Samsung Series 9 - Windows 8

There is a bios update available - when I tried to install it, my pc hung - called samsung tech support & the guy was basically useless - told me that samsung says that the pc was out of warranty & wanted me to email proof of purchase!! :banghead::banghead::banghead:

The pc hasn't even been out a year!!

Anyway, I was able to resolve the issue myself (he was telling me to hold down the power button - which did nothing)
But, there's a reset hole on the bottom of the pc - pressed that, which shut down the pc - it wouldn't restart immediately, but after having it plugged in for about half an hour, it was fine! (it was plugged in for the flash of the bios BTW)

I don't know if it was a bad download, or if the bios update is the problem? Anyone else have this happen?
I'm not going to bother with the bios update, until after the holidays at this point - if it happens again, and I'm not able to recover the pc - I don't want to risk being without it for several weeks.


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A few people have had problems with the latest BIOS updates. See the comments here, for example. Was your BIOS update done within SW Update?

John

PS: I have started a specific thread for BIOS update problems. Please contribute.

 

Hi everyone,

shaggyskunk, I've updated the BIOS yesterday and had no issues when installing it; anyway I'm experiencing some problems and I don't know if they're related to the bios:

when I close the lid the notebook doesn't go to sleep, it just turns off the screen. Even if I change the action for lid closing (shut down, hibernate) it doesn't do anything...


I got the computer three days ago and since I had to also install linux on the nb I decided to format the SSD to recover some space and install Windows 8.
While installing Win8 I disabled automatic updates and driver installation.
At the end of the installation procedure I downloaded the SW Update tool from samsung website and installed all the drivers and software (except intellimemory and samung's recovery tool). Then I updated windows via Windows Update.
What I noticed is that I couldn't manually set the brightness with the Fn+F2/F3 keys (Settings program was installed infact the other hotkeys were working) and when I closed the lid nothing was happening,..
I also tried to uninstall all the windows updates with no luck.

Now I'm writing from windows 7, which I've reinstalled (not from the recovery partition but from clean install). After installing all the drivers and the Easy settings software the brightness keys are working again but the laptop still doesn't go into sleep mode when I close the lid.

Hase anyone experienced a similar problem? Thanks!!

P.S.: if I press the power button the laptop enters sleep mode, then when I close the lid and open it again it automatically wakes up (both in win8 and win7)

 

Thanks - I'll have a look at the links you created!

One of the more disturbing things with my experience with tech support was - They could clearly see from the s/n of the pc, that the build date was June 2012 - But, the guy was insisting on proof of purchase for the warranty before doing anything more!

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We all look forward to the day when Samsung takes the support seriously and looks on each support request as an opportunity for them to learn that something isn't working right for the customer and needs to be improved. At present they work off a script that usually ends with the advice to reinstall Windows. There's a lot more knowledge in this forum than in their support system because our focus is on understanding and fixing problems with least inconvenience to the end user.

John

 

Yeah, this is my first samsung pc - I've always had Dells before, and I found their tech support to be amazing!! Even when out of warranty!!

On another note, I've had pcs since the late 80's and I've never, ever seen so many issues with s/w updates!

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Dell had to built up their support in order to attract big business orders. That's a hill that Samsung haven't yet seriously tried to climb.

It's unclear to me to what extent the problems are caused by Windows 8 and UEFI or by Samsung's (second) attempt to create a software / driver maintenance utility rather than let users keep control.

So far, I'm happy to have not tried the Windows 8 route.

John

 

Perhaps that's part of the problem - I'm on Win8 - which I've got to say, I like very much. But Samsung has got to know, that many people have gone to Win8, and if their sw updater says that there's an update available - They HAVE to ensure that it's fully compatible!
I'm very happy that I was able to recover my pc from a bios update failure (which is often a machine killer) but again, I'm pretty disappointed that samsung's tech fell flat, & gave me no other option than to return the pc to them.
I'm wondering how many people are needlessly returning pcs for warranty?
There's a cost to samsung for this, in many ways - not only ticked off consumers, but also the hard costs to them, to fix "broken" laptops....


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See which of the updates here are those which SW Update can't download then get them from there.

John

 

FWIW, I've had no problems at all after doing a Windows 8 clean install on my NP900X3C and installing SWUpdate. The only exception is that Rapid Start seems to be unsupported at the moment so you have to use Windows hibernation.

 

Was anybody able to find a solution to the high fan noise in Windows 8? I'm on an NP900X3A

 

I haven't followed the fan noise issue, but I can tell you that mine makes next to no noise at all - so I don't think that it's related to Win8. It could be a hardware problem with your pc?

