Samsung Series 5 ultrabook not starting

SERIES 5***** not 3

Last night I opened up my laptop and went to turn it on, but only the blue power light was on and nothing was popping up on the screen so I held the power button to turn it off and then tried to turn it back on. This has happened before and usually this solves the problem but it didn't this time.

When I go to turn it on the blue power light comes on and I can hear the fan spinning but no other buttons light up and the screen stays black. I've pressed the battery pinhole button in the back and plugged it in and tried turning it on but still nothing :/

Help please!

 

Disconnect the mains, disconnect the battery by poking an unbent paperclip through a hole on the bottom (next to a symbol which is a rectangle with a cross in it) then hold down the power button for a minute. Then reconnect the mains (the battery will reconnect automatically) and try starting.

If that doesn't work the next step is to remove the RAM and try again. If the computer show signs of life then turn it off and replace the RAM and try starting (removal / replacement of the RAM module sometimes sorts out bad contacts). If putting the RAM back in stops the computer again then it could be bad RAM.

If removal of the RAM doesn't give any progress then the next step is to remove the HDD (or SSD). if the electronics or the connecting cable have gone bad then the BIOS gets stuck while interrogating the storage device. Disconnecting it completely means the BIOS doesn't try.

John

 

My samsung series 5 ultrabook did the same today, it will not get past the bios splashscreen, it says f2 for bios and f4 for recovery at the bottom but is entirely unresponsive.
unless it automatically downloads and updates the bios, i havent made any changes to it last time i turned it off. It did however seem to be performing sluggishly, i thought i had probably been sleeping it too much and that it was time for a reboot but then this

any help or tips would be much appreciated

Daniel

(ps, tried all the steps outlined here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/703120-samsung-series-5-ultrabook-not-starting.html with no result, and managed to back up my disk using a HDD docking thingy)

 

OP. You could try and reseat the memory, see if that helps, but I have a feeling it might be your motherboard.

cpt.credible, sound like your hdd is defective, open the service slot. unhook the flat cable from the mainboard to the hdd. Start your laptop and see if its seems "snappier". Most likely it will go straight through bios and give you a "missing operating system" message

 

I had the same problem, A couple times I would turn it on and the Samsung logo would appear but then it would shut off. I opened the memory HDD on the bottom and with it open I turned it on and it worked. I put the cover back on and screwed it in and then It didn't work. Now I have the cover on but the screw almost all the way but not completely and it's fine.

 

You need to remove and replace the memory module. The contacts may be getting oxidised and reseating the module usually cleans them and restores good contact.

If you aren't sure how to do it then there are plenty of instructions, such as this, on the www.

John

 

Don't you just love it when you get first timer poster (in this case 3 of them) and they never post back to say it didn't fix the problem or not, let alone say "Thanks!" if it did fix the problem.

 

I'v got exactly the same problem as yours. But before it went out one of my partition went missing. After several reboot the partition still wont show up. then i shut it down and after several hours, it gave me this. Did your series 5 fixed? Is it the MB went fried or RAM. RAM is OB but still got a slot for SODIMM. tmrw will buy a 4GB and try to install it. If it doesn't work then I will need a new laptop. This time I'll get an ASUS. Even Samsung is even more convenient in drivers updates with SWupdates. But my last ASUS went fine until today even after i spilled a salty water onto it.

 

If one of the partitions went missing then I would be worried about the health of the hard drive.

Active SMART is a program for monitoring the drive health. You can use a trial version for a month which should be more than enough to check if the HDD is sick. If you can't get to Windows to install this program then the alternative is to remove the HDD and put it into a USB enclosure. You can then plug it into another computer and check the HDD contents (you may not be able to read the drives SMART data).

The other possibility is that your computer has caught something nasty.

John

 

I would like to say 'thanks', and I have now tried all the steps as outlined above. Sadly I am sure my Ultrabook has a dead motherboard!
Any suggestions for getting a new board (cheap!) or getting the old one fixed (UK) would be welcome.
Seems that Samsung have slipped up on quality control with this notebook.

 

Did you look on ebay? Sometimes people are selling parts from dead notebooks and sometimes there are new parts.

You can also use the parts finder at Samsungparts.com to find the mainboard part number.

Finally, you could contact Digicare who is probably the biggest of the Samsung UK service people to see what they suggest.

John

 

You can find those on eBay. Not too hard to swap out a MB.

 

Hello -
I've had the 540U model for a year. First I did SSD upgrade. I think power adapter quit working then bought a cheap chinese one and that always got stayed hot until it blew up. Then bought a Targus for Ultrabooks only adapter and started having loose connection at the power port (I'd have to turn the plug so cord faced opposite side). Read about the complaints for the power ports getting loose. Figured the bad connection would could be unhealthy on the Ultrabook. I would just adjust the plug until the orange charging indicator was on and, I did keep it plugged a lot while using or playing games but most always unplugged when full charged (80%) when powering off.

