1.0.0.98, then reboot. You can find that version in SW Update using Find Model -> NP540U4E-K01US -> Win8 drivers. See this post for more EC advice.

Also study the following threads for advice from fellow NP700Z5C owners (I don't have it myself). This was a very popular model with lots of discussion about drivers etc.

Samsung Series 7 NP700Z5C (15.6" Ivy Bridge) Owners Lounge

Windows 8.1 Update Issues and Discussion

Hope that helps.

Edit: Fixed model number missing in above description on where to find latest EC version.

 

Hi!

Once again, thanks for the help.

So, as a last update (and after taking some more time to fine tune things around here), this is the list of system programs and drivers I have right now:



Seems about right, right?

That extra partition was probably from updating from W8 to W8.1 indeed. I have used GParted to delete it and expand my existing space into it without problems.

As for the ExpressCache, after uninstalling IntelliMemory and reinstalling the latest version of ExpressCache (1.3.118) everything came back to normal and I can confirm that the partition and software are working.

Again and once and for all, thank you for all the help!

 

P.S.: Any ideas on that question about setting brightness values for the light sensor (used to turn the LED keyboard back light on or off)? Registry or any other thing somewhere?

 

@Cris_PIM: Thank you for the update. I am glad to hear you got it all sorted out and working. Well done!

1) I am afraid I don't have suggestions on how to tweak the light sensor for keyboard backlight. On my NP700Z3A I just have Fn-F9/F10 to adjust it. I presume it's the same on yours.

I personally keep keyboard backlight on max all the time, which appears to be using around 0.6W. That's something on a ULV ultrabook. But on a regular voltage laptop like mine, with a churning HDD, display brightness at 50-60%, and a few open Chrome tabs with active content working hard to keep advertisers happy, it doesn't affect battery life much. It has a hard time idling under 20W anyway -- particularly after installing Win10 which, while fairly snappy, uses power like there is no tomorrow.

I remember Samsung users reporting taping over their light sensors to control it...

2) Did you have to copy over your Samsung EC.LMF in order to make that ExpressCache 1.3.118 run properly? And if NOT, have you verified with ECCmd -INFO that it is actually caching? Just checking...

Once again well done! And once again thank you for reporting back. I much appreciate that

 

Hmm, I guess I'll just have to get used to the back light being ON most of the time then. The problem is not that it doesn't come on (I guess taping the sensor would solve that); rather, the problem is the fact that it only goes automatically OFF if the ambient light is VERY bright. Oh well...

As for the ExpressCache, I did verify with ECCmd -info and yes, everything seems to be OK:



As for moving the "EC.LMF" file, I think that I had to do it, yes, but at this point I don't quite remember very well anymore...