Samsung Series 7 Chronos NP700Z7 series Owners Lounge

@stigma: F2 (BIOS Settings) and F4 (Recovery) are firmware features that work independently of the OS. Being on Win7, you should see that F2 and F4 message every time you power on.

F2 (BIOS) of course relies only on the BIOS software itself and should always work.

F4 relies on software stored on your Recovery Partition, which uses Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment, a mini-Win7) and Samsung Recovery Solution. F4 also requires a unique link in the MBR to be intact. If you wiped your HDD and simply restored an image of your Recovery Partition, F4 may not work (unless your imaging software knows how to restore that link -- mine doesn't).

As mentioned in the post that John linked, timing of pressing F2 or F4 is essential, and you may need several attempts. Don't press and hold the key, instead press it repeatedly 2-3 times per second starting immediately after power on.

Edit: Just saw your last post, it's a good question. F2 and F4 should still work, even with Fast BIOS enabled. It's just even harder to get the timing right.

 

Hmm perhaps it it is just a matter of timing then. I will go test it right away.
I also assumed that entering BIOS should always be possible fomr a cold boot - until it seemed that the fast-boot setting blocked it.
Will reboot and check right now it is just a matter or very strict timing or not.

EDIT: Yea seems like that was the case. I had no problems entering BIOS now with fastboot on - i just spammed the key.
Guess I made a problem out of nothing.

-Stigma

 

Will Linux Mint brick this laptop or is it able to run it?

Anyone on this laptop and a linux distro?

I read on the internet that some samsung laptop would get brick if we try to instal linux on it...

Oh and what was the latest bios update about?

 

@Stigma: Sorry I missed your update when you first posted it a few days ago. Thanks for letting us know!

 

We have our own thread on this subject. Read it for yourself but the bricking problems have only started with the arrival of Windows 8 with Secure Boot and UEFI enabled by default.

John

 

Hello Everyone, This is my first post here since I just got my Chronos Series 7 Z5C. First thing I did when I got my hands on it was to rip out the stock HD and replace it with a Samsung 840 SSD and placed the stock HD to where the ODD was. I would like to upgrade my RAM too but so far I got different answers regarding the maximum RAM one can install on a Series 7. It ranges from 8 to 16GB. I read on the spec. sheet on Z5C-S01UB the max RAM is 8GB? Is that true? Thanks.

 

Hello Maxi3d, welcome to the forum.

12GB is the maximum on your PC. You have to replace the module in the SODIMM socket with an 8GB. The 4GB on the motherboard is fixed and cannot be replaced.

Many people here have done that. Look around to find RAM recommendations - or possibly someone will post their recommendations right here. Lots of helpful people in this forum

 

Question: will any ssd caddy made for the MBP fit inside the NP700Z7? I have the S03 version if that matters.

Thanks for any reply.

 

See this thread.

John

 

Yeah, found that thread. But no conclusive answer.

 

Hello guys,
I am new to this From and I own a 700z7c for two and a half year now. I recently set up a fresh windows 7 Pro 64 Bit installation on the computer as I installed an SSD into it.
Now the Optical drive is not working under windows. The version I have is the S01DE version and has an BD drive installed (different to the US versions I think). I did install windows from the DVD which was given with my computer so the drive should work and also windows shows the drive as installed and has a driver installed but whenever I want to insert a dvd/cd it tries to read the disk for 20 seconds or so and then it ejects it and tells me that there was no cd inserted and that I should insert a cd.
The Samsung support does not offer a specific driver for the drive and windows update does not find a newer version for the standard driver it has (which is version 6.1.7601.17514 from 21.6.2006).
The istalled BD drive is an teac bd-c16ss-a which seems to be only in that one computer :/
Has anybody any idea of how to resolve that problem?

Thanks in advance for your help and I wish you a happy new year

lifesbest23

 

Hello lifesbest23, welcome to NBR. And Happy New Year to you as well!

Did you install Chipset drivers from SW Update after you re-installed Win7? These are critical, since Win7 is too old to have native Ivy Bridge drivers. During installation, the BD drive would work through BIOS, but not once Windows' native drivers kick in.

Compare your installation to this Windows install guide and see if anything was missed. Also run Windows Update and check for drivers.

Did you change your BIOS settings before the install? In particular do you want to keep UEFI disabled on this model (and for Win7 on any Samsung model).

It is good that you installed from the supplied DVD. On your model, installing from USB triggers a boot issue caused by the ExpressCache iSSD.

