NP530Uxx Thread (Series 5 ultrabook)

.

ATTENTION: If you're a new user with a freshly bought Series 5, the first thing you ought to do is use Samsung Recovery Solution to make a backup of all drivers/software before changing/deleting anything!​

BEWARE: There have been several reports that booting Linux using UEFI could BRICK your Samsung laptop! (For more info, see the link immediately below this box...)​

Code:

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Booting-Linux-using-UEFI-can-brick-Samsung-laptops-1793958.html

As vital info is somewhat scattered throughout many posts, my purpose here is to provide a easy launchpad for essential posts related to this model (if this breaks forum rules in anyway feel free to advise or delete...).

Regarding the Series 5, I'm aware of two different main models, the 530U3x and 530U4x, with hardware and regional variants denoted by a five character code appended with a hyphen ( -S02PT in my personal case).[EDIT: since this was written, many more models came to light, look at the review of a NP530U4C below for a list...]

Let's start with the two most valuable (IMHO) entries to date, not really NP530Uxx specific but applicable and essential nonetheless:

EDIT: Although related to different models, the following threads might provide useful information on setting up particular components of the NP530U...

This WIPo (Work In Progress) will of course benefit from the collaboration of all, so everybody's welcome to join...

Misc. resources:

• http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/690174-sandisk-p4-issd-information.html#post8865540
• http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/687673-clean-win7-install-ssd-2.html#post8838811
• The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned - The SSD Review
• Very thorough unboxing/review of a NP530U4C with a couple of interesting links...

For those baffled by the intermittent nature of this model's USBs or the internal SSD, here's another thread that might be of interest:

I contributed a post with a working solution to install Windows from USB to the iSSD...

 

Thanks, good idea! I was kind of surprised when I went to this forum after buying my 530 and didn't find a thread like this.

Regarding the tricks/problems with booting/installing Windows from USB with the purpose of getting a clean install without bloatware. I thought I should mention that I took kind of a low budget solution to it when installing Windows 8 on my machine. I booted the existing Windows 7 installation as usual. Took my USB stick where I had manufactured a USB Windows install disk for Windows 8 with the help of Microsofts USB tool and started a clean install of Windows 8 from within Windows 7. After the installation was finished I was a bit disappointed that Windows 8 has saved all old Windows and program files in backup folders. But the standard Windows disk cleanup tool was able to delete them without problems.

Now I have a installation that is 32GB, but hibernation and swap accounts for 16 of them (I have a 8GB RAM) so I would say it really IS a clean install.

 

Great info. I did just the same coming from a Server 2008 back to Windows 7 (vainly hoping that it would keep my settings, which it didn't after I was forced into a clean install) and it placed the former OS in a WindowsOld folder...

What's your model ID and how's 8 performing?

 

The model number is NP530U3C-A01SE. It's a model with 500GB HD and 24 GB SSD-cache. I've upgraded it to a 256 GB Samsung 830 SSD and 8 GB RAM.

Windows 8 runs very smoothly and seems to consume less resources than Windows 7. There are a couple of drivers that I'm missing; a driver for the Elan touchpad so that multi gestures would work and also the USB 3 port only seems to produce USB 2 speeds. But hopefully the Samsung driver update application will take care of that when it starts to work. I guess it will be around the launch date for Windows 8 - right now it only returns an error when I try and run it.

 

Now that Windows 8 has been released the Samsung Update program has started working and I've used it to update all my drivers. The Elan trackpad now supports multi gestures and my USB 3 port manages to achieve 120 (!) MB/s in transfer speed.

The only thing that refuses to work is the Intel rapid Start technology.It seems that some Samsung update (maybe the BIOS update?) has removed the hibernate functionality completely. It's not that it just isn't visible under Power Options in the Control panel. If you run powercfg -a it tells you that the chipset doesn't support hibernation!

For anyone that wonders - I have a separate hibernation partition created and I've installed the Intel Rapid Start driver. Unsurprisingly the Rapid Start Manager complains when starting - hardly surprising if hibernation is totally gone from system!