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Found a solution to my problem (laptop not going into sleep when the lid was closed) here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/696197-samsung-laptops-roll-back-bios-updates.html

The problem has probably been caused by Ubuntu when i tried to install it in UEFI mode: it probably corrupted the BIOS/Micom so I had to reflash it to fix the problem

 

Mine is silent when I am in "battery saver" mode. But as soon as I move back to Samsung Optimized or High Performance OR if I plug in the power, the fans come on and stay on. It was a dramatic change that happened right after I installed Windows 8, so I am discounting hardware problem at the moment.

 

I have a series 7 but i thought i would add that i also noticed the fans being significantly louder in windows8 than in windows7. I switched back to windows7 because of the issue. I am very sensitive to noises.

 

It has to do with CPU or GPU usage. Have you tried by disabling Metro?

 

Thanks John for the reply. Everything is off in the Intel graphics control panel as well. I really went around and turned everything off before posting here. I'm out of ideas. It's really annoying not to be able to enjoy this beautiful display while watching a movie, because some damn software is self adjusting stuff.
Do you have other workarounds?

Thanks

I managed to get the USB boot working, so I'll be probably switching back to Ubuntu, because it just works

 

Did you already visit Settings > Display. In my Windows 7 Easy Settings the last part of that menu is display color including a check box for MovieColor Enhancer. (You can check if MovieColor Enhancer is running as a process and try killing it).

I'm short of other ideas. I'm leaving other people to sort out the bugs with Windows 8.

John

 

[edit] spotted a desktop icon - oops [/edit]

i have a problem with my xc3

used the win8 upgrade assistant and bought a license, it downloaded win8, then it told me about the drivers it would need to uninstall.

so i uninstalled them and it restarted......................... but how to get back to installing win8?

if i run the upgrade assistant again it just wants me to order another license, and there is nothing in the download folder where i might expect to find my win8.exe file (?) to run.

what do i do now?

 

See http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...l-x230-without-recovery-disk.html#post8962629

Hopefully that will get you going again.

 

[edit] using the SW_update application to manually download the "settings" app, and then using the "SettingsSetup" .exe in the Win8 subfolder seemed to work

p.s. is it normal that you don't get an on-screen que when adjusting the keyboard backlight using the Fn buttons? you got that in Win7. [/edit]

windows 8 is on now, and have done all of the SW_update updates except.............

the settings one which gives you access to the Fn keys for screen brightness etc.

done it three times now and each time got the following message:

"Installation failed(-10)"

anyone else found this, and solved it?

 

Here are the packages I installed on my machine (NP900X3D):
View attachment 87991

You might consider saving the install package local and running it manually. Sometimes the backend update servers act up and cause no end of grief for end user installation.

 

i have another gremlin, bluetooth seems to be borked.

the icon shows up in the system tray, but if you click on it to add/show a device it goes to the win8 device tile and promptly says it cannot find any bluetooth devices.

if i try to run the bluetooth driver package in SW_update (or run the driver locally after exporting it from SW_update), i get the following error hald way through installation:

"Could not open key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE32\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\BTHPORT\Parameters.Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel"

Device manager shows it as working, and is happy to enable/disable it, but neither state prompts it to actually function.

Anyone else encountered this?

using device manager to uninstall the driver package, and then using SW_update to reinstall just results in the following message in update: Failed(-10)

 

I ended up with a similar problem after installing/uninstalling the BT drivers. I was not able to uninstall nor re-install the BT drivers. To fix the situation, you have to restore the access of this registry key using regedit. In my case the key lost all its authorizations and ownership. I had to restore the owner first by going to authorization/advanced/owner (at the top). Then restore the authorizations and finally do a clean uninstall/re-install.

 

hmmm, could i beg you for some more detailed instructions, please?

i cannot find the "authorization/advanced/owner" functions.

if i right click on parameters it says access is denied.

elsewhere it also says; "you do not have permission to modify the permissions"

but it will bring a "permissions for parameters" pop-up box.
however the check boxes are greyed out, and if i select the "add" function under the "Groups or user names" box it brings up a further pop-up which i cannot decipher.

The "ok" function is greyed out, presumably until i enter something in the "enter objects to select" box, but:

what am i supposed to write?

cheers.

p.s. although the BT driver error is reported as "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE32\SYSTEM" when i search in regedit i can only find "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM", i.e. no "32".

