It is official... NP700Z7C-S01US is a lemon - Part 2

I have given my machine up for dead. I sent it to L2 Computing in NYC and they told me they needed a copy of the boot table (not sure what that is) to fix my machine. That was back in March.

Last Friday (6/26/15) I called L2 Computing for a status. Nothing has changed. I asked them to return my machine and issue me the refund. They said OK.

Fast forward to about an hour ago. I get a call from L2 Computing. They now say they have fixed my machine but need my HDD cable to run additional test. I would figure that a place that fixes computers would have a HDD cable capable of working on the Samsung. But I could be wrong.

Tomorrow (6/30) I will mail my HDD cable to L2 Computing and await their verdict.

If and when I get my machine I will let everyone know what they did (if they will tell me) and if it truly is fixed or not.

Brian D

 

Hopefully all is well.

 

Brian, keep us up to date on the status of your laptop. I like to know what they did. After they "fixed" my laptop, there is a 15 second wait before the laptop starts. The keyboard's backlight stopped working also.

 

^^ I never got a good answer as to why the 15 second start delay. They must have done a hardware replacement of some sort...

 

Check bios setting for ' Fast boot/Extended boot' option. Default is extended (takes longer) and they likely reset bios to defaults as standard procedure. Same with keyboard bl, perhaps; default could very well be ' off'.

 

^^ I've just checked the bios settings. Enabled or disabled the "fast bios mode" does nothing to affect the startup time. Still 15 seconds delay. There is no bios control/settings to turn on/off for the keyboard backlight. Whatever, S2 computers did, they must have done a hardware replacement of some sort.....

 

Do you guys still have an iSSD?

 

Yes, the 8GB iSSD is still there...not affected by the "fixed"...

 

is the 15 second delay before or after the samsung logo?

 

Before...press power button on.....wait 15 seconds....see Samsung logo....

 

For some reason the backlight has stopped working also...

 

Probability here then is the UEFI hardware initialization file is not being read. This file probably also turns the power to the keyboard on as well. TBH there may be a way to get it back but this too could also put you back with an unbootable system.

Edit; TBH again they most likely will never tell you what was done. They could be cornering a market here.

 

Good to see this chatter here. I sent the HDD on 6/30 before I went to Washington State for a mini vacation. Still have not heard back from them. I will call tomorrow.

To the 15 second delay. Question: What if joot were to reformat his drive and load Win7 instead of Win8(.1). Would that solve any problems with the delay? As for the backlit keyboard, that is a mystery in and of itself.

 

The UEFI table is loaded from under the format and allocation. In this way just playing with Disc Manager will not screw the pouch, so to say. Again more than likely not finding this where it expects it then is not initializing the backlit keyboard. Another school of thought is the UEFI is trying to initialize but not seeing the keyboard then kicks out but this is highly, and I mean highly, unlikely.

I caution against an OS change as it could easily restart the boot issue. This is the problem with not knowing what was done and also what exactly is happening to cause the delay. If we knew it were just re-pointing the UEFI boot location and setting it properly then it could be fixed, notice I did not say easily.

 

I just got off the phone with L2 Computers in NYC. They shipped out my machine on 7/8 and I should have it on 7/14.

According to the "technician", all he did was reflash the BIOS. Well, I wonder how they did that? If that is what it takes to fix one of these lemons then is this something any computer repair facility can do?

Joot, did you access your BIOS and see what version it was? Is it the current or maybe they loaded a different version and that might be what is causing your delay. I don't know, just trying to help figure out what went wrong.

I know I have seen instructions on how to reflash a BIOS, but how does one "break" into the bios if the machine will not boot at all? This would be an interesting topic I would think.

When I get it back tomorrow I will install my HDD and see what happens. But, is there something I should do first before installing the HDD? Maybe start the machine without any media and confirm setting of the BIOS so that I can at least read from USB or DVD?

Thanks
Brian D

 

We all know a reflash will bring most of these back. It resets the UEFI data and position, IE. it fixes all the UEFI corruption issues. This is where most fixes here go awry. When the UEFI corrupts it makes it almost impossible to flash a new/same bios. Now if the Bios Emergency Recovery were used, and this system supporsts that, I could easily see that. Same is true if he has an eprom burner that was used.

 

Andy, I tried to use the BIOS Emergency Recovery but could not get into the BIOS by any means. I am sure if the BIOS was set to allow USB/DVD access then it might be a different story. However, I had my BIOS setup so it would fast boot and did not give me access to USB or DVD. I am sure that was my downfall. Lesson learned here, serious lesson learned.

