I think my Samsung may have bricked itself

Hey Guys

First of all, I will apologize if I have asked the same question everyone else has asked. I have read a little on this site about the possible issue I may have and have followed suggestions but nothing has worked so far. Really hoping you guys can tell me what may be going on.

I have a Samsung NP530U3C-A02AU

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to turn it on and I noticed it was boot looping at the Samsung logo. I thought it might of been the battery but alas, after removing the battery I found it to be doing the same thing.

So I started doing a little research and thought my computer may of been corrupted so I tried to follow instructions on another thread on these forums but could not get past step 5.

The problem that I am currently having is that the computer is boot looping at the Samsung logo, I have tried spamming my F2 and F4 buttons repeatedly to the point where it says please wait down the bottom where it previously gave me those options however the computer turns off and then starts again.

I have also attempted the battery disconnection by sticking a pin into the hole of the battery to click the button and drain the laptop of battery but the same problem still exists.

Currently I have the hard drive disconnected out of the machine, I just cant get into BIOS to make any changes, to boot from the USB drive.

Please help

 

Hi Nato85, welcome to NBR. Sorry to hear about your problems.

Your notebook is on the edge of terminal bricking, but may still be salvageble if you avoid further trapdoors.

What you need is to clear NVRAM using the flashing utility for your BIOS. But in order to do this, you need to boot something -- which, as you discovered, is a challenge when your F-keys do not work.

The thread linked below discusses your problem in great detail, including a summary of the required steps in post #7. You need to study that thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/samsung-series-7-np700z5c-s03ca-my-last-hope.762595/

You can try the suggestion by member @oneflame in the post linked below, and use an external USB keyboard to enter BIOS. You can also try using F9 to select a boot device immediately after a power on.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-s01us-is-a-lemon.771836/page-7#post-10186978

Even if you manage to get into BIOS, that is merely the first step. Depending on your settings (in particular whether you use UEFI or legacy BIOS mode) I would still recommend you proceed to clear NVRAM as discussed in that other thread, since that solves the underlying problem.

In cases of harder bricking, TANWare's unbricking thread (stickied on top of the Samsung forum, and also linked below) has a number of solution cases you can check.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/samsung-accumulated-unbricking-solutions.775777/

 

I tried the external USB keyboard trick and unfortunately does not allow me into BIOS. I think the procedure would work, just gotta get into that BIOS lol

 

Just thought I would try one last ditch effort by forcing the computer to boot off a USB by pressing F9

IT BOOTED the USB Drive, re-installed Windows.

Restarted PC, same problem happened.

So this is what I did

Pressed F9 during boot and it got to the screen where it told me to press any key to boot from CD/USB

I left that alone and it booted into WIndows, from there I downloaded the Samsung BIOS Update utility.

From there I ran the utility where it flashed the BIOS.

My computer is now back to normal

I thank EVERYONE on this forum as I found a lot of advice hidden in posts that turned out useful.

Thank you once again. My expensive ultrabook is no longer a brick, you may use this information to help others if you like

 

Thank you for that update. And well done fixing the problem!

In particular thank you for testing the external USB keyboard. As I recall, we only have one report of that working, and it may be that that was a different situation than the usual bricking cases here.

In almost all cases of "soft bricking" (computer still turns on, but has no bootable OS and won't enter BIOS with F-keys) users found that clearing NVRAM with the BIOS flashing utility is the solution. That is why @Fitztorious' thread (again here, with a summary in this post) is our preferred resource in these cases, since it covers that scenario in great detail, including various ways to boot an external device.

Once able to boot something, users who are NOT already on the latest BIOS have an advantage, since they can simply run the BIOS updater to flash the latest version, which will also clear their NVRAM.

For other users, it is a bit more involved, since they have to identify and download the latest BIOS update file for their model, extract the BIOS flashing utility, and execute it with the appropriate parameters to clear NVRAM (such as sflash64 /cvar /patch for many models).

Again, all of this is covered in the thread I linked (again here).

For cases of harder bricking, @TANWare's unbricking thread contains examples of various solutions.

I include the above for others who might come across this thread in the future and be in need of unbricking advice.