Please help! Laptop boot problem...

Hey,

I recently purchased a Samsung NP370R5E-A02UK laptop used from eBay. The laptop was used and came with Windows 8.1 on it but I wanted to do a completely fresh install so I could start from scratch.

So, I have a ISO of Windows 8 Pro that I bought and downloaded from Microsoft Online on the day of release. I used the free Microsoft tool and created a bootable USB stick using the Windows 8 Pro ISO. The laptop has no disc drive so USB was the only option.

Now, I couldn't get my laptop to boot from the USB stick, so I did some Googling and found out that I had to change some settings in the Bios. I made the following changes:

1. In the advanced tab I changed Fast Bios Mode from enabled to disabled.
2. In the boot tab I changed Secure Boot from enabled to disabled.
3. In the boot tab I changed OS Mode Selection from UEFI OS to CSM and UEFI.

Now after changing these settings in the BIOS, my USB stick showed up in the boot order selection list, I set it to first and then restarted the computer. It booted to the USB and I did a clean install of Windows 8.

Once Windows 8 had finished installing, I went back to the BIOS and changed all the settings back to how they were originally. Here's where the problem comes in. After changing all the settings back, the BIOS says there are NO bootable devices. Not even the hard drive in the laptop. So I am unable to boot to Windows, I just get a screen saying no bootable devices found, and it resets to the Samsung screen and then repeats.

Can anyone help please!? Please note that I am not technical minded at all so please go easy on me Thanks!

 

Disable your secure boot and fast boot. Then boot and see what happens. You may have to leave the OS Mode to CSM (legacy) since that is what you installed Windows 8 under.

 

Yes this works, thanks.

So I must have installed Windows 8 under CSM rather than UEFI (I'm not entirely sure what this means...) How would I go about installing Windows 8 under UEFI instead? Remember that I cannot boot from USB when OS Mode Selection is set to UEFI in the BIOS, I had to change it to CSM and UEFI in order to boot from the USB and install Windows 8.

Basically I want to install Windows 8 Pro and then put all the settings in the BIOS back to how they were originally. Is this possible, and if so how do I go about it? I really want Fast BIOS Mode and Secure Boot to be enabled, because the laptop booted so much quicker (literally 2-3 seconds) when it was set to this with the original version of Windows 8 that came with it.

Your help is very much appreciated

 

Think I've solved it.

The Microsfot Windows USB/DVD Download tool I used to make my bootable USB stick formats the stick to NTFS and UEFI will only work with FAT32. I've found a tutorial on how to make a FAT32 bootable USB stick to install Windows 8. Hopefully once I've done this I can put the BIOS settings back to how they were.

I shall report back....

 

Yep, problem solved. I made a FAT32 UEFI Windows 8 Pro bootable USB stick with a free programme called Rufus, changed OS Mode Selection in the BIOS back to UEFI, booted from the USB stick, installed Windows 8, then put all the BIOS settings back exactly to how they were right at the start, and everything works a dream. Windows 8 boots up in a matter of seconds.

Hopefully this will be of some help to others experiencing the same issue