After selling the Targus charger along with a dell xps I sold I spliced a Sony 19.5v adapter, keeping and using the same Targus 'T' tip. 1-2 months no problem. I must add, a few days before my problem explained below, I added 4gb memory to the empty module. No problems. I also checked a few HDD's around this time but couldn't get a full boot. Just boot-looped. Re-inserted my SSD and every boot and function normal.

-> (I forgot to say when I upgraded to my SSD I downgraded to Windows 7 from 8! I did have to wipe, fresh install at one time when other user profiles became corrupted. Profiles became corrupted later, again..)

The signs of my problem: Everything been good, can't remember if the battery was charged or not but, pretty sure the computer was off at this time the adapter was plugged in then, the green power indicator on the Sony adapter I was using went off and so did all the LED's on the computer. After cutting the splice on the Sony cord to check and of coarse, unplugging it, all looked okay didn't look like the +- touched at all. The green light went back on the Sony adapter. Tested with DMM for proper voltage and wondered why the LED light and power shut off so I touched the - and + together and heard the pop with spark and green LED goes off, shutting down the power output on the Sony adapter. Seems legit. But, I did not hear any pop as the problem happened so what caused the Sony adapter to shut down?

The Ultrabook would not power on and did not get the slow pulsating blue LED blink I normally see when trying to power up on dead battery (usually hibernation..) but my battery is fine and gets charged fine. One thing I did notice just before the problem was the battery oddly becoming fully charged (80%) very rapidly from a dead battery but oh well. After resplicing the cord on the Sony adapter and testing good with DMM, I thought I would put this other HDD I got from a dead ASUS to check it out. The memory module I put in the Ultrabook came from this dead Asus.

First power up with orange LED all is normal, again except, got bootlooping probably because the HDD from the Asus had win8 on it and uefi and bios settings.. so I go into setup and verify bios sees HDD and changed a few settings like disabling 'anti-theft suspend mode' and uefi to manual and rebooted then it automatically powers off during bios boot and kept shutting down every time when trying to power up and each bios boot time before it shut down got shorter and shorter to where I didnt have time to check or fix anything in setup. So I put my SSD back in and same thing kept happening. So I hit some F buttons to try anything else and saw a samsung screen with a spiral spinning and said 'please wait' but, shuts down, again. Next I held down the power button during boot up, shuts down powers up and held down the power button again and the screen did a flickering like and shut down. For good! No more orange LED.., nothing!

Checked Sony adapter with DMM, it's normal and, tried the power cut-off button cycle but no lights nothing.

 

The symptoms you are describing make me think that there is a power problem so no power is coming from the charger and the battery is fully drained.

It's time to find a voltmeter (or someone with one) and start checking what power is available including at the battery terminals as well as at the computer end of the power socket.

John

 

Thankyou, John, for the fast reply=)

Ive got a harness connector from the battery with 3 black, 1 white, 1 yellow, 1 blue and, 3 red wires as well as the so many number of wires from the DC jack, I don't know which ones to test with DMM. Do you know where I can find the wire schematic?

UPDATE: After testing all possible combinations of wires from the battery connector harness (battery side), DMM reads 00.0v. Nothing. Not even 0.1v.
I even touched the connector to my tongue incase I tested the wrong wires and its as dead as grandma.

I get 1v from all 3 red wires from the battery connect (board side) and I get 0.8v from the blue wire (board side).

What to test next? Thanks.
Thanks, again!

 

So there's no charge in the battery. Most likely you drained it completely while trying to start the computer.

Therefore the problem most probably lies somewhere betweeen the PSU and the battery. Are you able to test the voltage (i) on the DC plug of the PSU when plugged in to the mains and then, if this is OK (about 19V) then (ii) on the inside of the DC socket on the computer with the PSU plugged in. If that's OK then the problem is on the mainboard.

John

 

I have a similar problem except while I was using my series 5, the screen went blank so I turned it off. And now I can't get it to turn on again. My battery was fine. Its about 2 years old so warranty is out of the question. I've tried with the little battery reset button at the bank but it hasn't worked. No lights come on at all to even indicate whether the battery is charging.
Please help, I'm desperate!

 

The absence of any light when you connect the PSU means either (i) the PSU is dead; (ii) the socket on the computer is broken so the power isn't getting throug; (iii) there is a problem with the power circuit in the computer; and (iv) the computer is thoroughly dead.First you need to establish that the PSU is OK and producing power.

It is quite easy for a user to not notice that the PSU has died until the computer goes off because there's not power remaining. Also read a few previous posts in this thread for more trouble-shooting suggestions.

John

 

my series 5 ultrabook is not starting up , first led glows for few seconds and than gets off and i dont see anything on screen , but i can see processor fan is working and charging led is also glowing while charging.
but it is getting on.,.
help me

 

Remove the RAM and replace one module at a time (if more than one) or without any modules (if your system has some on-board RAM). Sometimes the contacts oxidise with age and removal / replacement cleans them.

Any RAM problem will cause the brief sign of life that you are seeing: The BIOS starts up but needs to access the RAM. If it can't find the RAM then the boot process stops.

John