Windows 10 on Samsung Notebooks

The official roll-out of windows 10 is approaching and the "Get Windows 10 " notification has appeared on many Samsung notebooks. However, is it safe to proceed? Windows 8 / 8.1 caused a lot a grief for both Samsung and the owners of Samsung notebooks. Have lessons been learned regarding Windows 10?

Given that many of the potential problem areas are likely to be generic across the range of Samsung notebooks it is probably advantageous to bring together all the Samsung + Windows 10 discussion into one place so I am starting this new thread.

A few posts from other threads to keep this ball rolling:

Samsung support for Windows 10

Someone who tried the preview

Please post more links.

BTW, I am personally likely to first try Windows 10 on my Dell E7440. It is more likely to have propper driver support and, if Windows 10 doesn't fix a sleep issue I've been having then Windows 7 will need to be reinstalled.

 

I've installed the Windows 10 preview a couple days ago on my NP700Z5A-S04DE (from 2011 I think?) and I thought I'd share my experience.

I must say that I had much fewer problems than expected (and than I had when upgrading to 8.1 - damn, that was a fight). I didn't bother installing any of the drivers provided by Samsung since almost everything was running smooth from the start. The only thing I installed was the Smart Settings software, which, by the way, starts much faster than it ever did on Windows 8/8.1 and all the options I needed so far seem to be working (incl. keyboard backlight).
I didn't install the SSD software, since I didn't feel like it was working properly on Windows 8.1.

Then I tested the gaming performance. So far I've only tried League of Legends and AC Rogue and in both games the framerate is much lower than it was before, on Win 8.1. Even lowering the graphics settings didn't help. After investigating a bit, I noticed that the GPU load on the AMD gpu almost never goes above 30%. The CPU load isn't particularly high and the ram isn't full either, so I'm kinda stumped atm. As for display drivers, I tried the leshcat UnifL drivers as well as the official ones - they don't seem to make any difference for my problem, but both of them do work fine otherwise.
When / If find out what limits my gpu to perform, I'll let you know (until then, I'll gladly accept any help identifying the bottleneck).

TL;DR: working fine, but gpu bottleneck.

Edit: I managed to resolve the issue, however I'm still not sure what caused it. Here are some things I did that might have helped:

• disabling the silent mode in smart settings
• Windows updates
• reinstalling LoL

 

For now this needs a sticky just to be safe.

 

Good thread, while I think probably everyone should perform the FREE upgrade to W10 over the next year, I'd also say there's no harm in waiting a few weeks or months in case there are issues. I have a few concerns before I take the plunge:

My biggest question is what happens to your W7/W8 key. There have been rumors that once you upgrade to W10, your key is essentially a W10 key and may no longer work for your previous version. I find this hard to believe, but the key issues with W8 were copious, so perhaps. Once I confirm the W10 upgrade does not somehow magically deactivate your W8 license I will kick the tires on my X3G.

Secondly, I would like to use an official W10 version of the elan driver and Samsung settings.

Finally, I don't want to do the in place upgrade, clean install only. Ideally I would like to dual boot W8.1 and W10 with one license. I anticipate obtaining the W10 iso will be a pita.

What is not a rumor is that WMC will not be available in W10. I realize only people in the HTPC community will care, but I thought I'd mention it. Because of this, it's going to be a long time before all my systems are on W10. I plan to save a W10 image from a clean install for each system, provided I can roll back to W8/7.

 

Here's my take on the licensing thing, but do not think this as official as I only speculate from what I have seen or heard:

• When doing the upgrade, Windows 10 will either convert this into a suitable W10 key or issue a key that basically a match of the W8 key but only for W10.
• If it is happening like that, you will be able to reinstall both OS later.
• Clean installation is supported after you are upgrading from W8. Since they do not provide any activation key, your best way to do is to upgrade and verify if there are any problems, then using the Reset/Restore option in Windows to do a clean install.
• For dual boot, I don't believe we can do that unless they provide an activation key that is seperate with W8 or we somehow can look up that after upgrading. However, it might be possible due to the fact that they continue to provide alpha/beta builds and those are only activated by some generic key with our Live accounts. That could mean we can use our email just to activate the license.
• Rollback is also possible so I guess we do not have to worry about that. The only thing I can think of is that when we are doing the rollback, they will deactivate the W10 key and allow us to use the old W7/8 key to reactivate OS.

