Samsung model NP350E7C stuck loading on Samsung screen

Every time I turn the laptop on it just gets stuck infinitely loading on the Samsung splash page. It had been working just fine last night until I restarted it and got saddled with this headache. I have taken the hard drive out and used it as an external, but while the drive turns on and the Toshiba downloads the drivers, the hard drive itself does not show up under the computer section. The hard drive seemingly shows up in BIOS setup SATA Port 1 ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB. There had been a notice to restart and update a few days ago, but I had simply shut down and was going to update yesterday when the issue started. The OS is Windows 8.1 and I hope you guys can help me out and I'm not sure if this a physical issue or a software one, but As an aside, anything that causes me to lose all of the data in the laptop including browser tabs, history, bookmarks, images, music, videos, etc., is very much a no.

 

This is most likely caused by a failed Win8.1 update.

You can try to reset BIOS settings to default (particularly if you did a BIOS update). After the reset, make sure UEFI is enabled (if the pc came with Win8) or disabled (if it came with Win7).

If that doesn't fix it, I'd say a factory restore from F4 Recovery is your best bet - though I understand that is not what you want to hear. Use another pc to backup your data first.

Maybe others have less dramatic suggestions

 

The failed update is probably the cause. I'm not the most tech savy guy and I don't want to screw something up and make things worse so if you or anyone else can give me a sort of step by step on doing this I'd really appreciate it. Alternatively, would using a Windows 8 installation disk to do a repair installation also work, or is that something else entirely?

 

If you can get into the BIOS (tap the F2 key a few times immediately after turning the computer on) then do the rest as suggested above.

It may also be worthwhile doing a system reset by disconnecting the mains power, removing / disconnecting the battery (some models have a disconnect switch on the bottom) then holding down the power button for a minute. Then replace the battery (if removable), plug in mains power and try starting.

It is unclear to me whether you have tried, but didn't succeed, to access the HDD on another computer. If your machine came with Windows 8 then the HDD most probably uses the GPT file system. What operating system is running on the other computer. See here for a compatibility list.

One way or another you'll be able to get to the HDD contents and make a backup copy.

I would also suggest that once you have everything working then you consider setting up a separate partition for all your data. This won't get touched if you ever need to restore C:.

John

 

Windows 7 which might explain why it didn't work. I'll try your guy's suggestions when I get home, but thanks for the quick replies and tip.

 

Win7 should be able to read a GPT data disk without problems (and boot it as well if the BIOS supports UEFI). So if your other computer was unable to read this disk (that's how I understand you now) I wonder if there may be an actual disk problem -- which would also explain why it will not boot.

When connecting the disk to another PC, if it doesn't show up with a drive letter, you can look in Device Manager (Control Panel) under Disks drives to verify that it can see the disk at all. If not, you could be looking at a disk or interface failure.

Minitool Partition Wizard is a free tool which can be used to inspect, modify and recover data from disks (depending on the severity the problem, of course). But it only works if the disk appears in Device Manager.

But I shouldn't draw hasty conclusions. First see if you can read that disk on another computer, so you can save your data. That is priority number one!

 

Really sorry for the long MIA, but I had the laptop dropped at Geek Squad. Everything is already fixed and awaiting pickup. From whatvthey told, Windows had become corrupt and needed a recovery so I just told them to use a new HDD so that I could contonue working on the old one. The also backed all of my data on an exyernel I provided.

 

Good choice! Thank you for the update.

 

Wasn't cheap though. Overall the whole thing set me back 400 plus dollars, but now I'm covered by Geek Squad for the next two years and granted about $180 came from backing the system up and the new hard drive. The old one still works just fine its just that I don't want to lose all the stuff inside of it and I'm going to try and salvage it. If any of you guys have any advice on how to proceed with the corrupted hard drive I'd like to hear. Any help is really appreciated. It's Windows 8.1 if it helps.

 

Ouch, that's a good amount of cash right there.

Of course you need an external USB enclosure or docking station to read that old disk. If Windows can read it when you plug it in, make sure to copy any data files you need (if Geek Squad didn't already copy everything for you). Otherwise try those Data Recovery features in Minitool Partition Wizard. I haven't tried them myself, but the tool is otherwise well built, so I would have some confidence in it.

I assume Geek Squad just installed Windows on the new disk, but no Recovery. Certainly you can try and boot Recovery with F4 -- I would be impressed if they DID put a working Recovery on the new disk. If it works, I recommend you make a backup using the first two steps in this post. That way you will be able to re-image your disk yourself in the future, no matter how messed up it might become.

If Recovery doesn't work (because Geek Squad didn't put it on the new disk) I am afraid there is no way to clone Recovery from an external disk and make it workable.

Once you have copied what you need from the old disk, I would probably just try to make it useful by using the Wipe Disk feature in Minitool to clean it completely, then create and format a new data partition. Again Minitool makes these tasks very easy. As long as you are careful not to mess with your new (internal) disk, there is no risk involved.

Please keep us posted on your progress.

