Samsung Series 5 ULTRA NP530U3B

[rogue1987]

dosyoyas, how is that Samsung running? I've been thinking of getting that very model.

[arboziz]

ok let me tell you new thing that happend with my NP530u3b. i have the issue that suspend,reboot and shutdown are not working anymore. when i shutdowm it shows:
will halt now
[time] power down.

and nothing more happend i have to shut it complety down with the powerbutton pressing long time.

also if i enter the bios and save and exit the laptop was going off and not as aspected rebooting, strange!

ive treid everything (acpi=force,liveusb stick,and so on....)

iam running the latest BIOS 09XK updated with a windows7PE stick maybe i think this the point that bricks the maschine

Hi
Did you solve with the suspend,reboot and shutdown issue?
I'm in the same situation
this is my situation:

-when you give the command to shutdown or suspend computer stuck as you said before with power and wifi led on and heats a lot till the and of battery(or the forced shutdown with long press powerbutton/battery cutoff with pin)
-when you give the command to restart computer stuck as you said before with power and wifi led on for a lot of time and after that the computer shuts down
-same behavior as you when exiting bios
-issue is OS independent,with win7 same behavior
-never enabled uefi
-removing additional memory stick doesn't make changes
-removing drive doesn't make changes
-I'cant figure when these problems began,probably????? after a bios update
-I tried downgrading all version of bios and micom from 13xk to 09xk,but this doesn't seem to make useful changes
-[-o

[jpcarlino]

Hello,

some months passed since the last message on this thread. I would like to know if you tried the stable release of ubuntu 13.04 and what are the result. I've just bought a similar laptop and i can't boot the live version in graphics mode. Once i manage to sort out this issue i would like to know what comes next

Regards

[144]

I found that installing the latest AMD proprietary driver reduced the power consumption and heating enormously. Installation instructions are on the same website. The fan hardly ever runs now. It also fixes the suspend problem whereby resuming from suspend results in a blank screen (it still doesn't sense the lid closing though; you have to suspend from the menu) - none of the other suspend 'cures' on the web worked for me. I also installed Samsung-tools, to enable me to control the fan speed from Fn-F11.

[rockerito99]

I found a SOLUTION !!!!!!!
I wrote it up first in: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sams...ml#post9455595

I'm running Ubuntu 13.10 and everything works perfectly (webcam, mic, suspend, etc., etc.). I installed linux to the internal 24GB SSD, with /home mounted in a partition of the 500GB hard drive. Of course, I marked UEFI as DISABLED in the BIOS before installing, and kept it that way. I dual boot with the windows 7 that came with it. I used the free "NeoSmart EasyBCD" utility in windows to add linux to the windows boot menu which sits in the mbr (because the bios cannot boot directly to the SSD).

A few days into heavy use of both linux and windows, suspend with lid stopped working both in windows and linux. I debugged it like crazy, trying everything I could to fix it.

I'll put the solution here below:


TL;DR: "Force a reflash to the BIOS, even if you already have the newest BIOS, and you will be able to suspend on lid close and autodetect unplug/replug"


I bought my Samsung NP530U3C-AB1AR a week ago, and everything was working smoothly, until yesterday, when I noticed two things:

1. Closing the LID was not detected by either Windows or Linux, and it lost the capability to suspend by closing the lid.
2. Unplugging the power supply was not detected anymore by linux. And in windows it wasn't auto detected, though it detected it several seconds after unplugging, as if by polling.

It was obvious that this was a hardware/bios issue, since both OS's had the symptoms.

The lid sensor was working fine, so it wasn't a purely hardware issue (you could see the screen turn off when lowering it, and then ON again when opening the lid).

Clearly, the BIOS wasn't sending events such as power Unplugged/Replugged or LID closed/opened to the OS.

Of course, being familiar with the articles that described the bugginess of this laptop's BIOS, I wasn't surprised. I decided that it was a BIOS issue. I tried toggling all options I could find sensible to toggle in the BIOS, to see if the original behaviour was restored. It didn't, toggling options was useless.

I decided to reflash the BIOS so that its internal options would be reset to defaults. THIS FIXED ALL ISSUES.

But, but.. it wasn't that easy. This is because I already had the latest BIOS version, and the update tool refused to update the BIOS saying that I already had the "latest version or newer".
This didn't stop me.
I found a forum thread by searching for "samsung downgrade bios".
And then I did the following:

1) Open the BIOS update tool from Samsung (go to samsung.com, support, select your model, and look under Firmware). Click on 'Download' instead of 'Update'. It offered to save a file named "ITEM_20130423_1110_WIN_P14AAJ.exe". (My current BIOS version is "P14AAJ", so it is the same version).

2) Run the file "ITEM_20130423_1110_WIN_P14AAJ.exe". The program decompresses several files to "C:\Users\<myuser>\AppData\Local\Temp\__Samsung_Up date" The program refuses to update the BIOS because it is the latest version, and then deletes the files.
I copy the files before closing the program. They contain the ROM and the SFlash64.exe utility, and some other files required for flashing.