Those things are my guesses only and I hope they would clarify more on the release date. I am not worrying much about downgrading since I am always use the lastest software as possible and I have tested the preview on my laptop and it has been great so far, despite some minor things that could be fixed by updating new driver/software. For activation key, I am confidence that MS will not do something like revoking the old license key so that they want everyone to be on W10. They do not want more backlash for their OS, so they will provide as many options as possible. If it is possible, we should all migrate to W10, since it combines the best of 7 and 8 together.

Now, for software, WMC is definitely removed from W10. I have not use that much in a while and I know for some people, this might be a deal breaker. However, back then, there was no equivalent software to it. Nowadays, there are a lot of them like Plex, Kodi, so it is possible to ignore WMC completely. That is only my reference as other people might think WMC is much better.

For driver, as I mentioned in another topic, you can reuse old W8.1 driver/software because much of the underlying structure of W10 is basically W8/8.1 except for things like graphic and touchpad. Those two are definitely important and Samsung should release them as W10 compatible. Other driver/software, they probably reuse the old one since they are still working. Samsung settings does indeed working except for brightness, but there is a patch/fix that can be applied to fix that issue so do not worry about that.

 

How is everybody doing today? I have a question about upgrading to windows 10 and drivers. I am planning to do a clean install for windows 10. I currently have the Samsung Gamer 7 (NP700G7C-S01US),which came out 3 years ago and I was wondering.

Will Samsung be supporting this laptop with Window 10 drivers?

Will drivers from Window 7/8.1 be fine for Windows 10? I did go from windows 7 to 8.1 and they had drivers for 8.1.

Does anybody with this laptop have the technical preview or the full version? If so, can you tell me your opinion.



http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Gamer...id=1438007030&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+gamer+7

 

I don't have this one, but I am sure that your computer will not be supported officially by Samsung. Why I said that? If you look on Samsung Support page, you will see that they currently list the Ativ Book 9 and some series 3 models, even mine NP880Z does not make the cut. However, you can search for it inside the SWUpdate. As far as thing goes, Samsung has phased on their notebook division and they are currently not releasing any new model. That does not mean the old models will be obsolete. I asked their support and they just said they will release software and driver update for notebook, but did not mentions any model and even not referenced my model.

Now, for this particular laptop, you should be able to use current W8.1 drivers with W10. Everything should be fine, except for graphic and touchpad. I mention these two particularly because I had some issues with them. Your graphic should be fine since it is NVidia and they are more on the good side to provide good driver and software than AMD. Their Optimus switching support is much better in term of driver and software than AMD. For touchpad, I have not seen any news on the one that will be compatible with W10. That does not mean we will not have one though, it just that we will have to use the bad one until the good one arrives. For other drivers, I tended to go to their OEM websites and download them separately, because most of the time, Samsung would only provide one set of working drivers and stop doing update after awhile.

Here my suggestion. If you still have a good size of hard drive, then split that drive into two partitions and install the technical preview build 10240 inside the new partition. That way you can test out the preview or I should say the RTM build since we will get that build plus other fixes when W10 is released. By doing that, you ensure your laptop is able to run W10 and after the release, you can just delete the partition and update/clean the old one as you want. MS will release the official on the 29th, however, you might not be able to get it on that day those. They are rolling the build by stages with Insider first, and then for PCs/Laptops that meet the requirement. I suspect that laptops like Samsung or some other OEMs will not meet the conditions since MS are relying much on their OEM partners to release compatible drivers. So we could see that the build will come as a later with the support of drivers and software. In the mean time, just test out the preview and see if it works for you or not. If not, wait until everything is good, and then do the upgrade. Otherwise, people will just blame on MS for releasing bad OS like W8.

 

Thanx for the input. I rarely use the touchpad since I have a dedicated mouse. This is one of the reasons I'm moving away from laptops and going to get a desktop. Don't really know if these manufactures are going to support the systems after the warranty is up With that said, I wouldn't mind a updated Gamer 7 lol. It's a solid notebook.

