Unable to boot from USB after Win10

Hey, hopefully can help, been trying the suggestions on this forum but no success so far.

Background, was running Windows 7 on my NP900X4D-A03CA

Decided to do a full back up and fresh install via USBof Windows 10 instead of an upgrade. At 66% received an error : Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart installation. Error code 0x8007025d

Fine I attempt to restart. Check in my bios and my USB drives no longer show up as boot options.

Fast Bios disabled, secure boot disabled and uefi and csm os is selected.

Simply doesn't want to boot to my windows USB anymore. Tried F10 then tab, 3. USB CD: using external, I see a read light but not reading media. Not even sure where to start...Samsung has been useless as I m out of warranty, and Microsoft is clueless. Any other ideas?

 

Sorry to hear that you have having issues, but maybe a bad download of windows on the usb or a bad usb drive led to the errors. Do you have a dvd drive available? Maybe you could burn win 10 to a dvd using the media creation tool and try to reinstall windows and go from there to figure out why the usb ports are not working.

One other thing. Try to have uefi as the os selected, not uefi and csm. I have fast bios and secure disabled with uefi as the os, I then rebooted and went back to the bios and was able to select the boot order. Read below which was taken from another user:

1) use f2 on startup to go into BIOS.
turn off secure boot and rapid boot
Set to UEFI boot
2) Save settings and exit to reboot unit.
3) After rebooting unit, go BACK into BIOS and you will see that the alternate boot disk alternatives are now enabled.
4) You can select the USB drive to boot from it to verify functionality.

Good luck and hope it works out.

 

Did you try using the different USB ports in particular having your bootable device in the USB 2.0 port (the one on the left side)? IIRC, this notebook is of the generation where the BIOS doesn't include support for USB 3.0 as a bootable device so the USB 2.0 port there for a good reason.

John

 

Hey - thanks for your reply, yes I have tried the Win 10 via ISO burnt to DVD. For good measure I tried Ubuntu and Windows 7, along with just a bootable USB using Rufus. No luck there.

I gave your suggestions above and no such luck either. Under Boot Priority I still only see my SSD drive and network as option, nothing for USB's, like I saw before the issues

 

Yes, I tried all three USB ports, I know the left hand one is the one that would have only worked but honestly, I am trying to remember back to Wednesday last week when I was doing the install...for some reason I think I had the install started on one of the USB 3.0 ports (not thinking anything of it) and when it hit a certain phase I wonder if that just euchred something during a 'write'.

Right now honestly, the detection of USB is acting the same as if you removed your HDD and therefore removed as an option to boot from in the BIOS. It's *almost* like back in the day when you had control down to IRQ port and there was a conflict therefore not starting up. I really wish I could reflash the BIOS but no luck...tried clearing CMOS but I waited 48 hrs and it's still keeping the settings. This is the battery looking thing located near the DDR3? Didn't try removing the board from the chassis to see if I see something more recognizable

 

Thank you for the clarifications. I'm wondering whether any of the unbricking solutions might work for you since you've hit the same type of problem. Given them a try.

I see that this notebook originally shipped with Windows 8. Do you recall if you have any issues when you installed Windows 7?

John

 

Thanks John for your support. Tried the unbricking solutions, and no success. There was one I didn't try around flashing the BIOS, where I think something is corrupt. We have a Samsung service location supporting all of Canada, about 45 minutes from my home so I think I might just drop in person there.

Yes, it was originally Windows 8, upgraded to 8.1 and still couldn't stand the new OS like many users. Went to Windows 7 as it was solid and I loved it. The only issue I encountered is switching the BIOS from UEFI / secure boot to CSM and everything fired up fine. Honestly, everything in the BIOS was solid until it failed half way during Windows 10 install (which included re-partitioning). I am assuming Win 10 is UEFI much like Windows 8 so I made sure all those settings were correct. Other items such as making sure boot has the proper combo to work with the settings but I think I exhausted that.

Still think a BIOS reflash will re-awaken, CMOS didn't work. I think I am just a bit tied as I don't have a mSATA to SATA adapter without having to order it online (and waiting). Was hoping to load Windows on the mSATA using my old computer I have kicking around...get it up to a point I can safely reflash and then try a reinstall...pretty sure this is my last option

 

It would be good for the other owners of Samsung notebooks of the same generation if you can persuade Samsung to take ownership of, understand and fix, this problem.

Or you can try the BIOS reflash yourself. One member's experience is here (if you haven't seen it already). But before you go there did you try resetting the BIOS to default settings?

John

 

Hey John

I will keep this thread updated, and if you dont mind as mod, maybe pick out some useful information will be passed along as I noticed you have a few other threads for various issues, I think the Windows 10 part might useful for others.