 

Also, once you are up-to-date on the chipset drivers then try removing the optical drive in Device Manager and rebooting. Windows will then re-detect it and might sort out whatever problem is causing the blockage.

John

 

@John Ratsey I already tried that but it just reisnalled the old driver again :/ but thank you

@Dannemand I have installed the chipset driver via SW update and also have installed all the drivers available on SW update except the Intel rapid storage one as I did not see any harm nor use in installing it but I will do it now with some other recommended things by the post you send (thanks for that)
I also let windows update search for new drivers but it did't found any.
The BIOS settings were only changed to set the bd drive as the primer boot device...
And for the question BIOS or UEFI, I still have the normal BIOS boot and I wasn't even aware of the fact that that laptop has the ability to change to an uefi mode what would you recommend?

Thank you for your help so far, I hope it helped

lifesbest23

 

Did you try the Microsoft troubleshooter? The next thing to check would be the Upper filter / Lower filter issue (but Microsoft should automatically check for it).

I suspect you have a generic optical drive problem rather than anything specific to either your notebook or the Blu-Ray drive.

John

 

Yeah, keep UEFI disabled on this model. I think you already gathered that

As John wrote, you shouldn't need a driver specifically for your BD drive, as long as the correct Chipset and SATA drivers are installed.

Try restoring BIOS settings to default (F9) and see if that makes a difference. Series 7 models have some voodoo influencing drive numbering of SATA devices. Maybe it got confused when you changed the boot priority.

And then give Intel Rapid Storage a try, since it DOES replace the SATA driver.

I wonder if this problem was actually caused by the Samsung/Intel Chipset driver, which replaces Win7's built-in SATA driver. If you decide to try a new install, I would be curious if your BD drive works correctly (in Windows) BEFORE installation of Samsung/Intel Chipset drivers.

 

So now I have installed all the additional drivers from sw update, reset my bios, deleted the bddriver and the bd disk from the computer management and restarted sveral times but it still does not work
@John I have tried the mikrosoft troubleshooter and it ended that there was a problem but it couldn't resolve it :/ didn't help much...
What did you mean with " Upper filter / Lower filter issue"?
@Dannemand I will keep the BIOS as it is, doesn't seem to be productive to change it to UEFI...
I also looked up for the SATA Chipset driver which is provided by Intel, is that a direction into which I should look up a little bit more? The SATA drivers?

Anyhow I will go to sleep for today and tomorrow I will hopefully solve that problem.

Good night and Thanks for your help

lifesbest23

 

Your favorite search engine should lead you to details about this possible problem. Here's one description. It used to be a common cause of optical drive problems but doesn't occur much these days.

John

 

There are basically three different families of SATA drivers you can use:

1) Microsoft SATA driver that comes with Windows' built-in Chipset drivers. Obviously, older Windows versions don't have updated drivers for newer Chipsets.

2) Intel SATA driver that comes with the Samsung/Intel provided Chipset driver packages. They will override the built-in Windows drivers.

3) Intel Rapid Storage, which was originally designed just for RAID setups (called Matrix Storage Manager back then) but which are now pushed as general storage drivers. They will override existing Microsoft and/or Chipset SATA drivers.

I did some tests a few years ago to compare them. On my older HP laptop I decided to run without Intel Rapid Storage, but on my Samsung I decided to keep it. Raw speed tests alone will not give a full picture, as it also affects CPU utilization and power consumption. A few users have found that Rapid Storage increased CPU utilization, although others found the opposite. The latter makes more sense, since that's what it was designed to do.

The purpose of installing Intel Rapid Storage in your case would be to force a rebuilding of the storage device tree, including the filter drivers mentioned by John (see this and this), which is most likely where the problem is.

Another way to force this would be to delete the root SATA controller in Device Manager in Windows Safe Mode and reboot the computer. Or even the root ACPI device to rebuild the entire device tree. Note: This is a very crude operation which I have not tried myself in years, and I cannot guarantee the result. ONLY to be tried on a new installation with no important data on the disk.

 

Can someone point our the link to perform a factory reset on a Chronos Series 7?

 

If you haven't deleted the recovery partition then tap the F4 key a few times immediately after starting the computer in order to load Samsung Recovery Solution which should give you the option to load the factory image.

John

 

Hi, folks. I tried upgrading the RAM on my laptop (Chronos NP700Z7C-S02UK) yesterday, which is usually a simple process that even a relative noob like myself can handle. However, things seem to have gone a bit wrong, and I'd be grateful if any of you can help figure out whether there's a solution.