 

I have the notebook NP700G7C-S01, but no Windows 10 on it. One issue, with the preview, is it wants to use UEFI and GPT on the primary drive being as this system is UEFI compliant. If you have all MBR on the primary you may have an issue. The other issue may be with using Samsung proprietary easy settings software to get the function keys working. Hardware wise everything else is pretty standard so there should be little issue.

For the touchpad I use the touchpad settings to disable it when a mouse is plugged in, this helps immensely.

 

You can definitely switch around GPT or MBR as both are compatible with UEFI bios, although it is recommended to use GPT for better future-proofing. I am running mine W8.1 and W10 on an SSD with MBR and have no issue with either OS or the BIOS. The boot sequence is really fast as you will not notice any slow down just because using one or another. Easy Settings is working properly like I said by using the current newest version for W8.1 in W10, maybe they will release a good compatible one for the new OS.

Currently, the preloading is starting for people did the reservation. I have seen it has started download the bits on my desktop, but have not seen them on either my Samsung laptop or the SP3. It could be they are preloading by stage and only unlock by midnight. By tomorrow, if I can have it on my laptop, I will report the issues that I could find.

 

I, with the preview, originally intended to dual boot Windows 7 as well. The install though was on a legacy MBR and even though I disabled UEFI compatibility it wanted only a GPT partition to install too. This is why it ended up on my P79xx but eventually I gave up on it.

 

Could it be the Secure Boot option because that is the only thing I can think of. When you turn on Secure Boot (mostly on by default for any laptops nowadays), it requires GPT partition to install Windows. However, you can disable that and still use UEFI bios function to load Windows and use MBR.

Just an update, I finally see the preload is happening on my NP880. Hopefully I will be able to install it by tomorrow. I'll continue update as we go along.

 

Well, I asked samsung customer support and they told me that they are planning to support the W10 and updating drivers. They told me to continue to look at this to see when the update occurs. If anybody is interested:

http://support-us.samsung.com/cyber...&modelname=NP700G7C&modelcode=NP700G7C-S01US#

 

It does seem that Samsung is doing something about Windows 10: I've just run SW Update and see that Windows 10 drivers/ software are now listed for many of the notebooks sold during the past 3 years. The list looks reasonably comprehensive with Settings, graphics and touchpad drivers. The NP900X4C is there but not the slightly older NP900X3B. Surprising there is an NP940X5J-K01UK that has only Windows 10.

What we don't know is whether the driver database hasn't been fully updated or this is work in progress. However, it is promising.

John

PS: I have decided to make my NP900X4C a guinea pig and have (i) done a full disk image; (ii) downloaded the drivers / software from SW Update and (iii) indicated that I will try Windows 10. I would note that the Windows 10 compatibility reports says that I will have to uninstall Easy Settings during the upgrade.

 

Hey,

I recently started SWUpdate and searched for my Laptop model (770z5e SD01) and found this:


So far I havent installed Win10, so I cant say if these drivers work, but I hope I could answer a few question, wether Samsung is going to Support (at least) this model. Maybe I will have time in next days to install Win10 along with these drivers. Stay tuned, I will keep you updated. Wish me luck!

 

Hi there, new here.
I plan on getting a Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus NP940X3K-K02US 13.3" sometime next month from BH Photography.. I'm still trying to narrow it down between the NP940X3K-K02US or the NP940X3G-K04US, but that's off topic for this. With Windows 10 coming out tomorrow, does anyone know if Samsung will start selling these laptops with W10 or continue with W8.1 still? - Sorry if this has already been asked. I've read through and couldn't find anything on it, nor could I find anything off the forums on it.

 

Samsung's SW Update database currently shows no new version of these notebooks. Given the effort that is being put into making the Windows 10 upgrade process troublefree I wonder if Samsung won't be in any hurry to ship new versions of existing notebooks with Windows 10 pre-installed. It is more likely they will wait until the next Intel platform (Skylake) becomes available which is reported to be very soon.

John

 

The preloading on mine laptop has finished early and ready to go live at midnight. You should see an hidden folder $Windows.~BT if you have reserved our copy and your computer passes the requirement check.

