Samsung NP700G7A-S02UK No Bios Access

I have a Samsung NP700G7a-S02uk Laptop. It's about 3 years old and is outside warranty. It has an integrated 8gb SSD (extremecache), and a fastboot option in the bios, which I believe is enabled (this may be important later!)

Pre-problem information:
Today I tried to install an SSD into the laptop. I took out the system drive, and started the install process. Windows 7 wouldn't install to my drive, so tried playing around with deleting and creating partitions, but windows still kept telling me that it could not install windows to my SSD. I then went to my bios and disabled UEFI support, rebooted and tried again, but Windows still wouldn't install. I then forgot to re-enable UEFI, and instead removed the partitions from the SSD and the 8gb ISSD.

This worked and windows started to install. It got to the part where it finalises installation, then seemed to sit there for about 20-30 minutes. My friend whose PC is running the same copy of Windows said that his hung on that part, but was fine after a reboot. So I shut down the laptop, and upon power on is where I started to get real problems.

The Meat of the Problem:
The PC no longer boots. With the new SSD plugged in, or the original HDD I get a black blinking cursor upon boot. Nothing else. Not the usual Samsung logo, no "press F2 for setup", nothing. It does spin the CDROM up and pause for a bit, but I think that might be more of a power on test, as it won't boot from any of the bootable CDs I have (windows 7, Win 8, ubuntu, Falcon 4 etc), nor will it boot from USB.

If I take the hard drives out, the blinking cursor is replaced by "Windows boot manager" It gives a stop 0xc000000e - "The boot selection failed because a required device is unavailable". Unlike other posts on this forum even after I take out the hard drives, I still cannot boot from usb or CD/DVD.

What I've tried:
I phoned Samsung support, they were pretty useless. Went through the process of various Function keys that I'd already tried, F2 (for bios), F12 (boot selection), F9 (default settings), and the only Function key that does anything seems to be F9, which simply causes the laptop to power off.

I've tried resetting the cmos by removing the battery, holding the power button down for 5 minutes, and I've even gone so far as opening the thing up, locating what I think is the cmos chip and touching the contact pins next to it. There's no visible battery like on a desktop, and I can't find a service manual (samsung wouldn't give me one when I asked) so I can't tell for sure if I got the cmos pins. I also looked into removing the ISSD from the motherboard, but like it's name suggests, it's integrated on to the motherboard so can't just disconnect a cable or something. At this point in time I'm considering seeing what would happen if I just pull the extremecache chip off the mainboard!

I'm currently downloading a copy of windows 8.1 from microsoft to try and create a windows installation usb drive, just while I wait for answers here and just so I can satisfy my peace of mind that I've tried everything!

I've read through a lot of the forums on here looking for answers to my problems, but mine seem relatively unique in having no access at all from the bios, even when no hard drives are attached. Naturally I haven't read every single post on here yet, so I was kinda hoping someone here would have some knowledge that I've missed...

Anyone got any ideas? If you made it this far, congrats and thanks!

 

It sounds as if it tried to put the windows install on the iSSD, the problem there is it is not a drive until after the bios posts. Sometimes though the boot sector is on one hdd and the OS on another. Have you tried only booting with the OS drive installed, the OS and data drive and even switching bays?

 

I agree about the install going to the iSSD, not sure if there's any way around it. I'm going to NZ for 6 months in about 3 weeks so really need it sorted before then, so along with the cost of having it repaired that's another reason why I don't really want to send it to Samsung.

As for the hard drives, yes, I've tried every combination of having the new SSD, the original HDD and the Original secondary disk in there I can think of, I either get the black cursor blinking or the windows boot manager screen.

 

I think I had this issue with the G7C but you would have to do this at your own risk. With the Windows boot manager up you can hot plug in the SSD, or original hdd, into the SATA plug.

The HDD should have the MBR already there and set so actually to get it back that may be the safer bet.

 

Hi, sorry for the delay. I think this problem exists with my model too as it has the same combination of iSSD/Expresscache. It also has 2 hard drive slots so I was able to plug in the SSD and the original drive in various combinations, but none of that worked.

What did work however, is removing my SSD, putting it in my friends PC, installing windows to it and then running sysprep. Then put it back in my PC and I was able to boot it to windows and format the iSSD. After that it was all plain sailing and I've been able to reinstall windows (from a DVD this time!) and get my laptop running perfectly.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply/make suggestions, much appreciated!

 

Great, that would work as it gets the UEFI info on the drive pointed to the drive itself, not the iSSD.