 

I wouldn't be worried too much about what the BIOS thinks: IRST works outside of the BIOS. Is there a switch in Settings (the successor to Easy Settings) to enable IRST? Is there an IRST program to needs to be start (under Windows 7 the two relevant programs are irstrtsv.exe and RapidStartConfig.exe. Are they running?

John

 

No, the new settings application doesn't have anything related to Rapid start.Which is kind of suspicious in itself.The exe-files (processes) you mentioned are running.

But as I said - something in the Samsung updates has completely disabled the hibernation support on the machine. Before the updates I had hibernation support. Resume from hibernation was around 10 seconds.Not to bad, but of course slower than the real Intel thing. Now it's impossible to activate - running "powercfg -h on" only returns that the chipset doesn't support it!

I've tried uninstalling the Samsung settings application - it affects parts of the power configuration behavior. Without it the power LED flashes in sleep mode. With it the LED stays off. Apart from that cosmetic change, which probably has to do with the Samsung optimized power plan, the rest stays the same. Only sleep mode - no hibernation.

It's kind of shame that the Rapid start thing requires that both the vendor and Intel does things right. It seems hard for Samsung to manage hooking these things together judging by the threads in this forum...

 

You are missing a key point that IRST sleep / hibernation work outside Windows and the Windows hibernation gets disabled. See this thread for more about IRST.

Are those two programs (irstrtsv.exe and RapidStartConfig.exe) running?

What happens if you shut the computer? Does it go to sleep? And if you leave it shut overnight does it take longer to wake up?

John

 

Again . the exes are running! Oh, and my computer only sleeps even if I leave it closed for all night. No switching to hibernate.Battery drop about 1%/hour.

I now uninstalled Intel Rapid Start, rebooted and still no hibernate support ("The system firmware doesn't support hibernation").

So I still claim that the Samsung updates did away with the hibernation support.

My view is that Samsung should have implemented the settings for Rapid Start in the bios in the way that it is outlined in this Intel document http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/rapid_start_technology_user_guide.pdf. They could of course have added software support for changing those settings from Easy Settings/Settings as well. That is how some other settings work. Now when there's nothing under the Settings application that can affect it you are kind of stranded.

 

If those .exes are running then the problem could be that the time-out for transition from sleep to hibernation is not set (there is exactly the same problem with the Windows 7 setup that Samsung was shipping with the Series 9 - perhaps deliberate so that people though there was near-instant resume from hibernation, until they noticed that the battery had lost several percent charge.

You should be able to run RapidStartConfig to set the timer. You can also check the settings in the registry as discussed in the IRST thread.

John

 

I can confirm that he new Samsung Settings application does not allow to toggle IRST. Fortunately I have dual boot and I can turn it on and off in Windows 7 with the old Easy Settings. Also, SWUpdate doesn't offer IRST drivers anymore. Maybe Samsung discontinued support for it.

Anyway, I installed Windows 7 IRST drives and after editing the registry, it is working and I can set the timer. The downside is that with it Windows 8 fast start (which uses hibernation) doesn't work.

 

Thank you very much! This seems promising. After setting the timer to 1 minute in the Rapid Start configuration utility I no longer get error messages when starting the Rapid start Manager utility again. There also seems to happen something after closing the lid and waiting for a minute. There is definitely some activity - the power LED switching from blinking to on, the HD LED lights up and after a few seconds both turn off and everything looks dead.

I'll leave it off for a longer period now and get back to you with the result. Hopefully less power consumption than 1%/hour...

 

I now uninstalled Intel Rapid Start, rebooted and still no hibernate support ("The system firmware doesn't support hibernation").

You get that if a hibernation partition is detected, it has nothing to do with firmware support. Delete the partition and powercfg -h on/off will work just fine. I deleted the partition and confirmed that during a Win7 clean install on a NP530U4C. Rapid Start works just fine after manually recreating the partition, installing the driver and following the registry mod instructions posted here. BTW, the only Samsung software I have installed is Easy Settings.