So the software/driver list inside SWUpdate is pretty new today because last time I checked there was no Windows 10 section. Look like Samsung is getting ready to release the support for W10. I notice that you can only see that section for models that Samsung had officially released drivers for Windows 8.1. Any models that came with W8 and did not have 8.1 compatible do not show the section like Series 7 Chronos. Looking further more into the list, I also notice there are couple newest version of the drivers, noticeably is the touchpad. The one that WU had installed on my preview was 11.7.33. Hope this one solves some problems I had before. Many software/drivers have their version bumped up a lot and it is looking good to me. The only thing I am not sure is Samsung Settings/Easy Settings. The one inside SWUpdate is 2.0 but the newest one should be 2.5. I will compare and see, but 2.5 definitely looks newer to me.

Also, if you go to Samsung Support website, a lot of articles about W10 have been showed up by today. I did not see them before so I think they were staging them along the official release of W10.

Look like I am going to stay overnight to install W10 and make sure everything works. I'll keep you guys posted by tomorrow as soon as possible.

P/s: If mine NP880Z5E works perfectly with W10 and new drivers, then 770, 780, and 870 should be fine.

 

Windows 10 wasn't in a hurry to download onto my X4C (note that this is a Windows 7 version without UEFI enabled) so I downloaded the installer from Microsoft. It all went surprising smoothly. Once I told the Win 10 installer to proceed it first put up a couple of warnings:


The issue about Easy Settings had been previously identified. The warning about language had me confused and slightly worried but I decided to proceed. Some time and several reboots later Windows 10 was running. This warning box appeared.


I'm not good at reading those characters on the buttons so I opted for the left one. This started up SW Update.


I was offered four updates which I opted to install. One of them threw an error but succeeded after a reboot and a further reboot was needed before Settings would work. The touchpad driver wasn't on the SW Update list but Device Manager says the driver date is 01/Jul/15 so Microsoft must have included that somewhere.

My first impressions are favourable in that the overall Windows 7 look and feel are still there much as I had them set up. I had to disable adaptive brightness, but the settings for that were easy to find.

And, as far as I can see, my computer still thinks it is running UK English, even to the extent of my preferred dd/mmm/yyyy date format (for those who don't know, the mmm puts the month as 3 letters, not 2 numbers which eliminates confusion about day and month.

John

 

Yeah I really want to dual boot as well, maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend. Would like to know what happens to your old W7/8 key, that is, can you reimage your previous installation and have it remain activated. If someone finds out, please post.

I see that you can download the W10 iso if you want to do a clean install:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

Excellent thread.

I've just updated one of my laptops to Windows 10 yesterday and everything went smoothly (knock on wood). I have a Samsung NP900X3C which is currently running Windows 7 and I'm debating whether to update this to Windows 10 or not. I'm wondering if features like fast boot, Samsung quick settings etc. will still work properly if I go through with the upgrade process. I heard some time ago that Samsung was blocking Windows 10 update messages because they thought some of these features might not work properly under windows 10 (not sure if they have an update to this).

Has anybody updated their NP900X3C to Windows 10? If so, what is your experience so far?

Thanks!

 

I have updated my NP900X4C from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without any trauma. See my post further up this thread. The X3C (and X3D and X4D) are almost identical in terms of internal hardware to the X4C. They all share the same BIOS. Or more accurately, the same two BIOSes. Those shipped prior to Windows 8 (which my X4C is) has the P**AAC BIOS and doesn't have UEFI enabled. The later versions have the P**ABK BIOS with UEFI which created a few problems.

It appears so far that Samsung are better prepared for the Windows 10 roll-out than they were for Windows 8. Perhaps what is left of their software team haven't been distracted by trying to get numerous new models or versions ready for launch.

John

 

Hey I posted this in this ATIV thread but maybe its more appropriate in this thread, apologies for the double post mods.

Hey guys I have one question, and it might be stupid so apologies in advance but I have a brand new Ativ 9 and I turned it on yesterday to start the Windows 10 upgrade process, etc. I plan on upgrading to W10 as soon as it downloads, but I wanted to know if I should update everything that is popping up in SW update before I upgrade? It shows quite a few updates.