 

Okay, got my laptop back today. I had them back everything up and it's in my external. Only problem is that I'm not sure if the backed up my bookmarks which will very much displease me if they didn't. Either way, I'm pretty much still stuck in the same problem as far as that other hard drive is concerned. Pretty sure they actually did put a recovery on the new Hard Drive so if you guys can expand step by step the Data Recovery features in Minitool Partition Wizard and what I'd need to do to recover the stuff in my old hard drive(namely bookmarks, tabs, and history).

 

Bookmarks etc are stored in a folder somewhere which you can track down and then copy over. I've done this for Firefox (see here and here) and would expect other browsers to be similar.

John

 

Can you do this with the history as well?

 

The browsing history will be stored in a file somewhere. Use your favorite search engine to find how to locate and transfer the file.

John

 

Oh this helps me so much. Just the fact that it CAN be done gives some modicum of hope although I'll probably have to get it sent out again this time to recovery experts since I still can't get into the damn thing(PC detects a SATA/IDE bridge at least I think it does, but still shows no drive letter) and I'm afraid of screwing it up worse than it already is(some things best left to the experts). Either way, checking the history files will get me my lost tabs and the bookmarks are self-explanatory. Also, this one is probably a lost cause, but is it possible to recover extension data? I had an extension called Too Many Tabs on Firefox and both of my Chrome browsers(regular Chrome and Canary) and was curious if that was salvageable in some way. I know that data is stored in a folder specific for those, I just want to know if there's hope with that one.

 

It's all on the old drive.

When connected, the drive hardware should show up in Device Manager but my may need to go into Disk Management to assign a drive letter(s).

It may be useful to install Minitool Partition Wizard (a useful free utility) which would let you look inside the partitions.

John

 

Yeah I wanted to ask about that. I plugged it in via IDE/SATA Converter Cable, but I still can't find it. I don't if it's that it isn't reading it or I'm just not looking properly. I'll definitely download the partition tool though, but I just want to know as much as possible before I go to work on it.

 

Is the drive spinning up? Is there any clicking from the heads?

Device Manager should show it as either a disk drive or a USB device (but it might detect the adapter without seeing the drive itself).

I recall you originally reporting that the BIOS could see the drive. Is this still the case?

John

 

It spins and there is no clicking. The BIOS showed that thete was a SATA drive there, but I'm not sure if it was the hard drive. As for device manager, the system did locate the adapter since it mentioned there was a SATA/IDE bridge, but nothing about the drive.

 

The best way to check the HDD would be to directly connect it to an SATA cable in a desktop. This would avoid the USB interface, although I don't think that is the problem.

John

 

Any help here would be much appreciated

My son has a NP350e7c With Windows 8 pre installed, this will not restore. The Samsung screen appears then nothing. The BIOS looks normal, not updated. Holding F4 just leads to a "please wait" then swirl then grey lit screen. I thought faulty HDD or corrupt OS so tried to format using XP disk but same result. Tried to boot with Windows 8 disk, same grey end result. The HDD when swapped into my Samsung R580 with windows 7 begins the installation of win8 up till asking for Product key (don't have as Windows * was pre=installed), so I think HDD is OK. I've removed both RAM modules also swapping between channels with no result. The laptop stopped booting prior to my trying to do restore.

 

Hello petemclavin, welcome to NBR.

If you formatted the entire HDD (as I understand), that means your Recovery partitions are gone, and Samsung Recovery Solution (F4) will no longer work. There is no realistic way to get it back other than send the laptop to Samsung for so-called re-imaging of the HDD.

The same is true if you moved the HDD to another computer and began installing Win8 from there: That computer almost certainly uses the good old BIOS mode (since you say it has Win7) whereas your NP350 uses UEFI mode (since you say it came with Win8). These two modes are very different and use different partition styles on the HDD: UEFI=GPT, BIOS=MBR. Your HDD was originally UEFI style (as used by new Win8 computers). So when you began installing Win8 onto that HDD (in good old BIOS mode) Windows Setup probably converted the HDD to MBR, which would prevent you from installing Windows onto the HDD after putting it back into the NP350 (which still runs in UEFI mode).

You have two options:

1) Convert the HDD back to GPT and try installing Windows again on the NP350 in UEFI mode ( OS Mode Selection=UEFI OS, how it came originally). This time, make sure your installation source is UEFI-compatible: It must be GPT/FAT32. Don't use the Microsoft ISO/USB tool to create it, since it only knows NTFS, which cannot be booted in UEFI mode. Use Rufus (Google it) or create it manually, as described in this guide in our Windows section (that was link).

2) Convert the HDD to MBR (or make sure it's MBR), switch to legacy BIOS mode on the NP350 ( OS Mode Selection=CSM OS) and try installing Windows again. In this case, DO use the Microsoft ISO/USB too to create the installation source.

This switch to UEFI/GPT has caught a lot of users by surprise. Microsoft has made little effort to warn people about it, and many just proceeded to install the same way they used to do WinXP or Win7 in the past.

Following are some links to relevant posts and/or threads on the subject:

Overview of difference between good old Win7/BIOS/MBR and Win8/UEFI/GPT

New Win8 UEFI install guide on blank disk

Clean install Win8.1 guidance and gotchas (FAT32 not NTFS)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/746708-fast-boot-uefi-bricked-my-system.html