SRS6 Admintool USB and Bootable Factory Image errors

Hi Guys,

I've been reading this forum for a few days now and there are an awful lot of smart people on here, and i'm hoping someone can help with this issue.

essentially what i want to do is have a complete backup before i change anything to the HDD. I've read that people have totally formatted their HDD's and now the F4 startup doesn't work and that its unrecoverable, so obviously I'm trying to avoid that.

I've just purchased a Samsung Chronos 7 (NP700Z5C-S03UK) from a friend, which originally came with Windows 8 on its 1TB HDD.
Bios settings are-
Boot device priority: 1. USB HDD
Fast boot: disabled
Secure boot: disabled
OS Mode Selection: UEFI and CSM OS

I created an Admintool USB by going into ctrl + alt + F10 on several different flash drive manufacturers (Verbatim 32GB, Sony 8GB, Corsair 8GB, maxell 4GB and even the dreaded Sandisk 4GB)
after i restart and try to test Admintool USB, it boots up on the USB fine, enters recovery but then shows this
If you wait 5 seconds, it will restart the machine. if you press OK or Cancel, it will restart the machine!
does anyone have a fix for this?


Ive also tried creating a Bootable Factory Image onto my Verbatim 32GB flash drive, and when it boots up i get this message:

but when i create a bootable flash drive using Recovery program in windows, it boots up fine

thanks in advance everybody

 

Hi Guj, welcome to NBR.

You obviously read up on this subject ahead of time, which is great.

The only causes I can think of why the Factory Image Backup and/or Admin Tool wouldn't work are:

1) An incompatible USB flash drive. Check this and this. I realize you already tried several different drives.

2) Try using a different USB port, both to create the backup and to restore. Sometimes USB2 (black) has worked where USB3 (blue) failed. But of course it's much slower...

Following are links to some other relevant posts and threads that may help. You may already have read some of them, but it's what I have:

Summary guide to backing up and recreating SRS5 and SRS6

SRS6 Bootable Factory Image guide

USB bootable factory image backup wouldn’t create partitions - SRS6 Admin Tool fixed it

SRS6 / USB Admin Tool – create and use

SRS6 / USB Admin Tool guidance to re-create Recovery on disk

And finally there is @Gulfmaster's excellent thread on SRS6 and Win10, which in more recent times has become our go-to resource for all things SRS6:

Guide: Samsung Recovery Solution 6 (SRS6) and Windows 10

Also, I would say for a 4-5 years old laptop, with a Recovery containing Win8, you should consider whether it is worth your effort.

Within the first 2-3 years and the same Windows generation, I definitely think it is worthwhile to be able to restore to factory, particularly if one is re-selling the laptop or wants to prove a hardware problem to Samsung. After that, it is more important to be able to install a "still relevant" Windows version, be that Win8.1 or Win10 -- but most likely not Win8. For that, you just need the Product Key, which is stored in your BIOS, and which you can extract using free tools such as OEMKey, ProduKey or RW-Everything (just Google them).

Please keep us posted on your progress.

 

Thanks for the reply Dannemand (i was hoping you hadn't left).

Gulfmaster's post is what actually made me go into this SRS venture originally lol. Thanks for providing the links, unfortunately either i'd tried them before or none of them helped for me this time around.

How can one find out the version of SRS6 they have? I know the version of the erroneous SRS6 Admintools USB and bootable recovery i have (as it provided on my images above: ver 6.0.5.0), but is that the version of my SRS6 i boot into with F4? and how do i go about updating this?
I ask as the Admintools USB i had to resort to is from Dosibox's .iso hes provided, this is 6.0.12.4, which is newer than mine.. but Gulfmaster talks about a 6.1.0.1.

I did actually fix my Create Bootable Factory Image error above (MessageBox: M017).
I used Diskpart on my 32gb usb within SRS6's CTRL + ALT + F10's command prompt and just followed Dosibox's instructions here. this worked for me.

I will format my HDD from my other laptop to use in this samsung and see if i can get: admintools, F4 and recovery to work on correctly, and will report back.

And you are right, for a 4-5 year old laptop there's no point in restoring back to a clean OS to sell on, ive actually never had a quadcore laptop like this before so ill have it for a long time, rather I am interested in doing what Gulfmaster did (having a clean copy of an OS in recovery when i need it)... but not with windows 10.

I'm not a fan of the unnecessary, undeletable bloatedness of Windows store and cortana and Edge etc, so was planning to essentially downgrade to win 7 pro x64 (and keep a clean copy of this in recovery).
unless you or others can think of (or link me to) a reason for me NOT to move down to Windows 7 over Windows 10 with this specific laptop in mind. I know there is a forum in the sticky's (which ive yet to read) about downgrading, and im not even sure this laptop would allow me to do it (SRS6 instead of 5, GPT instead of MBR etc). any help you can provide would be a godsend!

kind regards!