Samsung Series 9 - Windows 8

It shows up an an animated graphic on the System Summary page. It's easy to see if the speed stays at 800 MHz or goes up to whatever is the normal maximum speed (bars still stay green) or goes into turbo (mustard colour bars).

John

 

Hi guys, I just bought a brand new NP900X3C-A01IT and seen that I have a free copy of Win 8 I upgraded straight away.
Now I have a few questions as Samsung's implementation seems clunky at best:
- I know this has been asked many times before but I can't seem to find it any more: is there a way to wake the computer with opening the lid? I have updated to the latest BIOS
- How do I know if Intel Rapid Start is working? I downloaded the driver from the Samsung site and then I activated regedit options to show the icon in the taskbar, I set the timer to 15 minutes
Is this the same as the Fast Startup option that's in the power menu or are they two conflicting options?
-Is there a way to regain automatic keyboard lighting? after installing easy setting the Fn keys for it work but they don't turn on when the screen dims like in Windows 7
-It seems that automatic screen brightness control is built into Windows 8 and that makes sense as it's made to run on tablets but isn't there a way to override the brightenss setting with the Fn keys? In Windows 7 I could set the brightness to a certain level and then depending on ambient light the screen would scale to -2,+2 brightness to adapt
- Is there a way of disabling easy settings volume bar or Window's volume bar? Both show up at the same time when I adjust the volume with the Fn keys

Thanks!!

 

Have anyone have any idea about Windows 8 activation? I am worried because it could fail to activate when it crashes. See this problem.

Anyone who is interested to completely disable Metro, this tool/method seems perfect. It just uses WIndows 7 explorer and disables metro. I think it is good to disable UAC to avoid warnings as pointed out by the author. I haven't tried it because I don't have Windows 8.

 

It says 798 and the bars stay green small until i touch the mouse. I noticed while in HWiNFO that my battery wear is 2.4. Under 7 it stayed at 0% from end of August until October 26th. The 2.4 has happened in the last week. Does that seem odd to anyone? Anyone running 8 notice battery wear?

 

I realize that a few days after upgrading my Samsung series 9 900X4C-A04 to Windows 8, I no longer am able to pinch and zoom, or use the swipe from top, left, and right to activate the various windows features such as switcher, charms, etc. I can scroll perfectly though.
Anyone have this issue or possibly have a solution.

 

The battery wear may be coincidental. Regarding power consumption we've discounted the CPU running at full speed (but we don't know if it is going to sleep). Perhaps high battery consumption is caused by hardware behaviour such as high display brightness, Bluetooth, WiFi or devices plugged into USB which are drawing power. This could be tedious to debug.

Have you tried the settings in the touchpad control panel? It's quite likely that the new default settings have changed.

John

 

Well, I don't quite understand it, but Task Manager was only reporting a small amount of memory used by IntelliMemory, but I noticed that my total memory usage was over 80%, which, when looking at the individual numbers in Task Manager, didn't make sense.

I uninstalled IntelliMemory and gained about 50% back of my 4GB RAM. I now have memory usage in the 30% range with minimal programs loaded.

So, I guess that IntelliMemory was taking QUITE a bit of memory!

bert

 

I have a series 9 with 8 gb ram , and with nothing running my memory usage is between 70-75%. That is absurd. I will try to uninstall intellimemory.
I really regret installing Windows 8. My notebook ran perfectly on Windows 7, and now I have constant touchpad problems. I lose all my windows 8 gestures until reinstalling Elan drivers. Then in a short while it happens again. I see I have a windows restore disc that came with the laptop, btu no cd rom to run it in. WHat a mess.

 

I went into task manager to check startup applications and discovered that the ETD control panel was disabled, thus my trackpad was not allowed to "startup". I restarted and all is well. Hopefully ti will last a while.

I still have no idea why my system memory usage is at 75% with no programs running.

 

Hey guys

finally after 15 pages I red the battery life drop issue for the first time.
after having installed Win 8 x64 Pro I get approximately half the battery life I had with win 7!!
i mean this is 50% less with an os witch considers itself to be more energy-efficient...
in Easy Settings the consumption doesn't go under 8-10 w even with display at lowest brightness, wifi off, bluetooth off.
with windows 7 i was at about 4-6 w power consumption.
why does nobody have the same problem?