 

I cannot tell you exactly how I did because I tried several things that I found on google (searching for a reg permission problem), additionally my Windows is in french so I will try to give you the best english translation for the different menus and button names but I cannot guarantee that it will be exactly the same in your english Windows.

I had a lot of those permission warning as well when I tried to fix the problem. I think that I run regedit in administrator mode just to be sure.

So when you get to the "permissions for parameters" panel, you should find "Advanced" at the bottom. In the new popup, the first line should start with "Owner : none" and a "Modify" link next to it. Click on that link and a new popup will come. Click on "Advanced" in this new popup, then "Search", and a list of the computer users should appear. Double click on "AdministratorS" (the group) and then "OK" in every remaining popup.

Once that's done, you go back to the "permissions for parameters" panel and you should now be able to add permissions to users and groups (start by giving "Full control" to the AdministratorS group). To know what to add, have a look at an other key for which the permissions have not been corrupted and clone the access rights.

If you need more help, I suggest you to search in Google. Note that a lot of results will give you instructions about the second parts of this procedure, but only a few will tell you to re-add the owner first.

Good luck !

 

cheers. still stuck however.

running regedit as administrator still gives me the same permissions problems as i had before.

i don't know if this is related, but in that first line of the advanced pop-up for the "permissions for parameters" panel it states:

"Owner: Unable to display current owner." followed by "Change" as a hyperlink

So no "Modify" link

If i click on the "Change" hyperlink is brings up a pop-up called "Select User or Group" with three sub-entries:

"Object Types" options - "User, Group, or Built in security principal"
"Locations" - "REMF-PC" (example)
"Check Names" which is greyed out waiting for some text to be added in the white box

It does also have an advanced option that brings up a load of greyed out options under the "Select User or Group" pop-up, presumably because i lack the permissions!

How can it be this difficult to install a BT driver?

 

Something is hosed. If you aren't too far down the line, I would copy your files off the machine and re-install the OS.

The real question is what hosed the permissions on the machine. I've seen this happen once on a machine of mine, but that machine had gone through all sorts of torture with beta testing, beta apps, etc.

 

That's normal, I had the same but running as administrator ensure that you have the highest level for permission edition during the rest of the procedure.

You are in the correct popup which I tried to describe above, in fact the Windows English wording differs a bit from mine
In this popup, you should see "Search" or something like that on the right. Clicking on this button should bring the list of local users and groups and let you click on the "AdministratorS" group. Then try to follow the rest of the procedure

Of course this is not a standard thing. Somehow your registry has been corrupted by an inappropriate driver install or uninstall. I had the same and I was able to restore it so I wanted to say that it is possible, but the easy solution is to save your data and do a fresh install as Thors.Hammer suggested.

 

[edit] BT seems to be working now [/edit]

cheers guys. it is utterly retarded that i am forced by a bluetooth driver to resort to a full reinstall, but that is where i am and i appreciate the help.

i have tried all manner of stuff with MS security policy to elevate my status to administrator, but somehow this parameters entry on the BT regedit entry won't budge.

bluetooth does work under Win8 after a proper reinstall, just doing the SW_update business and see if we are still A okay after that...............

 

It might be worthwhile giving Microsoft Fixit a try. It worked for me to fix a broken WiFi installation that would neither update nor uninstall (and that's part of the same overall package as the BT. CCleaner might also be able to tidy up some registry errors.

John

 

seems to be okay this time around.

differences:
ran win7 updates before upgrading
did a clean install of win8

 

I've done a clean install of 8 and am having a weird issue. When I shutdown, the laptop shuts down normally. I then close the display and when I reopen it, the laptop powers on without having to hit the power button. Has anyone else seen this? It's not a problem, just doesn't seem normal to me.

 

That's a feature, not a bug. You should have had that in Windows 7 as well.

 

If you don't like this behaviour then you can probably change the lid opening action in (Easy) Settings.

John

 

Bit of a silly question but how do people shut down their laptop once you have finished with it? I go to Settings - Power - Shut down in the Charms bar, do I need to do this? I am used to XP where you need to shut down from the Start menu.

 

Yea, I think that is the best possible option.

 

I think that you can also go into power settings, and set up the pc to shut down when you close the lid.

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The quickest way is to click on the Desktop and hit Alt-F4.

 

Thanks for that!