I bought an 8gb stick from Crucial after doing the system scanner thingy, which told me I had two RAM slots: one with 4gb in it, and the other sitting vacant.

I was a bit confused when I opened the hatch on the bottom and found there was only one slot, already occupied by the 4gb that came with the machine. No big deal, though. Swapping the sticks would still give me twice as much RAM as before. Old one out, new one in, I turned the computer on and braced myself for a shiny new era of awesome speediness...

...and waited while it plodded through startup at its usual sedate pace.

Odd. I had a look at the system properties, according to which I still had only 4gb installed (3.6gb usable). After a fair of googling, I had a look at the BIOS too, which again showed 4gb in Slot 1, nothing in Slot 2.

Even more googling revealed that the stuff in Slot 1 is in fact soldered onto the motherboard. Slot 2 (in the wee hatch on the bottom) seems to be invisible to my system. It couldn't see or use the 4gb that was in there originally, nor the 8gb i just put in. I now have no idea how long this has been the case - I noticed things running slowly about a year ago, but can't be sure whether the machine's been limping along with half the RAM it should have since I bought it, or if something packed in more recently. I took the bottom cover off to replace a faulty wifi card a few months ago, but there's no physical damage to the cards or the slot, as far as I can see.

I was running Windows 10 64-bit, which should allow up to 128gb, so that's not the problem. I've tried re-seating the card, and checked that both the old and new cards are the same voltage, etc. I've been through the device manager, checking the driver on every memory-related thing I can see, and even tried using Recovery to roll back to Windows 8 and the good old days when everything worked, all with no effect. I'm starting to think the slot itself could be defective, and may have been all along.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what else the problem could be? And if I do have a defective card slot, is there anything that can be done about it without shelling out for a new motherboard?

 

It's a rare thing for a RAM slot to become defective but it's more common that contacts oxidise and the RAM becomes invisible. However, removal / replacement of the module is usually enough to clean the contacts. What make is your 4GB module?

I wonder if you have fallen foul of the RAM recognition bug which Samsung introduced in a BIOS update at least two years ago and have never acknowledged or fixed. This problem is touched on in other threads for the Series 7 and a few people have reported what RAM works for them. However, I can't lay my hands on the relevant posts.

Is your BIOS up to date? Use Samsung's BIOSupdate.exe to check.

John

 

Thanks for replying. I tried running the BIOS updater, but it looks like I already have the latest version. To clarify, does that bug mean that only certain models of RAM stick are recognised? My 4gb module is the Adata card that originally came with the machine.

 

Yes. The BIOS bug means that computer became fussy about which make / model of RAM it would work with and refused to recognise others sticks that had worked fine. I encountered the problem with my NP900X4C where I had swapped the stock RAM for some Kingston HyperX sticks with slightly faster timings. The BIOS update appeared to kill the machine, so I put back the original modules ready to send the computer in for warranty repair and then discovered that it was working again.

You could do a BIOS roll-back to an early version of the BIOS. There is a thread about how to do this. Or search through the NP700*** threads for discussion of the RAM issues and reports of which modules might work.

John

 

I'd rather try rolling back the BIOS before spending another £30 on RAM that my computer may or may not like. Does anyone know which BIOS file to look for? I'm currently running the 2013 P03ABP, and managed to find the 2012 version using the guide that John mentioned. However, I keep getting the error message: "driver fail while locating SMM service" during the rollback process. Someone else on that thread had the same problem but didn't seem to find a solution. I've tried disabling the antivirus and running cmd in administrator mode, with no joy.

 

Have a look through the unbricking threads in case they reveal some extra BIOS switches.

I've just checked here and the BIOS that caused me problems was released in October 2013, so anything before then should be OK.

John

 

Has anyone upgraded to Windows10 on their NP700Z7C, and what issues did you find you had? Did you resolve them? Would appreciate any input. As of today I am running Win10. I had to download and run a Win8 version of Easy Settings in the Administrator account to get the function keys and cd eject key to work, nothing s I've nothing else major I have noticed otherwise. Anything to worry about or do next? Did anyone lose their restore partition or ability to restore back to Windows 7 through Recovery Solutions?

Thank you

 

I don't remember seeing any posts about installing or updating to Win10 on the NP700Z7C. But given its relative similarity, I would check the NP700Z5C Owners Lounge thread (that was a link) which had several discussions about Win10, and our general Samsung Windows 10 thread (also a link) where I seem to recall mention of the NP700Z5C as well.