Samsung Series 7 Chronos - What to do before Windows 7 clean install

I noticed that some people are having serious hard time re-installing system software and drivers after performing OS clean install. Samsung's Download Center website is definitely not the best support site you can find out there. Drivers and system software are scattered all over the page, missing descriptions and update Change Log, and sometimes missing. This can be a serious issue for people who are not Tech savvy.

Despite that shortcoming, I found their Easy Software Manager really easy to use and very useful. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, people seemed to forget to do one thing before reformatting their new laptop: System Software Backup!

Yes, you can technically re-download all softwares and drivers off of Samsung's website. However, back to my original point, for non-Tech savvy users, this can be very confusing.

BEFORE you perform any combination of re-partition, re-format, and re-install of your new Samsung notebook, make sure that you backup the entire Samsung System Software using Samsung Recovery Solution tool. To do this, do the following:


You can find the instruction in your Samsung manual book, Chapter 4, page 105.

After the backup process completed, you now have the entire set of software and drivers for your Samsung notebook inside "SystemSoftware" folder.


If you are planning to re-partition your HDD (I am sure you do, especially if you bought Best Buy version of Samsung Series 7), make you that you COPY the entire "SystemSoftware" to an external location!

Once you finished with the OS re-install, re-attach the storage device where "SystemSoftware" folder resides and COPY the entire folder back into your notebook. As you can see, in my case, I copied the entire folder into D:\Datadown\Samsung\SystemSoftware.

Now, double click to run the SecSWMgrGuide.exe file inside "SystemSoftware" folder. Easy Software Manager window will be displayed. KEEP IN MIND that this is NOT the same Easy Software Manager that was installed in your notebook prior to the re-format. This is actually the "recovery" tool you can use to re-install pratically all softwares and drivers for your Samsung notebook, INCLUDING the actual Easy Software Manager that has to be re-installed.

If you purchased the Best Buy version, you will notice that Best Buy bloatware is also included under "Miscellaneous." If you're like most people, you probably do NOT want to re-install this!

Go trough each tab starting from "Customer Support" and install only the software you really want to have. This is your chance to keep your computer sparkling clean, sans the bloatwares.

This is what I did when I re-installed my Windows 7:
1. Customer Support tab
- I only re-installed Easy Software Manager

2. Driver tab
- EVERYTHING but the "Samsung Universal Scan Driver"

3. Multimedia tab
- NONE

4. Miscellaneous tab
- Windows 7 SP1 Critical Updates
- Windows 7 SP1 common patches

5. Utility tab
- Easy Settings

6. Safe & Security tab
- NONE (I would recommend that you re-install Samsung Recovery Solution 5 to backup your computer)

7. Entertainment
- NONE

Obviously, it is entirely up to you to re-install whichever software you find useful. However, please do make sure that you re-install everything under Driver tab. Since you have everything stored locally, you can pretty much get everything re-installed in no time! For me, it was all under 15 minutes.

I would recommend that you then go to Samsung's Driver Center site ( Samsung) and find any driver updates you find important. In my case, it's the Touch Pad (ver.10.7.5.0 at the time of writing).

I would also STRONGLY recommend that you BACKUP the entire SystemSoftware folder into a CD and store it in safe location (i.e. inside the original packaging of your notebook).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since my Series 7 is Best Buy version, I do not have the experience in handling ExpressCache! I strongly recommend that you do some research before blowing it away!

Have fun!

 

I didnt do the backup think,but Easy Software Manager is really useful. I downloaded all the drivers from the samsung website first but ended up using Easy Software Manager and installed pretty much the same options as karu. If you have ExpressCache(Fast Boot), just install it, its in on Utility Tab. After a reboot you get a new tab in Easy Settings to control ExpressCache

You may also consider using an updated unofficial graphics driver, for example leshcat blog IT Tips & Tricks: Catalyst 11.12 and 12.1 UnifL's for Switchable Graphics

Also mind that you dont have any network connection after you do a clean install and dont have a backup.

 

Yeah, to me, the best part was getting everything back up and running normally in less than 15 minutes without stumbling on anything.

No network connection required either because everything is stored locally. I actually did the Network piece last so that I could get everything installed and rebooted BEFORE Windows starts kicking Windows Update process.

After that, you just have to bear trough the long list of Windows Updates...

 

i just bought a new SSD for this laptop.

does it really matter to make a clean install?? i have already everything installed and start from scratch again... i was thining to use acronis true image and copy to the SSD, and then use SSD TWEAKER program.

any sugestions??

 

I use Acronis for the cloning and don't do any other tweaking. Everything seems to run fine. I know that Acronis handles the partition alignment. it might well also tweak other settings to suit the SSD.

John

 

I did it. I had problems with partitions due the partition in the main disk and have another partition in the ssd for express cache.

I uninstall some trash with your uninstalled program, and use the program SSD TWEAKER that I recommend to get.

All works fine now....

Now I'm going for the graphic drivers...bufff.

Thank you!!

 

Another point that users who want to clean install must take note of:

If you still want to retain ExpressCache functionality, do not reformat the Sandisk iSSD P4 8GB partition. It is a proprietary format and the software that can format it isn't publicly available.

 

before looking the web for that da...n express cashe issues I tried to get it working by full repartiotioning and reinstalling windows. My problem with express cashe was that when the laptop started and logged in the sandisk issd p4 appeared in device manager and easy settings but after a few minutes it dissapeared from both. If I restart laptop it still doesnt appear but if I shutdown and turn on it appears again. Before it was working well.
I tried reformat the issd but neither windows diskmgr nor other soft could do that.
Please HELP!