 

Try uninstalling IntelliMemory - it freed up almost 50% on my NP900x3c-a04us. With just a few small resident programs running, I was consuming 83% of my 4GB - now I'm consuming about 33% (wihtout IntelliMemory).

bert

 

I would give it a day or two in case there's a load of optimisation going on in the background.

John

 

Any ideas?

 

FWIW, my battery "remaining time" is ridiculously low with Windows 8 - but it's a meaningless reading. On a fully charged battery, it shows 30 minutes left! I just ignore it. It changes to other silly numbers as time on the battery progresses. The only real indicator seems to be the battery % remaining.

bert

 

Using Battery Calibration tool from BIOS or some 3rd party application can solve this. Also, make sure you guys have all drivers installed. The estimate batter time is just estimate, it is depend on how intense you use the laptop. If the problem still persists, check the wear level of battery. If it indicates a large wear level, then it times to contact Samsung for replacement of the battery.

 

Anybody received a unit from Samsung that came with Windows 8?

My NP900X3D-A02US arrives on Wednesday (I think) and it is coming with Windows 8 Pro x64. I am curious if anyone is getting around 5 hours or more of battery life on the 13.3" model using Windows 8.

 

I am having an issue with my internet pages not displaying fully without a refresh (see example Upload Screenshot). I am running the latest wireless lan driver of 15.5.6.48 and this has only been an issue since the Windows 8 install. It also happens regardless of the browser I am using. Any ideas? Thanks all!

Computer is NP900XC3-A01US
Windows 64bit

 

Is it happening on IE too? I have the same issue but it appears to be with chrome and firefox only and of course windows 8.

Any experts here have any idea? The cache on firefox and chrome gets corrupt after a few hours or just randomly and throws cache read errors or just fails to load cached data as in stylesheets or images..etc.

 

I don't use IE enough to know and I actually removed it. The issue is pretty annoying as you seem to know.

 

I had a horrible time with Windows 8 and WiFi, whereas Windows 7 was perfectly fine. You're getting that problem with web pages because essentially your website stop loading half way due to wifi dropouts.

I managed to fix mine via the following:

1. Go to the adapter properties, and switch off the option that allows the windows to turn off the device to save power. Also, switch the option for wifi transmit power to maximum. Go to the battery menu, and switch all your profiles for wifi for maximum performance.

2. Download the Windows ==7=== Wifi drivers, and install them over the Windows 8 ones, and switch off Windows Update option to override your drivers. This last point is because some routers (especially CISCO ones) do not implement some wifi standard properly.

Hope that helps!

 

Did you Install the Win 7 drivers in a specific way? I tried to install as administrator and it gave me an error. I also tried to install "normally" but to no avail since they both gave me a "software did not install properly" message.

 

Definitely not a WiFi issue as I'm using wired connection.

 

Hmm... when I first installed Windows 8, I chose an option (can't find where this setting is after install sorry) not to have Windows 8 "update" my drivers.. and I had the Windows 8 WiFi drivers installed (not newer Win8 intel ones) before I downloaded and installed the Win7 Intel drivers.

I guess you could try uninstalling the intel software, and then "roll back" the wifi drivers to the stock Win8 ones and go from there.

Good luck

 

What is the function of IntelliMemory?

 

This was happening for me in Windows 7 as well, but not nearly to the extent that it did in Windows 8, so I figure it is worth mentioning.

I would experience slight freezing or lag, starting with the trackpad. The cursor would freeze to one spot, sometimes for minutes. An external mouse would still work without issue at that point. After more time (another week or two) the lag started to affect typing speeds. I was pretty frustrated with the issue. Tried all sorts of things to reduce latency and lag. I tried re-installs of the OS - which would work for perhaps a day - but then would come back. I was only installing the super critical items, and had done those one at a time to eliminate suspects. No Joy.

Samsung said to ship it in, because if it was happening in two different OS's - it had to be a hardware issue. I was pretty much in agreement, but I can't ship the unit in until after Christmas - I just really need it for daily use.

On a whim, I went in to check to see if the drive was doing automatic defrags (which could potentially cause problems on an SSD - and isn't necessary). I noticed that in Win8, instead of defrag, it's smart enough to offer TRIM in the built in drive optimization tool. I had it do the trim on the drive... and poof... the problem was gone.