 

Exactly! And after a few weeks of Windows 8 experience, I found it quite handy, to know a few shortcuts to get around the charming design of Windows 8. As I work on the desktop most of the time, I use the following shortcuts quite often:

Windows key + D: Access the Desktop from Modern Desktop
Windows key + Q: Access the Apps Search screen
Windows key + W: Access the Settings Search screen
Windows key + F: Access the Files Search screen
Windows key + X: Access the Windows Tools Menu
Windows key + P: Access the Second Screen bar
Windows key + PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of the screen and automatically saves it in the Pictures folder as Screenshot
Windows key + E: Open Computer
Windows key + R: Open the Run dialog box
Windows key + L: Lock computer

Once you get used to them, work is quite fast

And if you like, try some out:

Windows key + Arrows keys ...

 

Thanks for your list of shortcuts!! :thumbup::beer:

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Or anotherone for a fast switchoff:

Good old CTRL-ALT-DEL

Then you get a switch-off icon in the lower right corner ...

 

For the 900X3A-B01, a bios update was released earlier this week (via SW Update). Now, the laptop wakes up when you open the screen, battery saver mode is available again and some other settings from the function key are available again. Still no silent mode.

 

Hi all,

I have the Ivy Bridge Series 9 and love it. Unfortunately I have a crack near the power button

I'm running Windows 8 with only Windows Update provided drivers, nothing at all from Samsung except for some weird "Samsung Software" that shows up in the lower right of the screen (icon area). I just installed SWUpdate to add Settings to get my backlight working.

Is there anything else I should think of installing? I have updates for just about every piece of Intel software or drivers - Rapid Start, WLAN, Touchpad, etc. Just not sure whether the Samsung stuff will improve performance or add crud. I also have no idea why I have two updates for WLAN or why the updates aren't shown on the All Software screen. Weird design. Would appreciate your tips.

 

Original factory installed Windows 8.

A few thoughts from my experience setting it up, in the hope it will benefit others:

• My Wifi, making the S9 act as an access point, is turned on through the Samsung settings app <fn><f1>
• When the access point function is active Homegroup networking gets confused, and Homegroup assets are not accessible
• IRST is installed and invisible
• Trying to play with power plan settings for hibernation mode etc made it fail to hibernate. I reset the power plan and it works ok
• Battery life is outstanding - I don't have benchmarks
• THere is a setting for automatic brightness of screen, doesn't seem to do anything
• I succeeded in installing Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5 using workarounds from forums
• Similarly for Paperport 12
• Win 7 Scanner drivers for Brother work fine, despite being "incompatible"
• Similarly WIn 7 Brother printer drivers are better than the Windows ones
• Wifi is Proset drivers, but using the Samsung and/or Windows UI
• I will avoid a rant about the Metro interface, which I don't use. However desktop works well, if you learn the keyboard shortcuts
• Win 8 gestures on trackpad are useful
• Trackpad very pleasant, no issues at all
• Quite a bit of junk, but fairly easy to uninstall
• No WIndows product key provided, Tech support said that is by design. I said what if I wipe the recovery partition and want to reinstall windows - they said to call tech support and they will send me a disk and key for free
• One noticeable piece of junk is Intellimemory, which uses RAM to cache disk - why do that with an SSD? Anyone have different opinion/knowledge on that?

 

I can pretty much guarantee you this is false. First of all, they aren't going to send you a free key. Not gonna happen, ever.

There are several reasons. First, the key is embedded in the BIOS/UEFI implementation. Second, keys are tied to the hardware. Microsoft and Samsung aren't going to send another key because it represents a license. Samsung would have to pay Microsoft for the key to be issued.

All you need to re-install is a Windows 8 retail disk. Setup will read the embedded key and activate.

I can see someone sending you a setup disk, but not a key.

See Lenovo's instructions for backing up the factory image at Methodology to create Recovery Media and reload a Lenovo system with Microsoft Windows 8 preload. This will likely work with a Samsung since I believe this is a Windows thing and not specific to an OEM.

 

That makes sense Thors, it is probably what he meant. Now I can do the same thing myself, just burn the recovery partition to disk.

The option to copy the recovery partiion to the recovery drive is grayed out - (I haven't touched the partitions yet). So I experimented a bit. Can't find a way to burn the recovery partition - anyone have any ideas? Is there an official samsung way of doing it? (I have a backup using Acronis boot disk, but that is not the same)

 

Of course, there is a nice Recovery application, which does image backups (including on a network), makes boot disks and can save the factory recovery partition. Look for it under Recovery as a Desktop application. For network you need to install a "server" on the receiving machine, so no NASD storage.
Will even work bare metal, with no recovery partition available I think - haven't tried it

 

Anyone "upgraded" to W8 on an X3B and done a battery life comparison? Are there any other benefits over W7?