 

5 hours off and battery percentage still the same. So it's working! I timed the start up and it was 8 seconds. Maybe a bit on the slow side, I'll might try and move the hibernation partition to the snappier Samsung 830 from the Sandisk i100. If I can build up the guts to do it... also Fast boot wasn't enabled, but I kind of doubt that has any bearing on this resume time.

OK, but I've had the hibernation partition all the time that the Windows 8 standard hibernation worked (though Windows 8 used the standard hiberfil.sys instead of the partition). And "powercfg -h on" didn't work after installing a bunch of Samsung updates.

I haven't the Samsung Settings application anymore. Uninstalled it before the last successful attempt at using Intel Rapid Start.

 

8 seconds is in the range of what I get on my X4C. It's quite acceptable compared with the half minute or more I used to get using Windows hibernation on my Lenovo T420s with an Intel 320 SSD.

John

 

Yes, it's not bad. I managed to cut one second more of that time by having the hibernation partition on the faster Samsung 830. So I'm good now.

But Microsoft seems to have done some good work with the standard hibernation in Windows 8. From what I understand it uses a similar approach as Intel's Rapid Start. It loads the most needed memory pages first during the resume so to speak and that cuts the perceived wait time quite a lot.Of course Intel's solution is much more closer to the hardware and wins hands down, but it's not a gigantic difference anymore.

 

Thanks for the IRST hibernation tips here. I upgraded to Win8 (new notebook, so no pain to roll back if needed) and also found that IRST wasn't working.

Running IRST Manager and setting a timer works. I'll do what I had to do with Win7 - set it to start the manager at boot. (For some reason it hasn't been starting by itself.)

One little thing: when the machine sleeps it no longer flashes one of the blue LEDs, which it used to do on 7. So it's not obvious when it's hibernated (because then the flashing stops). Any ideas how to persuade it to flash again when in sleep?

Apart from Win8 desktop mode looking like a dog I'm inclined to stick with 8 and see what other performance benefits it brings.

 

One little thing: when the machine sleeps it no longer flashes one of the blue LEDs, which it used to do on 7. So it's not obvious when it's hibernated (because then the flashing stops). Any ideas how to persuade it to flash again when in sleep?

Are you using Easy Settings?

"Easy Settings/Boot Management/ Lid Open Action/Samsung Fast Start Mode" causes that, even with Win7, in my case. Knowing whether it's sleeping or hibernating is not really important to me.

 

Easy Settings in Win8 is now just Settings - obviously not easy any more!

The only option under boot management is ExpressCache on or off. And even then you can't see any usage graphic.

The reason I'd like the blue light to flash is because I don't trust it to go to hibernation every time - and if it hasn't, then I'd like to know. So it is important to me

 

The reason I'd like the blue light to flash is because I don't trust it to go to hibernation every time - and if it hasn't, then I'd like to know.

Have you ever seen a substantial drop in battery charge levels after waking? If not, then forget about it. Also, in a flaky situation, as you seem to suspect, it's quite possible that the duration of the flashing LED is just following the sleep time setting and is no definitive proof of the onset of hibernation.

 

Fair enough, maybe I'm worrying about it too much. I suppose I'd like to be knowing the machine is doing what I want it to do, that's all.

 

Hi, can anyone help me, I'm going round in cirlces with this Intel Rapid Start Technology problem on my NP530U3C, its driving me insane!

I've somehow lost it and can't get it back. I had a few other issues with my machine so I used Samsung Recovery to recover Windows to initial settings. Somewhere along the way my iSSD disk has lost its hiberantion partition.

So now I have no hibernation partition and no Intel Rapid Start Technology. I've tried following the steps from the other thread but with no joy, although the Series 5 seems to use IRST version 1.0.0.1015 not sure if that makes a difference.

After doing the Samsung Recovery, IRST appears to be installed on the system (its in programs in control panel), although Easy Settings has no option to use IRST, its simply not there.

So I've tried uninstalling IRST to reinstall it....but when hen I try and install IRST from Easy Software Manager, it appears to install ok at first, however when I restart Windows I get a tray Icon with a message "The software did not install correctly, open Easy Software Manager to install the software"

If I reload Easy Software Manager and try to install IRST again then the same thing just happens again (and again and again!)

