Samsung accumulated Unbricking solutions

This thread will be, as stated, an accumulation of solutions that have been found for Samsung laptops and apparent need for unbricking. Posting will be limited to just solutions (pasted from the original threads), no questions or other answers here. Please read this thread if you are having issues as it may hold your answer.

Please be aware any other posts placed here will get a permanent deletion, this means that data or information will be lost. Information posted here will be direct from the users threads, or parts there of, pertaining to the actual issue and solution.

As of 5/9/2015 this is a work in progress, please be patient for everything to be gathered up.

Disclaimer;
This is the usual. You do any of this at your own risk. Information here is just to try and help members understand the issues they may be facing. Most, if not all, the procedures listed below will void your warranty and easily could further damage the system. If you are still under any kind of warranty our one and only suggestion is USE IT!

 

Samsung NP700G7A-US02
5/9/2015
http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/ryaninja.659880/

Issue;
The PC no longer boots. With the new SSD plugged in, or the original HDD I get a black blinking cursor upon boot. Nothing else. Not the usual Samsung logo, no "press F2 for setup", nothing. It does spin the CDROM up and pause for a bit, but I think that might be more of a power on test, as it won't boot from any of the bootable CDs I have (windows 7, Win 8, ubuntu, Falcon 4 etc), nor will it boot from USB.
If I take the hard drives out, the blinking cursor is replaced by "Windows boot manager" It gives a stop 0xc000000e - "The boot selection failed because a required device is unavailable". Unlike other posts on this forum even after I take out the hard drives, I still cannot boot from usb or CD/DVD.


Solution;
I think this problem exists with my model too as it has the same combination of iSSD/Expresscache. It also has 2 hard drive slots so I was able to plug in the SSD and the original drive in various combinations, but none of that worked.
What did work however, is removing my SSD, putting it in my friends PC, installing windows to it and then running sysprep. Then put it back in my PC and I was able to boot it to windows and format the iSSD. After that it was all plain sailing and I've been able to reinstall windows (from a DVD this time!) and get my laptop running perfectly.

Moderator Notes;
This solution may be suitable for other systems that boot to only display the Samsung Logo. When the UEFI information is stuck in the iSSD an uninitialized boot drive MAY post before the non SATA iSSD does.

 

Samsung Ativ Book 4 (NP470R5E)
12/4/2014
BIOS/UEFI/MICOM version: P15RAN
http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/urkopineda.649297/

Issue;
This was done from a flash of a bad bios file. It is the only way to get a bios back from the emergency bios recovery tool built into bios versions before UEFI.


Solution;
I extracted my BIOS .ROM to modify it, because my laptop has a blocked BIOS (Lots of options as VT-x and SATA options don't appear) and I try to flash my modified .ROM file. Trying some options resulted in a bricked BIOS.
I modified the ROM with the AMI official utility. I changed some option (SATA v3 instead of v2, etc.) but the most important is "BIOS Interface Lock". That locks the BIOS options.

Then, I tried flashing the modified ROM using AFUDOS from a USB DOS stick. My AMI version is Aptivo IV (4) so, I downloaded the correct AFUDOS.exe and tried to flash my .ROM edited file. The result was the same: (0x18 Error: Secure Flash Rom verify fail.)

I tried some commands and, finally, I tried /RECOVERY command; result: Bricked BIOS. If someone has a bricked BIOS using this procedure, please do the next:

1. Use AMI's official tool to open PXXXXX.CAP file (Samsung's official file) and immediately save it as a .ROM file (Without modifying anything)
2. Then place that "original" file in an empty USB stick with the official name (VERY IMPORTANT: If the .CAP file was P15RAN.CAP, name the "original" file as P15RAN.ROM)
3. In your bricked Laptop, connect the USB stick with the file into a USB 2.0 port
4. With the laptop powered off, press CTRL + HOME in the keyboard and power on the laptop keeping the keys pressed.
5. The laptop will power on with the BIOS opened with a "Flashing..." window. Wait until the process is completed.

If someone needs the official tool, please tell me and I will upload it and If someone needs the .ROM, let me the .CAP file and I will upload your .ROM file!

Regards,

Urko

EDIT: I didn't mention before that the USB stick must be in FAT (16 or 32). NTFS/exFAT (Windows) or EXT2/3/4 (Linux) are not supported.

Moderator Notes;
This is an emergency procedure and will only work on systems that still have it enabled. It should also be done as only a last resort.

 

Samsung NP900X4D-A02US
5/8/2015
http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/irav.659436/

Issue;
I've install Oracle Linux on my Samsung Ultrabook 2 times.
1st time without Windows only Linux partitions - and it was just fine.
2nd time after restoration of original Windows 7 installation and installing Linux for dual boot.
Install itself was without any problem but after reboot I was not able to boot.
In BIOS I see no any bootable devices (flash, CDROM and so on) and unable to change order of bootable devices.
But in system info I can see my SSD as well.
I've try to change all BIOS settings related to storage, turn off CMOS battery for 15 minutes and setup other SSD - but with no luck.

Solution;
Problem fixed with Samsung Official Support Service without any problem.
It was simple.
They took my chip.
They put the new chip.
They do a hardware bios re-flashing...

I think that in general problem could be fixed with reseting nvram if we could boot.
But for some how all devices were missing in bootable devices list and I could not boot from anywhere.

Moderator Note;
This is probably great, and as suggested, for those still under warranty.

 

Samsung NP700Z7C-S01US
7/7/2015
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...p700z7c-s01us-is-a-lemon-part-2.777998/page-2

Issue;
System was stuck in a boot loop going to the Samsung logo but then rebooting itself in an endless loop. This actually was happening on a few systems of the same model.

Solution;
Systems were fixed and sent back by L2 Solutions in NYC. It should be known that whatever the fix used it now places a 15 second delay to the boot sequence before the Samsung logo comes on screen. It should be noted this fix has been accomplished at least twice on different machines as well.

 

Samsung NP700Z5C
7/8/2015
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/samsung-series-7-np700z5c-s03ca-my-last-hope.762595/page-10

Issue;
The symptom was that it would not recognize any boot device, the F2 function key to enter BIOS setup was non-functional (I tried lots),
the only "advertised" key which worked was F10 which took you to an empty menu (no options). I tried disconnecting the CMOS battery
etc.. but no luck.

Solution;
With some fooling around, I discovered that in addition to the non-functional F2 key and useless F10 keys shown on the startup screen, there
is a third undocumented function key which in my case actually worked! - pressing F3 at the right time during power-up forces the system to
boot from DVD.

Using F3, I was able to boot a Win7 DVD and install windows ... the problem was that the BIOS was still corrupted, and I couldn't boot the
hard drive once it was installed ... which brings me to the "trick" - if you boot the Win7 DVD it loads a little "stub" which prompts you to press
a key to boot the DVD, if you do nothing it times out and boots the hard drive ... this worked and I was able to boot the freshly installed system
indirectly using the Win7 DVD.

Once I was able to boot the running system, I was able to run the BIOS update tools and replace the BIOS - I had to halt the installer and
run the flash tools with command line options to force the update even though it thought the latest BIOS was already loaded as described in
other posts ... Replacing the BIOS obviously cleared the BIOS data area and the system boots and runs normally now.

For what it's worth - one Samsung which came back from the dead without a trip to the factory - perhaps others will be lucky too!

Moderator Note;
This has worked on two systems as one with Windows 7 and one with Windows 8.1. I should note as well with my NP700G7C F3 does not cause the DVD too boot up, at least the internal one as I do not have an external to test with.