Went to the service center today and spoke with the tech who is going to attempt the fix.
First issue he said he has seen consistent is the BIOS version, I had BIOS version P08ABK, but he said Samsung recommends using P10ABK (don't quote me on the last three will find out when my laptop is returned) as there is a special BIOS required for Windows 10. He said this is becoming a known issue - when people are bringing in their laptops.

To solve my immediate problem, he said he was going to do a same approach I suggested above, take the SSD and put it in another PC. Load the Samsung factory image, put it back in my laptop, and then repair the BIOS using the latest version and biosupdate.exe. I was going to do it myself, but I would have to wait a few days for the mSATA to SATA connector to come in the mail since the local computer shops have it as a special order, and it would cost ~$30, whereas he has all the tools available including the Samsung factory image (I find this ridiculous that I am not given the license that came with my laptop, and the media)...

 

PS I just realized I broke some plastic on the chassis while fiddling with the CMOS battery...off to ebay for some overnight Chinese parts *sigh*

 

Did the tech person say when you will have your laptop back?

 

Not exactly, he said a day or two tops. If you are looking for version of bios, the latest available should do it he said

 

Thank you for the further update.

Not having the latest BIOS could well be the cause of your problems. According to my records, Samsung released three updates in the second half of 2013 to try to fix the bricking problems (and seems to have been largely successful).

ITEM_20130717_1173_WIN_P08ABK.exe
ITEM_20131023_21241_WIN_P09ABK.exe
ITEM_20131114_21268_WIN_P10ABK.exe

(And for the older X4C the latest BIOS is ITEM_20131127_21276_WIN_P07AAC.exe).

So one lesson is for people to make sure they have the latest BIOS before trying to do the Windows 10 installation. The easiest / safest way to do this is to run Samsung's stand-alone BIOS update program (see here for more details) which will show the current BIOS version and the latest available.

John

 

Just a heads up too, I have the bios update check but under W10 it say the software publisher has been blocked when attempting to run it.

 

I've found the solution to this problem (which most likely affects a lot of other software): Select Unblock in the file properties.



John

 

Thanks, had to log in as admin to see that. I converted my usual account to standard so I could have an admin account for the email login and local for regular access.

 

Hey so I got my laptop back running Windows 10 (on top of 8.1 booooo).

BIOS version recommended to be running then is P10ABK or beware of having a lot of issues. To fix my problem we needed to as I mentioned move my mSATA SSD to another PC, copy on the factory image (or install Windows for the DIY don't worry about drivers), then run the BIOS update.

Looks like I will be buying a new 512 GB mSATA and run a clean install of Windows 10 now and keep the old for good keeping. Apparently with the Win 10 upgrade you can grab a tool to get the Product Key off it (which would have solved earlier issues) and do a clean install of Windows 10 so you don't have all the extra bloat of Windows 8 / 8.1 floating around your already small drive

 

I wouldn't guarantee that P10ABK will completely eliminate the risk of bricking but the reports of bricking problems substantially diminished after Samsung released that BIOS (and equivalent BIOSES for the other notebooks of the same age).

Did Samsung charge you any money for fixing the problem?

SSDs are now relatively cheap so doing a clean install onto a new bigger one is the best way to go. Then put the old one on the shelf in reserve.

John

 

Does Samsung restart the BIOS version numbering on every new model or do multiple models share the same P10 number? My 940X3G only shows P05ACJ as the latest version available. Do you know if that BIOS is OK or if it's also affected by the issue mentioned here?

 

All the BIOS names begin with P and the number is a sequence number for that particular BIOS as indicated by the three letter code which is the last 3 digits of the BIOS name. The letter code appears to have some logic with AA* belonging to pre-Windows 8, AB * were the family of BIOSes introduced when Windows 8 arrived (with changes to the UEFI implementation) and AC* is something newer still. Windows 8 / 8.1 revealed a lot of bugs in the AA* and AB* BIOSes hence the high number of revisions (although I once had a Dell notebook for which the BIOS revision numbers reached 20!). That you ACJ BIOS has only reached 5 revisions suggests that Samsung might have learnt a few lessons from the previous problems.

John

 

Thanks for the info. So in other words they always start from 1 or 01 for every new model? That's what I thought but I figured they might also use numbering that coincided with the "generation" of their BIOS/UEFI code.

 

Yes, each notebook model (with the occasional exception of more than one model with a shared hardware configuration) has its own BIOS for which the numbering starts at 01 (or maybe 00). However,most of the BIOS code will be common to a range of notebooks and the core will be standard (eg Phoenix or AMI).

John