Windows 7 install on NP770Z7E-S01UB (New 17.3" Series 7 Chronos with 8870m)

Hey everyone,
So my new Chronos 17.3" arrived the other day, with WIndows 8. I purchased a Samsung 840 ssd and threw that in and installed Windows 7. As expected I'm having problems finding drivers for several of the devices and Samsung hasn't been that helpful. I was able to go directly to Intel's web page, download and install the Intel 6235 driver to get connected to the Internet, but the Samsung SW Update Tool doesn't work because I don't think Samsung supports Win 7 on this new laptop(The tool came back and said all my drivers were fine). So I have a feeling I'll have to go each manufacturer and get their Win 7 driver, like I did for the Intel WLAN/LAN. Here is a list (from device manager) of drivers I need:
Ethernet Controller
SM Bus Controller
Universal Serial Bus Controller (My USB ports work so I'm not sure about this)
Video Controller (The AMD 8870m I presume, which I'm having a real hard time findingbecause it's so new)

I expect several of the above get fixed by installing the motherboard drivers..

Amy I going in the right direction here or should I just put Windows 8 on the SSD...

 

The chipset drivers (and most likely the other components) will be the same as other Series 7 Ivy Bridge models. You can use SW Update to find and export the driver packages. For the GPU driver look in the other threads here for the notebooks with the 8870M. There is a new driver in circulation plus a method to install it which keeps everything working correctly.

However, first download and export the Windows 8 driver packages. they may well work with Windows 7 or include a folder with the Windows 7 driver. Also the Windows 8 version of the Samsung Settings software includes a folder with the Windows 7 version.

John

 

Like john said, AMD drivers can be downloaded here: Download AMD Mobility Catalyst Graphics Driver 13.5 Beta 3 Driver for Windows Vista / Windows Vista64 / Windows 7 / Windows 7 x64 / Windows 8 / Windows 8 x64 . I'd recommend you install it after you have installed the latest HD4000 drivers.

Installation instructions can be found in post #1 of this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...unge-np770z5e-np780z5e-np870z5e-np880z5e.html

 

Hello, everyone

I am sorry for bumping an old thread, but I think it's better than making a new one, since I'm having a similar problem.

I have a Samsung NP770Z7E-S01PL (the letters at the end mean what? In which country the notebook is released?) notebook. I installed Windows 7 on it and I am having problems with drivers.

Please bare with me, because I'm feeling really stupid about all of this.

I am missing 3 drivers:

Ethernet Controller
PCI Simple Communications Controller
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller

(as a note, I used Intel's Wireless_16.1.5_Ds64.exe driver for WLAN)

Now, I used SW Update 2.1.17.9 to look up my model and download the drivers.

I know that for the Ethernet Controller I need the LAN Driver, but when I tried installing it it gave me errors:
1. FindFile failed, then it says New Driver Version unknown
2. The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If Deep Sleep Mode is enabled Please Plug the Cable.
This is if I install it through setup.exe
If I update the driver in device manager, it gives me error code 39.

I've read that I must uncheck the "Allow this device to be turned off to save power" box, but I can't do that, because it's not installed, so that doesn't make sense to me.
Also, is it just me or is the driver old? And why does Samsung force support Windows 8 (maybe I worded that wrong; why isn't there support for Windows 7?)

For the other 2 drivers I don't know what I must download from the SW Update list, because it seems to me that they are simply not there.

Thank you all in advance.

 

Hello Dedmytas, welcome to NBR.

As you have probably noticed in SW Update, Samsung has continued official Win7 support for several 2013 models (ie models that came with Win8). But for some reason, the 17 inch NP770Z7E isn't among them. This is a bit strange, because the NP770Z7E seemingly has more in common with last year's NP700Z57 (originally a Win7 model) than the 15.6 inch Ativ Book 8 (which DOES have Win7 support, and was only released this summer) has in common with last year's 15.6 inch NP700Z5C.

It makes me wonder if there is a legitimate technical reason why Samsung decided not to support it -- such as lack of Win7 OEM drivers for some components in that model.

I would still look for drivers in SW Update (as opposed to hunting down OEM drivers from various websites). But I would use the Find Model feature and look up Win7 drivers for NP700Z7C (last year's 17 inch Series 7) and NP770Z5E (this year's non-touch 15.6 inch Series 7) respectively, and see which works best.

The exception may be AMD graphics drivers, where members in the 2013 Series 7 / AB8 Owners Lounge have had good luck with the AMD beta drivers.

One thing that may be worth looking into, is whether you're still in UEFI mode and installed Win7 as an UEFI OS. That could cause some issues in Win7 (as many Samsung owners have found). Our general Win7 install guide describes converting your disk to MBR and changing the BIOS to legacy mode prior to Win7 installation.

