Samsung NP930X5J / NP940X5J ATIV Book 9 (2014) 15.6" Haswell announced Jan 6, 2014

Firefox, at least, has a great session recovery plugin (session manager) so you can shut it down and then pick right back up where you left off. IE, however, has proven hopeless. It has some level of 'crash recovery' but if you exit the browser, or shut down the laptop (including update installs) then the history is lost. I've taken to intentionally crashing IE (end task in process explorer) before a restart so that it will do a session restore on startup. I've experimented a tad with 'suspending' the sessions in Process Explorer, but it's not proving too successful. I wish there was a way to 'pause' the browser when not the foreground task, but there's probably not much call for that.

I'm now side-tracked by the loss of bluetooth; I ran samsung update as part of the overall update process today, and now bluetooth has completely disappeared from device manager, and is no longer an entry in the list of software items in samsung update. Argh ...

 

Wow - hours and hours spent today figuring out what happened to my bluetooth drivers. Suddenly, zero bluetooth items in device manager, nothing in PC Settings. Some tricks I tried - show 'hidden devices' in Dev Manager (there were several) and deleted them, reboot; no good. After several hours, I finally got them all back. Since I tried several different things, and many reboots, it's hard to say this was the exact sequence, but - I noticed a very odd 'exclamation point' device under USB devices in device manager, and I removed it, then rebooted, and magically my bluetooth devices showed up in device manager.

Back to testing power issues ...

 

I'm not making much progress in terms of figuring out how to deal with HIPM on my drive, and we know that DIPM isn't supported, but I have set 'lowest' in the AHCI Link Power Management setting ('lowest' is supposed to incorportate HIPM and DIPM if supported). I have also set 'maximum processor state' to 50% for battery - with no noticeable degradation in typical use (browsing, outlook, etc). I also did one 'extra' thing that is probably a HUGE factor ... I dimmed the display!!! I typically have the display brightness cranked all the way up, even on battery (I pass the 'threshold' where it tries to limit you). This time I set it as low as I could tolerate in a bright office (maybe 70% full?) and ... with all these things together, I got FANTASTIC battery life. Well, fantastic for me, anyway! I was onsite at a customer's office for 3 hours, then came home and ran on battery for another several hours ... at least 8 hours total, with intermittent use (I set the 'sleep' timer to 'never' as part of this experiment so laptop was on even when I was away from it). I'm really wondering if dimming the display was the biggest factor in achieving a probable doubling of my battery life.

I obviously need to do more scientific testing, but at least now I'm seeing good battery life. My goal here is to be able to head out to a customer site and not have to remember the charger.

 

Under light usage the display backlight is likely to be the biggest power drain. I prepared this graph for my Samsung NP900X3B with a 13.3" display:

The X3B panel is very bright (400 nit) and isn't very dim at minimum brightness. It was a big change from my Lenovo T420s which was very dim at minimum brightness and mediocre at full brightness. It might have been deliberately set up that way to give good battery time during tests.

While I don't think the X5J panel is as potentially bright as the X3B, the area to be illuminated is much larger (proportional to the square of the display size) so the maximum backlight power at full brightness may be even more than I deduced for my X3B. It will be, as you have discovered, a big factor in the light usage power drain when the rest of the system is likely to use no more than 3W.

John

 

I installed windows 7 pro on my 940x5j-k02us. When the computer sleeps for a long time, it seems to go into hibernate mode without saving a hibernate file. Then when i try to wake it, I see an error:

Your computer can't come out of hibernation
Status: 0xc0000225​

Has anyone experienced similar? Is there something in bios that is preventing sleeping windows from writing the hibernate file?

(So far I have left the stock power options alone: Hybrid sleep = off, Hibernate Time = 360 minutes)

 

I fixed the above problem by installing the Intel ME Interface Driver. Who knew that program actually did something useful??

 

I lied. The hibernate issue remains.... sometimes!

Like a watched kettle, the hibernate file appears to get created normally while the computer is being watched. Doing some testing, I can see the blue power light comes on for a few seconds about when I expect the hibernate to happen.

 

Are there any errors in Event Viewer > System log for the time when the computer is hibernating?

John

 

Loose screws ... best thread lock product?