I've tried downloading IRST from the Samsung website, and running setup manually as adminstrator. However I get an error message "This computer does not meet the minimum requirements for instaling this software"

AGH! Where am I going wrong? I can't get the partition created through Easy Settings as the option isn't there. And for some reason IRST won't install. I've wasted ages on this now its driving me mad!

So its a catch 22. After Samsung recovery IRST appears to be installed but there is no partition and no option in Easy Settings to use IRSt/create the partition. I can uninstall IRST but it then won't reinstall again?

Shall I just not bother? (I don't like giving up though!)

Or perhaps get an external DVD drive and start again with the Samsung disk (would this recreate the partition on the iSSD and put everything right?)

 

Have you checked the "Samsung Series 9 NP900X3B/C / NP900X4B/C: Guide to Intel Rapid Start Technology" linked from the first post?

 

[rant]

I just confirmed that all the services installed by Samsung notebook utilities on a x64 system (appart from 'SW agent') are non-native x32 programs. Pretty disappointing when the corresponding downloads range in the hundreds of MegaBytes...

[/rant]

A couple of examples:

 

Hello Forum,

you might not believe it but I'm googling around for days now, only for booting my NP530U3C-A0BDE from usb flash drive. I already tried several settings in BIOS: disabled fast boot and pushed all three usb options to beginning of boot order. But absolutely no result. The notebook is preinstalled with Windows 8 home, but I need Windows 8 professional. So I prepared a USB flash drive with Windows 8 professional DVD image. I tried all three USB ports and tested USB drive in another computer, where it is booting without problems.

What can I do to make my Samsung Ultrabook booting from this flash drive?

Thanks in advance for your kind help,
Stefano

 

No one, folks? Do I really have to return my Ultrabook to the dealer because it does not allow the installation of an alternative OS?

Thanks,
Stefano

 

Strange, disabling fast boot and changing the boot sequence did it for me. Only thing is I booted from a USB blu-ray drive....

 

Hi Miloman, thanks for input. I indeed read about it several times, that it works with DVD drive. But I guess (and hope) that I do not need to buy additional hardware just to install a new OS!? We're not in Apple-World, are'nt we?

Greetings,
Stefano

 

It's true that people have fewer problems installing Windows on Samsung notebooks from a disc than from a flash drive. I don't think that Samsung deliberately make things difficult. They just haven't figured out how to make things easy. Make sure you have disabled the Fast BIOS mode on the Advanced page of the BIOS then try using F10 at the BIOS screen to select your boot device.

John

 

Sorry Stefano, hadn't seen your request, I don't check this forum as often as I should. Glad to see some help has been provided.

I can only add that you should ensure that your flash drive is plugged into the USB 2.0 port (there should be one); it looks like the USB 3.0 won't really do for booting (my guess is they need their driver installed first, which only happens after POST...).

 

Ciao Stefano
have you solved the problem? if yes, how?
sono nelle tue stesse condizioni .. grazie

 

Hi everybody!

I have a question: I only can use 7 mm SSD drive in Series 5 or not?

What SDD model I can use? I´m really confused.

Thanks!

 

A safe bet is the Samsung SSDs which, I think, are all 7mm and reasonably priced with good performance. Some versions of the Crucial M4 are 7mm but most are 9.5mm. And the 7mm drives will fit into a slot designed for 9.5mm.

John

 

Hi !

I just bought a SSD SAMSUNG 830 256Go. I'm planning to reinstall W8 from scratch...

Express cache and IRST are still needed ?

I don't know if I should use the iSDD for small storage or for EC&IRST...

In the second case, do you have any recommendation about the iSSD (like format or...). In fact I'm worry that EC&iSDD are still not working.

Thanks in advance !
Stephane

 

The iSSD will be slower than the Samsung 830 so the best use will be as extra storage.

Microsoft have improved sleep and hibernation performance in Windows 8 so having IRST working is less essential (and I'm not sure whether it is working properly with Win 8 at the moment - check this thread).