I don't think that trim is working very well automatically in windows 8. This is likely because with an ultrabook you have very little "idle" time, at least based on my habits. When I'm not using the machine, the lid goes closed and it's in suspend. When I'm using it, I'm... using it.

Not sure if that will help anyone, but it's definitely helped me. I can't wait until a drive replacement is in the budget.

 

Do you have the Sandisk U100 SSD? If so, I can understand what happens. That drive chokes on multiple queued I/O. From the Advanced Description here:

Unfortunately, too many of us are not Sandisk's typical users and overload the cache. Whereupon everything freezes until the backlog is cleared (I saw this happen on my X3B).

John

 

John,

Definitely agree about the Sandisk SSD and being easily overwhelmed.

Strangely, the only thing that was freezing when this was happening was the internal touchpad, then as more time went by (days, not minutes/hours) the response from the keyboard would lag. Applications would continue humming along fine, as far as I could tell.

Even a reboot or cold boot did not change what was happening - it would happen with a cold boot, launching no applications.. even just sitting there moving the mouse around at the login screen.

Running the trim optimization in Win8 has taken care of it for now. Right now I've got about 7 tabs open in Chrome, Postbox, Photoshop, a programming IDE, and Word open. No lag or latency, even when photoshop is doing something in the background and I'm typing this. Yesterday, I couldn't have done this at all - and the only change has been manually running trim.

I think ultimately the answer is replacing the silly Sandisk drive with something more robust, but I wanted to post what I had done in case it helped others in the same situation who cannot replace their drive, for whatever reason.

 

So is anyone here running Windows 8 and has 100% of the functionality of Windows 7? So:
- Opening lid automatically wakes the machine
- Every single Fn key function works
- Touchpad works fine with all multitouch gestures
- No weird battery issues
- No screen brightness issues
- Machine wakes just as fast as using Intel Rapid Start with Win 7, or comparable

... anything else? Is it time to switch yet?

 

I have np530-u3c and everything you mentioned works. I didn't install the graphics drivers, which are supposed to cause brightness issues, I'm using the ones Windows Update offered. Rapid Start also works, but the new Settings application doesn't allow to toggle it on and off.

EDIT: I now installed Rapid Start 2.1.0.1002 and it appeared in the Settings application

 

It's happening on me as well. IE works fine. I don't know about Firefox since I don't use it, but the issue with chrome it's getting annoying. As you mentioned it has to do with the cache getting corrupted every now and then. I Read some other forums, not particularly for windows 8 and found that others are having issues with chrome as well. Tried several methods that i found like going on the chrome settings, advanced setting and deselecting the option for predict network actions, others recommended to use a DNS service like the open DNS or the google DNS service but the problem wasn't solved. Also clearing completely the cache (from settings, history, clear browsing data) resolves the problem but only temporarily. The only option i haven't tried yet that I found is to delete my profile in google chrome and create a new one. By doing this you will loose all your bookmarks (not a big problem though you can save them and import them back) but you will loose all your passwords and etc. It's an option that I will try but first I'm trying to found if anybody else has done anything about it. Is it an windows 8 chrome issue, just a chrome issue, don't know. On wifi it more often but it happens on wired connection too, so I believe it's just a chrome or chrome/windows8 issue. Has anyone found a solution?

 