Ever since I first opened the case to install a larger SSD, the screws work themselves loose frequently no matter how tight I screw them. So I went looking for a 'thread lock' product on Amazon, but everything I found seemed to be intended for BIG bolts. So - can anyone recommend a specific product, preferably available on Amazon, that would be good for these very small screws? Thanks!

 

I always thought the hibernate file was a permanent fixture, not something 'created' on the fly. If I go to the root of my C: drive (with hidden and system files visible), I see hiberfil.sys (6.6 GB), along with pagefile.sys (1.3 Gig) and swapfile.sys (16 meg). It's my understanding that, at 'hibernate' time, the contents of this pre-existing file are simply updated.

I forget off hand what the process is, but I think there is an explicit 'enable' step for hibernation and this file is created at that point in time.

 

The lowest grade of Loktite is plenty strong enough. Something like this.

powercfg -hibernate [on] or [off].

John

 

Actually, my concern was, many of the products found seemed to be designed for big bolts and may be too strong / too thick for our delicate little things! The closest I could find on Amazon (US) was '222' . I'll give that a try.
ETA - how do I post a url with a friendly display name? I tried the 'link' tool but no good.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2118394622&pf_rd_i=desktop
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2118394622&pf_rd_i=desktop

 

The low strength Loktite 222 should be fine. Anything stronger could cause problems if you want to remove the screws.

Regarding links, I always strip off everything starting with /ref. The rest, I think, is a record of how you got to that page. The actual product link is http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002KKTT0.

John

 

The 2 TB 850 EVO is expected to cost US$800 and the 2 TB 850 PRO $1,000. There's no official release date yet, but they will be available to buy in 50 countries. Samsung also says that it has plans to extend the 3D V-NAND SSD lineups to include mSATA and M.2 form factors.

http://www.gizmag.com/samsung-stora...ail&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-bc7fe28d7c-76687611

 

Good news, if only for the fact it means I may be able to pick up the 1TB msata someday for a reasonable price (<$250) before it is discontinued. Hopefully SSD prices start getting in tune with Moore's law.

 

Does anyone know what touchpad is on the acer nitro laptop ? i tried it yesterday at the store i was surpriced it was dead spot on every hair of an inch it was precise on the samsung i can move my finger from the side to side small small moves and the cursor stands still. its a joke for being sutch an expensive laptop.

 

Samsung Update now offers a new TouchPad driver (I haven't tried it yet)
and also the "Samsung Update Patch"
more info here:
http://www.informationweek.com/infr...-to-issue-windows-update-patch/d/d-id/1321094

 

My version of SW Update only lists Windows 7 drivers for the X5J and has the original (1.10.0.0) driver. I downloaded the zipfile to look inside and see that the newest file is June 2014. However, the zipfile name of "Win7 I2C Atmel Driver 64bit(1.10.0.0)" drew my attention to this being an Atmel pad, a detail which I had long forgotten although Google shows it is mentioned earlier in this thread. Station drivers has a driver version 10.43.56.83 for Windows 8 /8.1. Is the new Samsung driver more recent?

John

 

The TouchPad driver version offered to me in SWUpdate is 1.15.4.3

 

That appears to be a lot newer than the original driver although Samsung is confusing us by having completely different driver package numbers for Windows 7 and Windows 8. You could look inside the zip file to see the dates on the driver files.

John

 

I installed it. It is called the Samsung I2C Input Device Driver. I have no idea where the zip file is, but the driver date in Device Manager is 6/12/2015

 

You get the zipfile if you export the driver from SW Update. Anyway, the date you have found shows that this is something new and there is some life remaining in Samsung's notebook support section.

John

 

Anyone knows how to reverse the touchpad scroll ?
when i drag two fingers down it scrolls up and when i drag them down it scrolls them up i have googled but havent found anything useful this is kinda annoying anyone knows who to fix it ?
Thanx

 

In windows 8.1, got to settings charm, then select "change PC settings", select PC and devices, then "mouse and touchpad". Under touchpad options, turn-on REVERSE SCROLLING DIRECTION. All done, enjoy reverse scroll.

 

Hey guys I have one question, and it might be stupid so apologies in advance but I have a brand new Ativ 9 and I turned it on yesterday to start the Windows 10 upgrade process, etc. I plan on upgrading to W10 as soon as it downloads, but I wanted to know if I should update everything that is popping up in SW update before I upgrade? It shows quite a few updates.

