Series 9 Problems After BIOS P09ABK Update

Last week I updated my Windows 8 NP900X4C to BIOS P09ABK (which nearly bricked the computer but that's another story).

Since then the battery had been sitting at 100% although I had re-enabled BLE (the BIOS updates always disable it). Today I ran the computer on battery for a short period of time and the charge dropped in the usual manner. However, when I reconnected the PSU the charge level jumped from about 96% (I can't remember the exact number) to about 76%. But the battery didn't charge back to 80% as BLE is meant to do. So I progressively drained the battery and checked at interval when the recharging is initiated and the critical point was 63.3%. (This is 79% of 80%). I've now turned off BLE and am letting the battery charge up so I can see whether the computer thinks that 80% is full.

Has anyone else with the P09AB* family of BIOS seen any changed BLE behaviour?

**Update**: With BLE turned off, the charge reached 79.1% before charging stopped. Something is broken.

John

 

Further update:

I thought I would try to be a good citizen so I phoned up Samsung support to try to report that BIOS P09ABK seems to have unwanted side effects. I got through to someone surprising quickly and they proposed first doing a CMOS reset and then running the battery calibration.

For the reset the person said first disconnect the PSU and then poke something through the battery disconnect hole and hold it down for half a minute (I told them this was the wrong procedure but they didn't want to listen). We then reconnected the PSU, went into the BIOS, disconnected the PSU and started the battery calibration (the battery charge was reported as 99%). I then gave them a few complaints about Samsung's fiasco of Win 8.1 support but they didn't want to listen saying it was all Microsoft's responsibility! I then said we might as well hang up given that it would take the battery a few hours to discharge.

I then escaped from the calibration, disconnected the battery, did the CMOS reset by holding down the power button then plugged the PSU back in and started. This time the system was reporting a sensible battery charge level and %. Whether resetting the CMOS or starting the calibration reset the confused data is unclear. I'm currently draining the battery while using it and will complete the calibration once it is almost empty.

John

 

Further update: The calibration resulted in reported battery wear of 6%. That's actually more like 8% because previously the fully charged capacity was more than the design. Not impressive for 5 charge cycles.

I'll do another calibration.

John

 

And after another calibration HWiNFO reports:

Full Charged Capacity: 62900 mWh
Designed Capacity: 62160 mWh
Wear Level: 0.0 %
Cycle Count: 6

Which indicates a slight drop in the fully charged capacity. That BIOS update had caused confusion somewhere.

John

 

Does your Laptop works fine now? (I have the same model as you)
Have you experienced issues concerning standby mode?
After Bios update today, my 900X4C won't go in standby mode by closing screen, or by pushing power button
I will post this on a new thread and / or in this thread.

Thanks for help

 

I think the battery of my X4C is OK now.

I have my computer set to hibernate on lid close so I just checked what happens: Nothing. I hadn't previously noticed this problem because I tend to manually select hibernation. I've checked the power plan settings and they are OK.

So this looks like another side-effect of the P08ABK BIOS update and I'll rename this thread to cover this issue. Someone else reported a similar problem which appeared to be the result of the Windows 8.1 update but I've not gone down that path yet. Perhaps their updating included the new BIOS.

I'll check whether reinstalling Settings has any effect.

John

 

Reinstalling my previous Settings (2.1.2.0) had no noticeable effect.

However, today SW Update offered me a new version of Settings (2.2.0.5) which went through several restarts to get itself working. The process included resetting my old power plans. Now that I've reconfigured the lid close action to Hibernate the computer hibernates again.

Settings 2.1.2.0 has a few other quirks and changes, so I've given it another thread.

John

 

I installed some updates today, including lan driver and elan driver. I have previously seen the loss of screen closing functionality since the bios update, but it is working again now. My settings is 2.1.0.0 and I haven't been offered anything else for my NP900X4C

However the ELAN driver v11.7.18.2 doesn't seem to offer the reverse setting for two finger scrolling - it is driving me crazy!

The registry settings I found in various places SC_Reverse_Enable doesn't seem to help

------------ EDIT

In the folder of the downloaded ELAN driver, I found a program ETDAniConf.exe which lets you configure everything, (including many other hidden settings), and it seems to have worked. Reverse scrolling is now "disabled" in that program's settings, and works as it used to for me.

Worth playing with - lots of cool settings in there.

 

i installed the P09ABK Update on my NP900X3E and have many problems like no brightness fn funtion or wifi toggle (F12), BUT aftear read this and doing a CMOS reset everything is working again on Windows 8.1even suspend with lid function ! :thumbsup:

i have:
Setting 2.2.0.5
Elan driver 11.7.10.4 ( i avoid the 11.7.18.2 since have the multitouch bug )
Wifi intel driver 16.5.3
Intel graphics driver 10.18.10.3304
Win8.1 brightenss patch 1.0.0.1
Sound Driver 6.0.1.7055

i don't install:
Lan driver
BT driver

thanks John for documenting this bios update

 

But even if you open ETDAniConf, you will be having problem with 2 fingers like right button on mouse, I have it :/

 

It all works for me, I needed to uncheck and recheck the settings I wanted (for some reason the initial state didn't correspond to the mouse behaviour.

Once I did that for the settings I wanted to change, including 2 fingers, everything works fine and is preserved across reboot.

 

in my I can't use 2 fingers like right button of mouse.

sometimes when I click 3 times, 1 time it works.

 

Does it also happen when the ultrabook is running on battery (disconnect the main power cable)? If it's OK on battery then I assume a problem with your power supply.

Background: I bought a cheap China power supply for my 900x3d which - as soon as it is connected - causes the touchpad to become unusable (the mouse pointer just jumps at random and double clicks don't work anymore). With the original power supply everything is smooth.

 

I didn't think about it, but I remember that my friend has the same problem when he bought not orginal power, he couldn't use with touchpad, because pointer moving themself.

Now I disconnect power and the problem still exist, so I think that it is a driver problem, because I installed the newest driver on my sister ultrabook 5 and she has now the same problem.

 

Samsung must have discovered that P09ABK was a bit buggy: P10ABK has been released.

I took the risk and installed it. As always, in the absence of a changelog, it's unclear what is changed. However, the lack of support for 1.35V RAM hasn't been fixed.

John

 

I also updated to P10ABK yesterday night. Everything went fine but now it seems that the fan turns on very frequently and stays on for longer time.

 

I don't think that P10ABK is worse for fan noise than P09ABK. However, both may have a faster fan at medium speed than previous BIOS versions but it's not enough to stop my X4C from going to fast fan (>80C) when I run wPrime 1024M. The incremental difference in noise between the medium and fast fan speeds seems to be less than when I first got the computer.

Edit: I've just noticed something else that happened during / immediately after the latest BIOS update: I now have both a page file and a swap file:



I've made a small size change to the virtual memory in the Advanced system settings and the page file size changed. So what's the Swap file? I can't delete it because windows says it is in use.

John