NP700G7C-S01UK: unable to enter BIOS when resuming from hibernation

This is just a heads-up for other users of the NP700G7C-S01UK laptop (other Samsung models may be affected).

I am experiencing an issue when waking the laptop from hibernation - Windows stops with an error that "Boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible".

Now this in itself is not a disaster - I think I know why it is, it's because the system is looking at the hard drive in the first SATA port, which still has the original factory partition on it, but my OS is installed on the drive in the second SATA port. In normal operation, it is no problem to configure the BIOS to boot to the second drive.

The big problem is that the F2 key, which normally lets you enter the BIOS, is unavailable while the system is resuming from hibernation.

This means that there is apparently no way to stop Windows booting to the error message, if it occurs. You end up in a loop. Disconnecting AC and battery, and holding down the power button before reconnecting, didn't help.

Fortunately it turned out that pressing F12 at the "system resuming" screen did point the BIOS to the correct drive and I was then able to wake the system fully. However this was more by luck than judgment, because pressing F12 produces no menu or sign that it will do anything.

I have submitted a feature request to Samsung for the BIOS to be accessible when waking from hibernation, but judging by their previous replies to support messages, I'm not optimistic.

Anyhow this is just a heads up for other users. The bottom line: if you are having problems resuming from hibernation, and F2 doesn't work, try F12.

 

Just curious: Are you saying that even after a failed hibernation resume, with the error message still on the screen, holding down power for several secs did NOT turn the PC off?

That would have been my suggestion. Once it was turned off "for real" (as opposed to being in hibernation) it should allow you to boot BIOS with F2.

I can see this would be a problem if hibernation resume fails for some reason other than boot device - and where F12 won't fix it.

 

Yes - that is what surprised me.

I disconnected the laptop from AC and removed the battery. I left the laptop like this for at least a minute. I also held down the power button several times during that time.

When I reconnected AC and turned the laptop on, I was straight back at the hibernation error message. I would have expected the laptop to do a cold reboot.

 

If it suspended to disk it would survive a power outage.

 

I see what you mean - however i had hoped that cutting the power might at least force the BIOS to boot normally instead of to the Samsung "system resuming" screen.

There are basically 2 issues:

(1) not being able to access the BIOS when resuming from hibernation

(2) when resuming from hibernation, the laptop doesn't boot the hard drives in the order specified in the BIOS.

So issue (2) was a problem in my case because the laptop tried to boot HDD1 instead of HDD2 which is my actual OS installation. Issue (1) compounds this by not allowing the user to confirm the boot order upon resuming from hibernation.

 

Hey ! I just had the same problem with the " System resuming " boot loop on my SAMSUNG NP370AE . Being unable to acces bios by tapping F2 i manged to enter bios by tapping F10 ( a menu appeared, and selected "enter setup". I booted from a flash drive , Started a system repair. from that system repair menu i clicked on Shut down, thus making the System resuming vanish and have my F2 option on boot log. The problem is that the boot loop is still there. What can i do to get rid of it ?
( Sry for my bad english. )

 

Solved !
The problem is OS related. I don't know exactly what is the problem with it, but i changed the HDD with another HDD and the boot loop ended. So i took the old HDD, connected to a PC via USB ( used a HDD rack ), saved all the files i needed from System partition and formated it. After all these steps i put the HDD back in the laptop, did a fresh OS install and it worked like a charm !

 

It is because the boot HDD was not waking up fast enough so the system pointed to the HDD that did wake up fast enough, pressing F12 probably got the system to relook at the HDD's and by then the problem HDD spun up and initialized properly.