I am going to clean install w10 on a new ssd regardless after it upgrades but just wanted to know if not doing any updates would effect my W10 installation. Thanks in advance!

 

I did install all available updates before upgrading to Win10, but I can't say whether or not that made any difference... I did have a full list of Samsung updates to install immediately after the Win10 installation was complete, though. It went very smoothly and I haven't noticed any problems at all.

I also just got my NP940X5J-K02US about two weeks ago, so I didn't have much time with Win8.1 before the upgrade. I read this entire thread while waiting for my new AB9 to arrive, paying extra attention to all of the battery life posts. My battery life was great with Win8.1, but I never ran any benchmarks or loggers to track it. Now with Win10, though, my battery life is absolutely amazing. I ran it with light use for about 8 hours last night and still had over 50% battery left when I went to bed...

Has anyone done a formal comparison of battery life / power consumption before and after upgrading to Win10?

 

Hello Gents. Just made clear installation of Windows 10 on my Ativ 10 PC. Touchpad doesn't work starting from the installation process and in OS. I tried to install drivers through the Samsung update SW and it gives me next mistake: "mxtbootbridge requires an x64 processor error". Have you faced the same issue? Any ideas how to overcome it?

 

Hi i upgraded my samsung ativ 9 to windows 10 but i have one problem i cant zoon with the touchpad on chrome it only works for explorer and edge but not on chrome i have updated all the drivers with the sw software etc anyone else having the same problem ? and know a fix for it ?
Thanx

 

I can confirm the behavior, but can't explain it... Others have posted here about how Chrome handles touchpad gestures differently, but no one mentioned zoom before. What was unique to Chrome for horizontal scrolling was that you had to hold the shift key to use it in a prior version of Chrome... The shift key does nothing for pinch-zoom, and I can't find any other key that works either.

 

ugh the touchpad is one of the things that is annoying me. It is very jerky when scrolling. I have a clean install W10 and touchpad driver is the generic windows one and i cannot seem to get it to update to the newest driver from swupdate even after uninstalling, etc. Its odd because in control panel it shows mxtbootbridge being installed, but it device manage doesnt reflect this. sigh.

The touchpad driver from swupdate is 10.43.56.83. mxtbootbridge in control panel is version 1.00.

 

I posted some info months ago regarding battery life, and the observation I came up with was that display brightness was by far the single biggest factor. I generally crank the brightness up pretty high, even on battery, and I was getting about 4-6 hours of constant use; but if I dropped the brightness down a few notches, it would go for more like 8-10. Since there's no numeric scale for the brightness that I can find, it's hard to discuss this meaningfully. Also, I tend to have 30 or more browser tabs open at once, and invariably, several of them are running at non-trivial CPU amounts (3-5% each in some cases) so that affects battery.

I leave SysInternals Process Explorer running all the time so I can observe the CPU chart in the tray and note when any background task starts consuming solid amounts of CPU (this forum is one of the biggest offending sites, btw!). Back to brightness ... I also seem to recall, when you first use the laptop and increase brightness, there is a 'limit' on max brightness when on battery, compared to wall power, but you can override this. Once you do that, adjusting brightness (function F3) goes 'all the way' to the top. So simply saying 'brightness on max' may be misleading.

PS I just upgraded to windows 10 on one of two near-identical models, and I'm not noticing any difference yet.

 

Can you clarify what you mean by 'Ativ 10 PC'? This forum is all about ativ book 9 (2014) 15.6

 

My experience quite different. Let me be give gory details!
I have two near-identical laptops; np930x5j-s01US and np940x5j-k02US (non-touchscreen, touchscreen).

On the np930 (non-touchscreen), I have just upgraded to windows 10 using the standard Microsoft upgrade methodology (signed up for the update, and let it happen). on the np940 (touchscreen), I'm still at windows 8.1 (as delivered). I've always found the touchpad to be annoying on both so was intrigued by these posts.

