Samsung NP940x3G K05US boot devices not detected

I have a Samsung NP940x3G K05US. I don't know what happened but recently I went to turn it on and it would not turn on.

long story short I had to remove the BIOS battery to fully discharge the motherboard, then the laptop finally booted up. Prior to doing that, the laptop would power on but the screen would be black. Hence not able to POST.

Now I'm able to get it to boot past POSTing however it does not detect the 256 m.2 ssd. Nor when I put a USB3 flash drive with windows 10 on it (confirmed this flash drive works for booting on many other computers).

I've disabled all the secure boot/fastboot etc. all security type options I could find in BIOS and the yet nothing shows up in the boot device priority section.

The only time I can get anything to show up in that section is if i enable PXE boot which is a network based boot option.

Is the chipset fried or am I missing something? I'm guessing the chipset may be fried and hence it isn't detect the USB device and isn't detecting the ssd.

Now there is a chance that this usb3 flash drive just isn't compatible with this laptop but I've used this drive on many machines USB2/3 compatible and it is a usb3 flash drive. (kingston DataTraveler 100 G3 16gb).

Is there anything on the mobo I should check or flip a switch/reseat.. that would get USB/m.2 detection working again?.. I feel like I've tried all BIOS options..

 

i figured out a weird glitch..
if you pull the USB key out then turn on laptop, see the 'samsung' logo, then put usb key in, it'll detect it in the bios. save as boot option, then reboot, take out key, when you see logo again, put key in, then it'll find the key and boot from it..

however in the windows install i can't see the ssd..

any thoughts?

 

Is there an option for the bios to load defaults?

 

Perhaps this generation of notebooks has some of the UEFI-related glitches which affected the previous Samsung notebooks. Have you kept the BIOS up-to-date?

This discussion has some similarities and suggestions.

John

 

I did try loading defaults at one point but that did not help.

I think the drive is dead or port is dead..

I'll review that forum thread as well, not sure if there is a newer firmware revision available and I think the ssd is just either dead or port dead.. I'll also try and buy a new ssd and see if it works.

 

The replacement samsung 850 evo m.2 250gb drive I ordered resolved the issue. However when booting up the laptop did not see the kingston usb flash drive that had windows 10 installer on it. I had to do the trick I described earlier in the thread where you have to wait for samsung logo then put the usb drive in and it will detect it. Then hit f10 to select boot drive before samsung logo disappears and POSTS, then select your usb flash drive to boot from and it'll boot from it.

Now my windows installation see's the new m.2 drive and the BIOS showed it as well. Laptop fixed!