John

 

Thanks for your prompt response !


FYI, I did the install with USB. And it's not so difficult. In fact it's very easy. Don't need to buy a usb DVD player. I use the tuto from CLabs :
A 256mB usb stick is enough. you even don't need to delete your data (if it's a bigger one).

 

In fact it's very easy

If that's very easy then how would you describe installing from a DVD drive? Those steps read like a workaround for an issue yet to be addressed. What is the real issue and who or what should own this issue and correct it, if that makes any sense?

 

With a DVD drive it could be just more easy but I will not buy one just for that ;-)

There is a free workaround, and I use it. And for people in my position, I want to say: "give a try, it's easy"

Concerning a fix, I'm not sure there will be one... SAMSUNG deliver a recovery DVD not and an USB stick.

 

I looked at the NP530U3C before getting a 4C and just assumed that installing from a bootable flash drive would be just as easy as installing from a DVD drive. It was the dongle for this, and add-on for that, which turned me away from the 3C since it reminded me of the next to useless tablet that I already had. If Samsung owns this installation issue, do they even know that there is an issue?

 

Thank you! I buy a Samsung 830 and works fine!

 

Why this ultrabook is so hot? I hate it!

 

Find out what is creating the heat. Sometimes a malfunctioning process leaves the CPU running at full speed.

1. What is the CPU utilisation shown by Task Manager? Then go to the Processes tab, select Show processes from all users and see what is using the CPU.
2. Run HWiNFO and see the CPU speed and temperature. Is the CPU running at its minimum speed when on idle.

John

 

The CPU utilization is betweren 5/20%. I use the processor in low mode (see the picture and sorry for my english).

 

I don't consider a CPU temperature of 60 to 70C to be hot unless the outside of the computer is also unpleasantly warm. Repeated fluctuations in temperature can be worse for the hardware than a more stable temperature range.

As the difference between CPU and room temperature reduces the efficiency of the cooling system also reduces so it takes more fan effort to remove the heat. Most of us value less fan noise. The important aspect of cooling is whether the temperature does not get excessive under load. The CPU can take up to 95C before throttling but ideally the cooling system should keep the maximum temperature in the 80's.

John

 

Hi, I was wondering if I could get some info from people regarding the SSD caching on this laptop. I was planning to buy and upgrade to a full SSD, but the folks at Samsung (UK) have told me it would void my warranty, which I'd rather avoid. How good is the caching - is it noticeably worse than a SSD/better than a HDD?
On the other hand, if I decide to be brave and void the warranty anyway, how have people found this laptop for reliability? I haven't found too many complaints - maybe it's worth the risk...

 

I've installed an SSD (SAMSUNG 830 256GB) few days ago and improvement is really noticeable:
- start up and shutdown are faster (mainly use hibernation). It's almost like IRST when it works ;-)
- Programs start-up are also much faster
- Also have autonomy improvement around 20%
- and what a silence !

Note: I'm using now the iSSD as storage

 

You risk voiding the warranty but why make it sound like it is a must? I replaced the original HDD with an SSD in mine but kept the system and recovery partitions intact on the HDD. Have been using the HDD in an external USB 3.0 enclosure for backup ever since.

Just replacing the SSD with the HDD and recovering the original factory installation is sufficient to avoid any warranty issues unless I'm missing something. This assumes one used the proper screwdrivers and didn't make a mess when exchanging drives.

 

I agree with you. As long as the computer can be restored to the condition supplied by Samsung then one can expect to get the warranty service. Samsung cannot be expected to support hardware which they haven't supplied and can't be expected to fix any damage caused by the user.

John

 

To be complete: Finally I was able to boot from USB flash drive. I had to switch off secure boot in BIOS settings and to select "CSM OS", an option which gets visible when switching off secure boot. I'm not sure, but I guess these settings are additionally to the setting mentioned before in this thread (disabling fast boot).

Thanks,
Stefano

 

I was searching bios updates for this model, but was unable to find anything. Not even Windows 8 drivers. Where should I search for them if not here?