I have np900x4c-a01. I bought it by the end of September with Windows 7. At the beginning the trackpad was freezing a lot of times for seconds or even minutes. Started to looking for solutions online and found the threads here about trackpad issues, latency issues and so on. Downloaded all the newest drivers for trackpad and all the rest but nothing improved. I contacted Samsung in Greece and they got back the laptop for repair. They changed the top housing case which holds the trackpad. The problem was almost fixed, from freezing about once every hour, it got freezed twice in a week and only after closing the lid and reopening it. In general I could feel it had some latency issues. I followed the instructions on the latency thread, but didn't remove completely the easy settings, just went on the task scheduler and changed some values as recommended at the end of the thread. Everything seemed to work fine. The only issue I had was with wifi (since the beginning) while being connected with wifi n. With wifi g no problems. After all these I installed windows 8. by doing all the recommended steps, having latest bios, doing clean install, downloaded samsung's software update and installed all of the software samsung had for Windows 8, which by they way is only what you need. It doesn't give you norton antivirus, rapid start, IRST. After that everything seems to work perfect apart from google chrome. Fn keys, brightness ok, IRST and rapid start not installed by default, but windows 8 speeds are blazing fast, couldn't expect anything to get faster. The wifi issues with wifi n I had with windows 7 disappeared, trackpad never freezed again. On my install I kept the recovery partition and the partition that IRST had for hibernation, but they are useless. I'm planning to do again a new install and remove all partitions and make one. No need for IRST since sleeping or hibernating on windows 8 is very fast. Also now in the task scheduler the only thing that samsung has is the S agent which I believe is the software update program and the WLAN script. In the latency issue thread the recommendation was to disable that script and I have done so on windows 7, but on windows 8 I don't see any latency or drop out of the wifi connection so I haven't removed this time. Again as I said above and on my previous post my only issues is with google chrome cache which makes loading pages slow or incomplete and need to so several times refresh to get your job done. So to sum up I believe that the best choice is to do a clean install of windows 8 and keep only one partition, download samsung's software for windows 8 drivers and don't try to put any software from windows 7, like rapid start or IRST since there is no need to. I would never go back to windows 7...

 

I have all of the above working as good or better with Windows 8..

 

I did a clean install and have one partition only, and I am having the same experience you are.

 

Two questions to the ones who bought a 900x3c with pre-installed Windows 8:
1. Does it has new printings? I´m talking about the Windows-key (new icon on it?) and other printed stuff (like "NEW series 9...")
2. Does the BIOS now has a secure-boot entry? Can you switch it off?

Thank you for sharing those informations.

 

Did you do first of all a clean install of Windows 7, before aupgrading to WIN 8, or is there a possibility to do a clean install when upgrading to win 8 + get down to only 1 partition?
Asking mainly because of the fact that the recovery cd is of course not usable without an external DVD drive, therefore I currently can't do a clean install that way. There's also no friend available who has such an external device.

Thanks in advance!

 

I waited to do a complete clean install until I installed Win 8. Just format all of the partitions and expand them all into one remaining partition during the installation process, when you are prompted what partition to choose for the new operating system. I used a thumbdrive to install the OS. Just go into the bios and change the boot order so it boots from USB. Use this link to format your thumbdrive.

 

I installed all the recommended programs from the Samsung Software Update from their Windows 8 page, and I don't have the backlight FN keys working, battery settings FN key, display key, and my computer doesn't wake up when I open the lid... do you have anything else installed that might fix this?

 

Those functions are included in the Easy Settings package as described in this thread. I would re-install it.

John

 

Has anyone found a solution to that? Is it a windows 8 issue, is it wifi driver issue? I haven't managed to fix it, emptying cache solvesit for a while but it comes up again...

 

That's right. It is now called Settings, and it has recently gotten an update, but after installing it, all the FN functions work properly. The only issue I notice with the FN keys is that if Windows 8 doesn't have a graphic to correspond with the function, you don't know whether or not pressing a key has worked. The disable trackpad and the quiet fan FN keys are examples. However. The operations still work. There is just no graphics saying the trackpad is disengaged. The backlight for the keyboard has no graphic, but it is obvious, obviously, when it works. Functions like volume and brightness do have corresponding graphics however.

 

but in other side, FN keys dont have that graphic but they are much much quicker and responsive

 

Has the Caps Lock on-screen display gone as well? A number of people complained about it. Sensibly, Samsung would have provided a switch in Setting to enable / disable the on-screen displays.

John

 

It is gone as well. I mean Caps Lock works, but there is no onscreen display.

So here goes: F1 seems to be the single function that doesn't work at all. F2, F3, F4, F6, F7, F8, and F12 all have onscreen displays. F5, F9, F10, and F11 do not show an onscreen display of the function, however they all work.

Edit: Actually the F1 key does work. It doesn't show up in modern/metro. I just posted this reply and switched to the desktop app and the settings window was up, so I closed the window and tried the F1 while in desktop mode and settings popped right up.

 

has anyone noticed that the windows reports that wifi has "limited connectivity" when resuming from sleep? sometimes the wifi is completly non functioning. my wifi wasn't working last night when I resumed from sleep so I rebooted, when it loaded back up windows had disabled wifi and bluetooth! just wondering if anyone has the same issues.