On the NP930 (now windows 10):
control panel/programs - mxTBootBridge Atmel Corporation Product Version 1.00.0000
Installed on 10/9/2014
Never knew what this was, but the date of 10/9/2014 suggests nothing new.
Same exact item shows on the NP940 (windows 8.1).
In Device Manager, I looked under both HID (Human Interface Devices) and "Mice and Other pointing devices", and saw nothing to suggest any driver from Samsung or Atmel - just standard Microsoft drivers from 2006 (!). Going to 'details' tab in dev manager for the 'mice and other ...'/HID-compliant mouse entry does show a harware ID entry with 'ATML' in the strings - suggesting Atmel perhaps.

I ran Samsung SW Update for first time since windows 10 upgrade, and possibly for first time ever (picked the 930 laptop up on eBay so can't speak to how it got to its current state). I had to tell it what my model number was (which never happened on the NP940). I found my exact model reference - np-930x5j-s02us. I then had to choose between windows 7 and windows 8.1 (no windows 10 option, so chose 8.1). I then saw 'Save Setup Files', and got a list of 32 items. Very unclear if these are 'everything available' or stuff detected as needing to be updated on my PC.

I then saw, in the list of Setup Files to save, Touchpad firmware update driver, type driver, 64 bit, 3.41MB, version 10.43.56.83.

I had little interest in the rest, so deselected them and only selected the one file mentioned above.

This resulted in a folder 'Touchpad Firmware Update Driver_10.43.56.83_64bit' (not a zip file, not sure how that happened ... I never chose to unzip or run anything ... ). Contents included 6 files, including setup.exe, and three mxtbootbridge files (cat, inf, sys). File SWDesc.txt inludes this rather skimpy bit of info.
ItemName=Touchpad Driver
ItemDesc=Installs Atmel touchpad driver.
ALL files are dated from 9 to 12 2013 - so pretty old.

Running setup.exe tells me it is installing mxtbootbridge, and offers a default of 'repair' (suggesting it knows it's there already) but offers no suggestion of version numbers ... installation completed without further feedback and never mentioned versions.

Control panel / programs still shows an entry nxtbootbridge, and 'installed on' still says 10/9/2014 and version is still 1.00.0000.

So what the heck is this update you speak of?!

 

Hello everyone. I'm sure (hope) that someone had the similiar problem with NP940X5J-K01US and could give me the clue...

The problem started few month ago. To start or fully restart the ultrabook I was forced to press power button twice or more. Everything was okay with sleep mode - when I opened the lid it started immediately. Few weeks later, to start the ultrabook from "cold mode" I was forced to press 10-20 times. Now it's dead. Quick blinking of capslock, the blue light of the running machine and 0.5 sec of rotating fans. That's all.

It is looks like that something wrong with the power circuit. There is a warranty of course but I managed to seriously scratch the lid of the machine and service center refused to take it. And there is no such spare motherboards in Russia.

We tried to locate the (capacitor?) with the heat camera but the time (0.5 sec) is too short to locate the overheated problem zone.

So, where is the probable bug, anyone? Thank you.

Basically we hope to find the problem element and solder a new one. A trick that worked on some not so advanced models and motherboards...

 

Hi,

A few weeks ago I noticed that the "battery life extend" has disappeared from samsung settings, and now battery is charged by 100%.


Only I have this problem, or at all?

 

Samsung have dropped the BLE support from the more recent versions of Settings. An older version of Settings which supports BLE should work OK. You can find many different versions by using Samsung SW Update to look through the drivers/software for different models.

John

 

Battery Life Extender must be supported in BIOS in order to show up in Settings, even older versions of Settings. Check yous BIOS (F2). If it's NOT in there, no Settings versions will have it. If it IS in there, look for a Settings version 2.0.x to have BLE support.

I am surprised to hear that this model has BLE at all since Samsung stopped providing BIOS support for it in newer models starting mid 2013. It was one of the few changes between the NP780Z5E (from early 2013) and the NP880Z5E (from mid 2013).

 

Yuk - laptop woke all by itself in my bag and got super hot!

I closed the lid on the laptop at 4:30pm, and slipped it into my backpack. Got home around 8pm, and took the laptop out of the bag, it was very hot to the touch.

I immediately opened event viewer.

saw this at 4:20:05pm:

The system is entering sleep.