I am going to clean install w10 on a new ssd regardless after it upgrades but just wanted to know if not doing any SW updates would effect my W10 installation. Thanks in advance!

 

See my post here which shows the sequence of events: (i) The Windows 10 installer will advise you of anything that needs to be uninstalled prior to the upgrade and (ii) it will automatically start SW Update afterwards which will list anything important that needs to be installed.

And, on a related subject, here's a report of successful Windows 10 installation on the NP770/780/870/880.

John

 

Thank you John I appreciate the info. I read your post earlier regarding your upgrade experience and will use it to guide my own. Once I get upgraded and make sure everything runs accordingly I will be clean installing W10 on a new ssd (samsung 850 m2 500gb).

I appreciate your help!

 

I'm currently upgrading the i5 laptop with the SW Update (I dont dare do it on my i7 work laptop) so I will report back on the results. it looks like it's going to take a rather long time too.

Also I noticed that on my i7, the bottom right hand corner says "Windows 8 Build 9200"? There was nothing like that on the i5.

edit: Forgot to mention that the upgrade is being done on an 770z5e i5 8850m.

 

Update finished and the screen brightness controls are working and the keyboard backlight is working. I also just had a pop up saying that there was another importatnt update to install, but the pop up was rather large with the word "ATIV" on it. Not to sure what that's about.

The update puts 5 icons on your desktop:

Support Centre
Recovery
Help Desk
Intel HD Graphic Control Panel
Samsung Settings

Edit: My computer has turned into "This PC". One other thing - I'm using classic shell and the side bar still says 8.1

 

Thanks! That's good to know.

I saw that you had to uninstall "Easy Settings" prior to upgrading to Windows 10. Have you had any issues from not having it on your machine?

 

My Fn keys are not working after updating my np900x3b. What is the solution for this as easy settings had to be uninstalled prior to the update...

 

My Fn keys didn't work for brightness settings after Microsoft pushed an update on the preview for Windows 10, nor does my touch pad for multi touch features only. Neither have worked since the update, 4 months ago I believe. This was on my Series 7 Chronos, from 2011 or 2012. I've looked everywhere through settings for a fix to it with no solution. Was hoping the actual Windows 10 would have fixed this problem..

 

You will need Settings now as Easy Settings was for W7 only. In SW update, use the find model option and search for NP900X3c-A02US. It has a W10 drivers section that should be compatible.

 

Hi there! My first post
I upgraded my NP870Z5G from 8.1 to 10 yesterday. Everythings working fine (Windows 10 seem to be more responsive) as far as I can tell at this moment. Even the fn keys are working properly!

 

Easy Settings is superseded by Settings which I was invited to install once Windows 10 was running.

You should be offered Settings, which is the Windows 8 / 10 version of Easy Settings (see the last graphic in my post). Once that is installed and the computer rebooted then the Fn keys should work. My display brightness controls work OK (I haven't checked the others).

John

 

Thanks go45cvi and John... It fixed my Fn problem. What about all the other drivers and utilities in SWupdate. Should I manually install those too or Windows 10 has taken care of all the drivers etc?

 

Hello,
I've disabled the touchscreen from Samsung Setting (Fn+F1) when I was using Win8.1 but after I upgrade to win10, the option is missing in Samsung setting utility. How can I enable touchscreen? (Samsung Ativ Book 9+)

 

If Samsung Update, when run on your computer, is offering drivers then these are most likely newer than whatever went into the Windows 10 installer. Which other Samsung utilities are you being offered?

I would try going back to the version of Settings you had in Windows 8.1. If you don't have that saved somewhere then run Samsung SW Update and use the Find Model function to find the windows 8.1 drivers for the 9+. Then uninstall the current Settings, reboot, install the older Settings and reboot again. While Settings has core functionality that applies across most (all?) Samsung notebooks we have observed some features appear and others disappear with different Settings versions.

John

 

I have now upgraded my Dell E7440 to Windows 10. One thing I then discovered is that the text in some of my older programs looked fuzzy. The fix seems to be to disable display scaling on high DPI displays (see below).