 

Yes. But after I made a setting change in the Easy Settings program, I am getting more consistent results. by enabling the " Maintain the previous settings when the system restarts", it seems the connections are persisted after power on or resume from sleep.

At least that seems to be the case for my NP900X3D with Windows 7. I wiped Windows 8 from the mSATA drive after looking at the bloat Samsung delivered the machine with. I will revisit Windows 8 later this week when my Crucial M4 arrives.

UPDATE: Spoke too soon. I am seeing the WIFI fail to automatically connect after several suspends and resumes. Manually connecting to the preferred network works.

 

I have the settings app installed from the samsung windows 8 sw update application, I will redownload it and reinstall it.

 

Hi,

I installed Windows 8 Pro x64 on my Series 9 NP900X3A (A01) and I would like to share my experience and get potential feedback from the other NP900X3 A owners.

First of all, I checked for BIOS updates and there were none available for my model.

After installing Windows 8, I downloaded the last drivers from Intel website and Samsung SW and installed in this order :

- Intel INF Update Utility Primarily for Intel 6, 5, 4, 3, 900 Series 9 3.0.1025 (from intel)
- Intel Management Engine Components (HECI) 7.1.60.1193 7.1.21.1134 (from samsung, could not find on intel website)
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 15.28.64.2875 (9.17.10.2875) (from intel)
- Intel PROSet Wireless Drivers & Software 15.3.50 (from intel)
- Intel Wireless Display Software 3.5.40.0 (from intel)
- Airplane Mode Control Driver 6.2.8400.4218 (from samsung)
- Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.6.0.1030 (from intel)
- Realtek LAN 8.4.907.2012 (from samsung)
- Realtek High Definition Audio 6.0.1.6748 (from samsung)
- Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 2.1.28.1 (from intel)
- Synaptics Pointing Device 16.2.11.3 (from samsung)

Then I installed those software from Samsung SW:

- Samsung Easy Settings 2.0.0.30
- Samsung Display Color Profile


Now my system runs smoothly, the only problem is related to the FN keys and fast sleep/wakeup mode. I strongly suspect Easy Settings to be the problem, maybe it is not fully compatible with this laptop model yet (I could find other user reports having the same problems but their laptop model was not always specified, only "series 9" which is not enough in this case).

Description of the problems:

- The FN keys will not show the visual "samsung popup" confirming the changes of backlight, volume, etc. The FN+F1 command will launch the "Settings" program, but only Network, Display and Sound menus are available. The control of the backlit keyboard, eco/battery mode and wireless master (F12) don't work at all.

- When closing the lid, the laptop goes into standard windows sleep (with power led blinking, which was not the case with Windows 7). After a few hours of sleep the laptop automatically goes into some deep sleep (hibernation ? I don't know) and the led will stop blinking.
Additionally, opening the lid won't wake up the device as it used to do on Windows 7. I have to press the power button to wake the device. Boot times are still very fast but I don't think that those sleep modes are as power efficient as the original one with correct Samsung software and drivers.

I would like to send this report to Samsung but I could not find a ticket system on their Belgian website yet.

What about your installations on this model ?

 

With the new Setting program that came out a few days ago, mine works the same way. Although I do have options for Keyboard Backlight and Eco Mode. With the older Easy Settings, opened in Windows 7 compatibility mode everything seems to work the old way. Your choice as to which way to go.

For the closing lid - there's options for changing behavior in Control Panel --> Power Options. Have you played around in there?

 

I'm curious what version of the Elan driver you all are using? With the one downloaded with SW Update I'm having a weird problem. I installed Avast the other day and afterwards moving around on the touchpad still worked, but I couldn't actually select anything. The behavior continued even after reboots. It was a pain to get Avast uninstalled without a pad that could make selections (I didn't have a mouse available). I Installed AVG instead and everything worked fine for a day and then the same thing happened again. This time I uninstalled the ELAN driver and the laptop became usable again. I noticed that there was a 14.1.3 driver on this site, so hoped that it would be the latest and greatest, but unfortunately many of the gestures are missing such as two finger touch, etc:

ELANTECH Drivers

 

I haven't got that option in my easy settings, I also haven't got a series 9 but I'm guessing the software is the same. Its getting really annoying now, a restart fixes it but I didn't have this problem a few days ago, maybe its a windows update that caused it??