 

Hello, Dannemand

Thank you for your reply.

Here's an update:

I downloaded the USB and LAN driver of the NP700Z7C model that you mentioned (NP700Z7C-S01UB to be more exact).
The LAN driver works without any problems, but when I updated my USB driver I'm now getting an unknown device with the following hardware IDs:

IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_1E31&REV_0004&SID_C0EC144D
IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_1E31&REV_0004
IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_1E31

In my USB Controllers there are 9 devices.

As for the PCI Simple Communications driver, I have no idea which one to download. I'm guessing I have to get the driver from Intel?

Also, when I first tried to install Win 7, I had problems, so I checked the thread that you linked and by following it I installed Windows 7, so I'm probably not in UEFI mode.(?)

UPDATE:

I installed the USB driver onto the Unknown Device from the NP770Z5E-S01PL model and it works.

By the way, I have a concern... these drivers are not up-to-date, are they? Seems kinda lame to install old drivers...

Also, what do S<number><letters> mean?

 

If you got it working, even with older drivers, I think that's about as good as you will get it: We're not seeing many Win7 driver updates anyway, even for models that DO have official Win7 support from Samsung.

The PCI Simple Communications device you mention could be just the Management Engine (Intel ME) in which case you can use the driver from Windows Update. That may be true for a few other devices too.

Again, I would collect drivers from the models I mentioned (NP700Z7C and NP770Z5E) as well as Win8 drivers for your own model (NP770Z7E) and test each of them to see which work. Make sure you install Chipset driver as the first (probably the NP770Z5E one).

Once you are done testing and have determined which drivers seem to work (and work best) I would do a complete new clean install, using just those drivers.

The Win7 install guide I linked is a specific post in a larger thread. If you followed the guides on the first page of that thread, they are NOT relevant to your model and would NOT take you through the conversion from UEFI/GPT to BIOS/MBR.

It sounds as if you could still be in UEFI mode. You would know if you had switched, since it involves a series of steps to convert your disk and change the SecureBoot settings in BIOS. Also, it includes creating a backup of your Recovery before taking these steps. Again, running Win7 in UEFI mode has been troublesome for many Samsung owners.

 

Dear Dannemand,

Thank you for helping me. Update status:

You're right, the PCI Simple Communications device IS the Intel ME driver.

Well, I'm not sure how I am supposed to test which drivers work best, but since I've installed them all, I think I'm going to leave it at that.

Also, I am probably not in UEFI mode, because I did change SecureBoot settings in BIOS and converted my disk, that I remember. (I just checked and I am not in UEFI mode)

Thank you once again for helping, but it sucks that my notebook has drivers which are not suited precisely for it.

So driver support depends entirely on Samsung? Maybe I should write them an e-mail or get a petition going, in my opinion it's ridiculous that I HAVE to use Windows 8 for the best performance. Bad move on Samsung's part I think.

 

That's all good. Great job getting it working -- including that UEFI switch!

I would say that driver support for Win7 is whatever you can find, when the model you own doesn't officially support Win7. Again, since other Samsung models released this year DO have official Win7 support (except the very latest Haswell models), I suspect Samsung had a technical reason to omit it for the NP770Z7E. Most likely it includes a component (USB3, Memory Card, TPM, Audio or whatever) that doesn't have Win7 drivers from its respective vendor.

Of course I don't know the reasons why you chose to downgrade to Win7, but as a very reluctant Win8 convert myself, I would generally say, bite the bullet, get a 3rd party Start Menu, and go with the flow instead of against it. I use Win8 just as I used Win7 (i.e. I never use Metro) and there is more to like than dislike -- in my opinion. Other members here preached this message before I converted, and after switching I agree 100%. But it's for the under-the-hood changes, NOT for the new GUI.

 

Thank you for your reply.

Well, maybe I will use Windows 8... just that I'm stuck on the, erm... comfort of Windows 7.

If you can, please suggest stuff to do in a fresh Windows 8 install, i.e. what kind of 3rd party Start Menu should be installed? Also, isn't the Start Menu added in Windows 8.1 ?

 

Microsoft DID add a Start button in Win 8.1 -- which takes you straight to the Metro screen that we're trying to avoid, instead of opening an actual Start Menu. At least that's the last I heard and what I found when I tested 8.1 Consumer Preview.

As for 3rd party Start Menu replacements, I use IOBit Start Menu 8 which I commented on here. It works OK, but there are several other products too, some cost a few bucks. Some of the free ones are spammy -- Pokki in particular should be avoided, nastybad business, which is now included as bloatware by some vendors.