There is a possibility that L2 removed the BIOS and reflashed it. I am not sure, but it would seem the logical route. Or, they could have replaced the BIOS and then flashed it. I am not sure and they did not offer that information.

 

It would be nice to know the procedure, especially if it were one that can be preformed at home. It would be nice though to say the third system got recovered though.

 

Bios version is the same exact one. There is only one bios version for this BestBuy laptop. As far as installing different OS version, I've tried Windows 7, 8.1, and Windows 10 Preview, no difference, they all have the 15 second delay booting from a cold boot.. Note however, if you perform a system restart and not a shut down, then cold boot restart, there is no delay. There's a delay only if you shut the computer down and re-start it again with the power button.

 

Thanks Joot...

Well it arrived. Same issue that joot is having is what I am having. Seems as though it takes me about 19 seconds before the splash screen comes on. I have BIOS access via F2 and recovery access via F4. But the recovery does not work. Nor will the machine boot.

I get a BCD file error 0XC000034. I have Win8.1 DVD and tried that. Boots up from DVD but cannot repair. I checked the BIOS to see if UEFI was enabled and it is. But something about the BIOS menus looked strange.

Checked the BIOS version and it is P03AAE which I think is the first generation of BIOS. I seem to recall the BIOS for this machine should be P03APB. This could very well be the root cause of not booting right now. The reason I remember is when I was starting to have issues I did a search on BIOS versions for this machine. I also seem to recall looking at the BIOS version when I still had F2 BIOS access.

So there we are. Still a lemon. LOL but maybe with some more digging around I can upgrade the BIOS and get it to boot. If not, I will have to get a working copy of Samsung's Win8 with recovery. I have a full recovery of the HDD but I also have all the files from my user account. So either way, but I would like to have F4 recovery back on the machine.

Thanks again for all your help!

added: I thought I sent my power supply with the computer to NYC. I can't find it and it was not in the box. I was pretty sure I sent it but that was 4 months ago. So I will chalk it up to old age. Can anyone tell me what the model number for the NP700Z7C-S01US power brick? Thanks.

 

Hi, you could try "BCDboot c:/windows /s c: /l en-us"
http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/17774-windows-8-boot-error-bcd.html

 

It could be relevant that the earlier NP900X4C notebooks shipped with Windows 7 had a P**AAC BIOS while those shipped after the arrival of Windows 8 came with a P**ABK BIOS. Evidently Samsung found that the changes to the BIOS needed to achieve compatibility with Windows 8 couldn't be addressed by a simple BIOS update. I see that the NP700Z7C -S01US was released before Windows 8 arrival (comments here dated May 2012) and by inference I would consider that the P**AAE BIOS is appropriate.

Any standard Samsung (or compatible PSU) with the appropriate power rating (90W according to this) will work but samsumgparts shows the part number as AD9019S or BA44-00215A.

John

 

Thanks, John.

Andy, I tried the bcdboot and it did not work. I just made a Rufus boot USB with windows 8.1 on it. Can't do anything more because my battery died. I will have to wait for the replacement power adapter. Oh well.

 

@john

John,

The reason I believe the BIOS I have is not the right one is because I am missing Secure Boot option. I have fast boot but not Secure Boot. In the Secure Boot I had three options; UEFI only, UEFI or CSM (or something like that), and CSM (I believe). With that in mind, I am sure there are other options that I do not recall but possibly not available.

The main problem I am having now is missing BCD file. No doubt it is there, somewhere, but the PC cannot find it. I queried the net and found it should be in the \efi\ (folder? / partition?) but I do not find it. OK, I can live with that, meaning, I should be able to recreate it, possibly.

Does this seem like a plausible solution, to recreate the BCD file? As always, I do so at my own risk of losing everything on my HDD, but like I said, I have backups of all my files. (lol I think I better double check before I wipe my HDD). Or, I can purchase a new drive and just rebuild anew.

Thanks,
Brian D

 

Update:

As of 8:50 PT this morning, I was able to boot into my Windows 8 environment. After much reading and trying different things, I came upon this solution: http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader

The instructions given in the post "I've spent a lot of time..." actually was the fix for my problem of "no BCD file found". There may have been other things I tried that did not work, but may have contributed to the success of the processes outline in that post.

Right now my laptop is showing the windows 8 start screen and it is my user profile displayed, but the HDD is still very active. Might be building a catalog (if I may) of apps and files. I don't have access yet to the desk top. That is next.

However, we are making progress.

Thanks,
Brian D

 

That's good news.

I'm not being very helpful with anything to do with UEFI. I've not tried tinkering with any of these settings.

Very prolonged HDD activity might indicate that it has a health problem.

