Samsung 350V5C-S07 (Serie 3) - Can't boot windows 7 or 8...

Hello,

First of all, excuse my poor english, this is not my native language !

I recently bought a notebook for school, and it cames with windows 8. I downgraded it to windows 7 and everything went perfectly.

Then I updated some drivers (intel drivers, AMD drivers for the graphic card) and since I updated the AMD Radeon Drivers, the computer doesn't boot on either windows 7 or windows 8 (Tried 2 differents installs, same problem...)

I decided to update the Bios, and then it was working again... so I was pretty happy, decided to install drivers again (shouldn't have you say ?) and BOOM again I cannot boot the computer...

I changed the boot order, tried to put a windows 7 or the windows 8 one, but still nothing.

The only way I can boot the computer is to go on the bios, and to choose the hard disk (or DVD player) from the bios override. I also tried to do a repair with the windows dvd, but same problem.

Does anybody have a solution or shall I bring the computer back to the shop and wait for a new/repaired one ?

 

Hi r0nan, welcome to NBR.

Most problems with downgrading to Win7 are caused by UEFI issues. Check this thread from earlier today.

What did you do when you installed Win7? Did you convert your disk to MBR and disable UEFI in BIOS (changed OS Mode Selection=CSM OS)? Or did you simply format the Windows partition and install Win7 while staying in UEFI mode (kept OS Mode Selection=UEFI OS or UEFI & CSM OS).

Basically, the two has to match: On a GPT disk, Windows MUST be installed and run with UEFI enabled. On an MBR disk, WIndows MUST be installed and run with UEFI disabled.

Of course the problem could be something else entirely. But I would like to check this first.

 

Hello Dannemand, thanks for the warm welcome !

I simply formatted the windows partition and installed windows 7 ultimate 64bits on it, and in bios choosed UEFI BIOS and legacy OS.

Should I try to convert the disk to MBR and install windows 7 again ?

EDIT : I just converted the harddisk to MBR, and it booted directly on the DVD, will try an install and see how it's going.

Shall I install the graphic cards drivers again or the same problem as before will appear again ?

 

Oh, that's the nuclear option: You just wiped your entire disk by doing that conversion, including your Recovery partitions. But that makes it all easier, since now we don't have to be careful about losing anything. It's already gone

The Win7 install guide in this post tells you in great detail how to proceed from here. Just follow that as closely as possible. In particular, I would disable UEFI completely ( OS Mode Selection = CSM OS) to make sure Windows doesn't install in UEFI mode.

Please keep us posted. I check in here a few times a day.

 

Yeah, had nothing to save, and got a windows 8 DVD in case...

I reinstalled windows 7, had some problems with the windows update installing things that made a black screen of the death ! But it's fixed right now.

I'm currently installing some softwares, but I don't know if I should install the AMD Radeon (graphic card) drivers since they were pretty bad... Well, I think I should try again, maybe it will work (i'll take them from the samsung website like I did before)

 

Samsung stopped posting updated drivers on their website about a year ago. What's still there is mostly outdated. You want to use the SW Update utility to fetch drivers from Samsung's database -- except a few which you want to install manually. Ideally you want to do that before running Windows Update.

It's all covered in that Win7 install guide I linked in my last post. A complete install will take you less than an hour if you follow it.

 

Hello,

Thanks for the help, everything is working perfectly !