Win8 installation is easy, particularly if you stay in non-UEFI mode (now that you made the switch to MBR anyway): First you need to get Win8 install media, which is a challenge for many (see this post). Then pretty much follow the same Win7 install guide (it mentions where Win8 differs), including SW Update to automatically install most drivers. Use this post for Win8 driver guidance, though, instead of the list in the Win7 install guide.

 

Dear Dannemand,

Thanks for your replies and help. I hope other people use look in this thread if they have similar problems.

Cheers!

 

No problem. Keep us posted after you've run it awhile

 

Hello, everyone.

Well, so far everything is okay, but there's 1 tiny problem.

I seem not to have any software for my laptop camera.

Can anyone send me in the right direction? I checked the models that Dannemand suggested in SW Update, but there don't seem to be any... or maybe the software/drivers are named mysteriously.

 

Hey Dedmytas, good to have you back.

Both Win7 and WIn8 come with built-in drivers for your webcam (of course) so that any software that uses it (Skype, Hangout etc) can use it right away.

As for actual webcam software (to watch or record video using the webcam) my NP700Z7A came with CyberLink Youcam -- which I quickly removed because it hogged my CPU. I have since upgraded from Win7 to Win8, and the bloat software that came with my PC (including CyberLink) doesn't show up in SW Update anymore. But it is still available in the SystemSoftware folder on my Recovery partition. It probably shows up in SW Update if I boot Win7.

So, if CyberCam (or similar) software came with your laptop originally, I would expect it to be in the SystemSoftware folder on your Recovery Data partition. But I believe you downgraded from Win8 to Win7, right? And according to your previous posts, you switched from UEFI/GPT to BIOS/MBR mode, which means your Recovery partitions are gone.

So unless you made a SystemSoftware backup to DVD or USB (Recovery has a feature for that) I am afraid it's gone. It's not even included in the bootable factory image backup which I always recommend members to make.

It is possible (though I am not sure) that if you were to run SW Update in Win8, that it would offer to download these items from Samsung. Otherwise your best bet is to create a SystemSoftware backup to DVD on another similar laptop. I don't think there are licenses buried in that SystemSoftware folder, so it should be legit. I am not 100% sure, though.

 

Hello all, it's me again, and am kinda pissed about this.

I updated my AMD drivers with the latest beta drivers 12/3/2013, revision number 13.11 and now the bad part: the Configure Switchable Graphics option is gone.

Afaik earlier you needed to mod the drivers or something for it to become accessable, but AMD Enables Legacy Switchable Graphics Support? &larr; leshcatlabs.net says that these newest drivers added the option (if I'm reading it correctly), but there's no option.

Also, the AMD Radeon HD 8800M device in my Device Manager informs:
Device status: Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)
Resource settings: This device isn't using any resources because it has a problem.

What am I doing wrong? Or what am I missing?

Also, another thing, I tried using the AMD Catalyst Mobility tool, but it says that my version of the graphic adapter is not supported. Any ideas why?

Thank for in advance!

EDITED: I also used SW Update and updated the Intel graphics driver from the NP770Z5E-S01UB Windows 7 64-bit driver. I must have screwed something up, because Everest shows 3 Intel HD Graphics 4000 video adapters in Display components. Argh...

EDIT2: I deleted the AMD and Intel Graphics from Programs list, then uninstalled the devices in the device manager, did fresh installations of both, but same problem.

 

@Dedmytas: The 2013 Series 7 / Ativ Book 8 Owners Lounge contains extensive discussion of drivers for the AMD 8700/8800 -- including beta drivers from AMD and the various modded drivers. There are new posts about it almost daily.

In addition to Leshcat, you can check LeeKM's drivers (Google it) which have been modded for Switchable Graphics. He is a member here on NBR.

 

Hi again,

Well, I reinstalled my laptop, because apparently Service Pack 1 was not installed, the newest AMD drivers screwed everything up, I started getting BSODs and finally I started getting a BSOD while powering up. Anyways...

I see AMD have released new drivers few days ago. I want to download the driver, but it's not in their download page, only the Verification Tool is there, but when I launch it, it says that my version of graphics adapter is not supported. Why does this laptop hate me

Also I tried the auto-detect and install, but it tells me it was unable to find my product or OS.

Any help fixing this would be appreciated, I have the 13.10 drivers, but I'd like to be up-to-date with them :I

EDIT_1: ok, I found the drivers, going to try the 14.1 Beta ones...

EDIT_2: apparently neither the Catalyst Software Suite, nor the Latest Beta Driver wants to be installed, gives an "install package failure"... siiigh.

EDIT_3: ok, I guess the 13.10 drivers will have to do...

Few extra things I don't understand: SOMEHOW the AMD Gaming Evolved App started when I rebooted my laptop, altho I did not install anything AMD related before that.
And why in the Catalyst Install Manager is .net framework and HydraVision required? Also it tells me that .net is not installed, even tho it is.