Sleep Reason: Button or Lid​

But also - saw this, at 4:20:05pm (same time, though EARLIER in the list ... FWIW):

The driver \Driver\USBHUB3 for device USB\ROOT_HUB30\4&af86a28&0&0 stopped the power transition.​

Nothing more until 5:20:05pm, when there are a few entries regarding clock change, Browser election, etc, then at 5:20:06pm (1 second later), there's this one:

Firmware S3 times. ResumeCount: 7, FullResume: 274, AverageResume: 275​

and then this one at 5:20:10pm (5 seconds later):

The system has returned from a low power state.
Sleep Time: ‎2015‎-‎09‎-‎22T00:20:07.064590800Z
Wake Time: ‎2015‎-‎09‎-‎22T00:20:07.030567000Z
Wake Source: S4 Doze to Hibernate​

This would suggest a sub-second event.

So I can't decide if it went to sleep and then woke up, or never slept ...

Pretty darn risky to have a 'cooking' laptop in a bag for hours ... probably for the battery especially ...

I'll do some tests to see if it sleeps on lid close, and look in the event log again.

PS - I did upgrade to windows 10 about a month ago.

 

I've always been hesitant to put a sleeping notebook into a bag for this very reason. Be thankful that modern hardware is less power hungry: Some previous generations of notebooks have been known to melt if they woke up while in a bag.

John

 

I love my NP930X5J, but I am ready to upgrade to something faster that has
- 15" screen
- weight of less than 4 lbs
- 16GB RAM
- PCIE SSD
Should I wait for Samsung to come out with an Skylake ATIV or go for the new Dell XPS 15 just announced (October 2015) as the world's lightest 15 inch laptop...?

 

You can watch out for more information about the NP940Z5L (unfortunately, the numbering suggests it is touchscreen. And be forewarned that the PCIe SSDs which have impressive performance also tend to need their own cooling system.

I'm quite happy with my latest (non-Samsung) acquisition.

John

 

It is highly questionable that Samsung will use a QC cpu or incorporate TB3/discrete graphics, 16GB may also be a stretch. The dell looks good, but I would wait for reviews for heat dissipation, battery life, coil whine resolved.

 

My google chrome starts automaticly somethimes on my ativ book 9 anyone have the same problem and knows how to fix it ? im running windows 10 i had the same issue when i had windows 7 on it

Thanx

 

The Ativ 9 Pro looks good - except it only comes with 8GB soldered RAM and a 256GB SSD:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP940Z5L-X01US

The NP940Z5L-X01US is also available at Best Buy(USA):
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung...lack/4526101.p?id=1219757968441&skuId=4526101

I hope that Samsung will release a 16GB RAM / 512GB or 1TB SSD version.

I am currently testing the XPS15, but most likely will send it back. Not enough performance improvement over my Samsung NP930.

 

hi,

anyone else has a problem with the wireless internet on this notebook? If i fold the notebook and open it after some time, it don`'t find any wireless connection. I need to restart it to have a connection again.... Anyone have a suggestion? In the "Network Sharing Center" i can't open the adapter settings, if i have this probem.

 

Which version of Windows?

See if the latest WiFi driver direct from Intel clears the problem. If not, try changing the WiFi card power management settings.

John

 

hi

ok thx i will try. i have win 8.1

I only tried to intall the wireless treiber from samsung setting and this fails all the time.

if i dont post again, it worked ;-)

 

Good news:

Samsung has been somewhat of a small player in the notebook market lately, but today they are announcing two new devices which should appeal to anyone looking for a very portable laptop. The new Notebook 9 series laptops, in both 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch sizes, come in at a very svelte 1.85 lb (840 g) and 2.84 lb (1.29 kg) mass, respectively.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9913/...ralight-notebook-9-series-laptops-at-ces-2016

But: "RAM is 4-8 GB, and storage is 128-256 GB SSD" I hope they will do a 16GB/512gb version

 

Hi to all, sorry for my english but i use Google translator for the posts.

I have an NP930X5J and i open it. I see place for the second ssd but without connector , only pins welding raised to the motherboard. There are two holes near . They are perhaps to screw connectors without solder or it is impossible to put the second ssd without this connector ?

 

Welcome. Your English is good.

What you are seeing is where the M.2 socket would be soldered onto the board. It is a mystery why Samsung didn't include the socket - the cost saving would only be a few cents. More likely the decision was steered by the marketing people because the notebook versions which included the second M.2 socket had a significant price premium.

It would be a challenge to solder the M.2 socket on and I don't recall anyone trying to do this.

John