Samsung Series 7 - NP700Z5C-S03CA: My Last Hope

My disk is in mbr with windows 7 reinstalled for some reason it still didnt boot, and f9 for me instead of reverting to factory defaults it actually boots into my windows 8.1 usb without needing to unplug the hdd, i switched to uefi on windows 10 and installing linux prevented me from booting to bios right away

 

Understood. I meant F9 inside BIOS settings, which resets to default. But if your disk is MBR, then that wouldn't be the reason for your boot problem. Most likely the NVRAM corruption too then. Along with the inability to get into BIOS settings with F2, boot problems are a typical symptom.

Your current ability to boot the external USB is precious, so be careful not to lose it while waiting for the battery to arrive.

 

Yeah also for some reason the f9 key only works on an external keyboard to boot to the external usb hdd, it was mbr cuz i tried installing win 7 on it

 

My battery arrived

Windows boots from sata i can boot into bios and nvram is cleared

: D

 

Can some expert look into similar error which is described HERE?

 

Hello Manzaa, welcome to NBR.

I realize you already described your problem on superuser.com, but I would ask you to update your post to describe it here as well, to ensure proper context in this thread.

I'd say you are very lucky that you are able to get into BIOS settings AND are able to boot anything (Linux). Most users with corrupted NVRAM can do neither. That said, it is most likely Linux that overloaded, and thus corrupted, your NVRAM. These old Samsung models didn't play nice with Linux.

Seeing you found post #7, you already know that you need to boot some form of Windows or WinPE to run the BIOS flashing utility. And you need to download and extract the BIOS flashing utility for your model, as described in the BIOS rollback thread -- which you can do on another PC.

You DON'T need to update/re-flash the BIOS. You just need to use the correct flashing utility for your model to clear the NVRAM directly.

My suggestion is to focus on booting WinPE from optical drive (through SATA or USB). Put it on top of the Boot Border list in BIOS. You may need several tries of burning the disc with different tools, selecting UEFI/GPT and/or CSM/MBR options.

Beyond that, study this entire thread AND all the linked discussions in post #7. There isn't one single fix. Different users succeeded in different ways.

Good luck to you!

 

Hi! I think I might just have the damned NVRAM corruption error, but I can't manage to make the pc boot any configuration of WinPE. I have a Samsuns NP530U3C. Here's what I did:

The error happened because I installed Ubuntu 20.04 after many attempts at installing Windows (both 10 and 7) on the laptop. I didn't knew about the ExpressCache disk and the many problems it had with USB installation of Windows, so I decided to try installing Linux. Unfortunately, after installing it the pc constantly reboots after the first boot, and then goes directly into the boot menu, displaying only "ubuntu" as the only option, and a clear menu when moving to the apps option. I've tried disassembling the laptop, removing both the CMOS battery and the laptop battery for about a day, then putting it all together and trying to make it boot into a USB with WinPE, but it didn't work. After that I tried removing the SSD (not the integrated one) and trying again, but no luck. I'm using the Windows 7 PE from archive.org and Rufus to burn it to the USB.
I've 2 USBs, a Kingston Hyperx 32GB USB3.0 and a Kingston DataTraveler 8GB USB2.0, and I tried both GPT/FAT32 and MBR/NTFS on all of the notebook's USB ports. I've read that using a DVD Drive might work, and I managed to get ahold one of them, but I want to make sure there are no more options to try.

 

Hi MwenDavo, welcome to NBR.

I see from the other thread you created that you managed to clear your NVRAM problem. Good job there. If you want to share here how you fixed it, I am sure it will help somebody else down the road.

As for your Windows installation issue with Win10, I responded in that other thread. I hope you get it working.