John

 

if in the Windows environment it may be building index etc.. If not it could be running disc check etc. from non successful boots.

 

John and Andy, agree with you both. I now have navigation access but the mouse has issues until I bring up the mouse in control panel. On boot up I have F2 BIOS control but no F4 Restore control. I am working on that. Otherwise, other than being very slow to boot, it seems to be usable again. But I am not ready to restore my files. I will continue to use this HP laptop I have.

Again, thanks to you both and others who have endured my whining and complaining about this machine. LOL

Brian D

 

Just a thought, but could the 15 second delay be caused by an external storage device plugged into a USB port? e.g. USB stick, external HDD, external DVD drive etc. That can sometimes confuse BIOS's and cause delayed boot sequences.

 

Cakefish, joot has the same issue as me. We both had our laptops serviced at L2 Computer in NYC. Both are slow to boot; his around 15 seconds and mine around 19 seconds. I have nothing connected to my machine, but you may be correct that the machine might be doing something or looking for something. I am not sure. I am still working the issues.

I have also noticed that the machine will not restart from the restart command. I have to shut it down completely. It just has a black screen and power remains on. So there are diffidently issues revolving around some device or firmware.

As mentioned before, L2 told me they reflashed the BIOS. I don't know if they used the same chip or a new chip. That information they would not say.

 

@joot. I have been working on my laptop almost daily. The machine is speeding up and speeding along. While doing some research on issues, I sometimes stumble upon some information that I did not think of. One was ExpressCache.

I heard that our machines had it but I did not know anything about it. Then I also read about rapid start on one of John's post. Putting the two together in my mind I wondered if the machine boots from SSD ExpressCache and that is why the thing takes seconds to boot. I am sure there is some magic software that starts this thing right up.

Anyway, I digressed. I found the command to determine if ExpressCache was mounted or not. I ran the command and sure enough, it wasn't. So I opened MSCONFIG and saw ExpressCache Services were not running. Selected them to start and rebooted. Command line now shows ExpressCache working. But the machine is still lagging on start up.

Would be nice if someone with a NP700Z7C-S01US could compare files/Cache size/BIOS version, etc... with us to see what we are missing. I am sure we are missing something,

One more thing. I contacted Samsung to buy a DVD with Win8 so I can do a fresh install. They are sending me a recovery DVD for free. I hope the recovery DVD is a new install image used on all new computers of our model number, and not just a generic Win8 install.

Have you made any progress on your end?

Brian D

 

It was working last night. I used it this morning. Turned if off to do other things. Turned it back on, well, tried to turn it back on and now there is nothing. No lights, no camera, no action. Completely DEAD. Power switch does nothing. Battery charging light is still working.

Disconnected the BIOS battery and the main battery. Plugged in the power adapter and still nothing. Reconnected, shorted the battery with the little button on the battery and am now waiting. Maybe there is some kind of timer inside, I don't know. It just will not power on at all.

Where is the "crying" emoticon? <- guess that will have to do.

 

did you get any updates that you noticed? I would be if I were you.

 

You know, Andy, it is hard to be mad at an inanimate object such as technology.

 

LOL, I do not seem to have that same issue.

 

touché... Now the task at hand is to find a suitable replacement. Preferably not a Samsung. This should be fun.

 

good luck, Maybe they will back their work though. Does not hurt to ask. Over here as they say, if it were not for bad luck.....

 

Brian, no progress whatsoever on my end. I'm using it as is for now. I don't believe the express cache has anything to do with the 15 sec delay...I've turn if on and off and no difference...

 

That will not matter. The delay is a pre-bios one. The system is either initializing hardware or is searching for something no longer there. Even they, he company you used, may not know why the delay is there they only know the procedure works. Knowing the procedure used might provide a clue for someone else to figure out the issue, but again I doubt it.

 

You can try pressing the BIOS discharge button, recessed in a small pinhole in the back. You have to do it while the power is plugged in - to get it to turn back on.

As for the other UEFI issues, I was able to interrupt the process and delay with an external keyboard.

I resolved these issues by an external USB Keyboard. During boot, if you mash the appropriate F keys.. (F10 & F11, I think for my UEFI BIOS configuration), you can get into the Boot Menu.

I had both a Windows 10 GPT/USB installation, and an ArchLinux USB/MBR plugged in.

I spammed the F keys /on both keyboards. I am not certain if it is a matter of "timing" that the two keyboards allowed me to get.. or a matter of hardware interrupts.

Either way -- I hope this helps!

 

A clarification: The switch in the pinhole is to disconnect the internal battery which is part of the procedure for resetting the BIOS but doesn't do the reset directly. Connecting mains power closes the battery disconnect switch.

John