The E7440 has an FHD panel and it appears that Windows 10 is applying display scaling by default whereas the Samsung X4C that I upgraded yesterday is only 1600 x 900. Display scaling, in theory, is probably a good idea but older programs aren't scaling aware and don't scale properly. I can't remember whether I came across this issue while I was using Windows 8.

John

 

These were the software offered when I chose Windows 8 for Np900x3b in SWupdate.

 

Hello,
I would like to do a clean installation of Windows 10 on 900X4C-A03PL, so I checked if all drivers is available for my notebook.

I found this:

8 by SkuterPL posted Jul 30, 2015 at 3:54 PM

8.1 by SkuterPL posted Jul 30, 2015 at 3:54 PM

10 by SkuterPL posted Jul 30, 2015 at 3:54 PM

Chipset: 8 | 8.1
Graphic: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Sound: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Wi-Fi: 8.1
LAN: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Bluetooth: 8 | 8.1
IRST: 8 | 8.1
IMEI: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Touchpad: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Airplane: 8 | 8.1 | 10
Radio HID: 8
SW Update 8
Settings: 8 | 8.1 | 10

There is missing a few important drivers like chipset, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

With IRST, I shoudn't have problem with download property version on Windows 10, I think that on intel.com I will find it.

I don't know what's Radio HID, maybe anyone can explain me that?

Does Samsung still updating drivers for notebooks? If yes, I would like to wait a few time.

 

My experience is that Windows 10 installs the most important drivers out of the box. I don't believe there is any need to install chipset seperately and to install all provided drivers from Samsung Update, since Windows will cover most of it. The only thing I installed through Samsung Update were Samsung Settings and the brightness fix and my laptop is working perfectly.

 

I prefer drivers from manufacturer than this one from Windows

 

Hi, I´m new on this forum.

I want to share my experience with my notebook (Samsung NP900X3C-A05US) and Windows 10.

I made an upgrade using the media creation tool. Everything seems to be working.

Just one thing is missing on the Samsung Settings aplication. With Windows 8.1 I had the option for sharing the internet connection. But now the option is missing. I hope Samsung bring it back with future updates.

Saludos

 

Without this option, you can share the internet connection too.

For example: http://www.ampercent.com/turn-windows-10-pc-into-a-wi-fi-hotspot/15499/

 

Thanks I´ll try this workaround. But I hope Samsung bring the option back, since it was very easy, just push a button and it was ready.

Saludos

 

Last time I went to upgrade my NP700Z5C to Windows 8.1 from 8 it bricked so its been sitting in fear at Windows 8 ever since going through 2 bricking incidents. All this talk about Windows 10 has got me excited and I'm going to take the plunge and upgrade to 10. I'm not getting the "Upgrade Windows" icon in the taskbar because I think it I need to upgrade to 8.1 first. If this is true, will I be safe to upgrade again? I'm still emotionally scarred from last time.

 

This happened to the i5 770z5e when I installed an old piece of software "Paint Shop Pro 8". When I loaded up one of my pictures created using pixel art, it appeared fuzzy. I went into the display settings and set medium to small. However, it was too small for me to use, so I then went back to medium, rebooted the computer (I was installing something at the same time where a reboot was necessary) and for some reason it fixed it. The pixel art was sharp again and remains so.

 

I would suggest you try downloading the Windows 10 installation files from here and see if it will do an upgrade.

John

 

So, I updated my Series 7 Chronos NP770Z5E to Windows 10 today and everything seems to work rather smoothly. I only seem to have one problem: When I press the power-button to switch the laptop to standby everything works fine but when I want to wake the laptop up from standby again it seems to crash and reboots. Has anyone experienced the same and is there some kind of work-around?

 

No problem here on a Samsung Series 9 NP900X3C-A05US. The notebook wakes up without a problem.

Saludos

 

Out of curiosity: On my Samsung NP900X4C I have an "Infineon Platform Security Settings Tool", which the Windows 10 compatibility advisor complains about, saying that the "Infineon TPM Professional Package" needs to be uninstalled. What would be the consequences of doing so? Is there a replacement?