3) I notice a file there, named "DebugAppLog.txt". That file is not deleted between runs. In it, it contains the log of the time I updated the BIOS the day I bought it, and most importantly, the full command line for the SFlash64.exe utility. Which is:

Bios command : SFlash64 /n /s /sa /ips /exit /file P14AAJ.rom

I try "SFlash64 -help" and see the meaning of the flags. I particularly liked "/n" which says that it clears bios internal options to factory default, which is what I need.

4) I close all the opened programs. With the task manager, I close Samsung's "Easy Settings" and all Samsung programs so that they don't interact with the BIOS while it is flashing.

5) Start a console right clicking and "Run as administrator". Go to the directory where I saved the uncompressed files and run:

SFlash64 /n /s /sa /ips /exit /file P14AAJ.rom

6) Shutdown windows. Start hitting the "F2" key until I get in the BIOS. Inside the BIOS screen, hit "F9" to load defaults. Fix options to my liking because they were all default now.

7) Start Windows. Test lid close, It works!!!!
Start Linux, Test lid close, It Works!!! Test unplug power cord:
It is detected!!! Also, when unplugging the power cord in windows
it now detects it instantly, instead of several seconds later.

PROBLEM SOLVED!


FINAL NOTES: What caused the issue? Will it happen again? I have a few guesses: 1) The bios might have gotten confused when changing states, and enabled some internal option to not inform the OS of power events, perhaps while plugging/unplugging power while in S3 at the wrong time, who knows, Or 2) Some Samsung software in Windows messed up some internal option in the BIOS (Samsung software does change bios options, for example, one can toggle "Battery Life Extension" from windows, and the option will appear respectively toggled in the BIOS screen.). I might uninstall all the Samsung software, I won't for the time being, to see if it happens again. If it happens again, I'll just reflash. Or 3) I read that these Samsung BIOSes have limited memory for variables (in Jakob Heinemann: blog), so maybe entering the BIOS screen and saving bios options too many times is what caused it, which is what one does the first days of setup, changing boot order, etc (maybe the BIOS stores a backup of changed options internally until it runs out of space, and things go wrong then, luckily, reflashing the BIOS seems to restore everything to factory).
I hope that it doesn't happen again, but I'll pay more attention to what I do, and try to remember what could have caused it.

I spent the whole saturday debugging this issue, and I'm happy that I can share the solution!
--
Juan Manuel

[thohva]

I have the Intel one, 54 c, and a lot less battery time than windows. So the same problem here i guess.

Sorry, thought i was responding directly to the inlay.

[thohva]

The laptop does hibernate perfectly though, when using the terminal command.

Sorry, thought i was responding directly to the inlay.

[thohva]

Rockverito: I have the 540u3c and i lost my windows product key when formatting the drives and did not notice there was no product key on the laptop..

So how can i reinstall the bios without Windows?

[rockerito99]

Hi Again!!

I found a much better workaround by reading this thread:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...1?comments=all

The workaround consists of:

1. Turn off and unplug the laptop.
2. With a paper clip, push the button through the small hole in the back (it would be below the touchpad, in the back). Count to two.
3. Now plug the laptop, so that it can turn on.

After this, the LID close/open events are produced again. So do the AC plug/unplug events.

This is what they recommend to do to reset the "Embedded Controller" which is the motherboard component responsible of detecting LID close/open events, and plug/unplug events, and battery percentage drop/increase. Hitting that small reset button in the back has the same effect as removing the battery would have, in a laptop which has a removable battery.

This also explains why flashing the bios (any bios version), gets the computer out of the "problem state", because the Embedded Controller is reset while flashing any bios.

I also found out, after many, many tests, that the problem happens again when the laptop is suspended and no less than 16 Embedded Controller events would be produced. (% battery drop or increase is one event. Plugging or unplugging produces each two events (so you can unplug or replug 8 times at most, LID close or open is one event).

So, if I leave the laptop suspended with 100% battery, plugged to the wall, and without closing or openinng the lid, then the problem never happens.
If I never suspend the laptop, the problem never happens.

(by "problem state" I mean the state in which the laptop doesn't report LID events anymore, nor AC plug/unplug events, and this state is persistant between reboots and shutdowns).

My guess is that either some internal buffer of the Embedded Controller gets full when it cannot report events to the sleeping OS, or that Linux gets the system into a race condition trying to respond to too many events at a critical stage while the system is resuming from sleep.

If you think you got a fix, and want to try to see if it worked in preventing this issue, the quickest way to reproduce the "problem state" is to:

1. Suspend the computer
2. Unplug PSU, plug, unplug, plug, unplug, plug, unplug, plug (8 actions each produces 2 GPE events).
3. Resume. Then, you can see that plugging or unplugging the PSU isn't detected, and LID close is ignored.

--
Juan Manuel

[tempaccount325]

Hi everyone!

I've the same laptop and the same issues with it. My battery lasts around 1h and 20 min, compared with the almost 3h in Windows and the energy loss rate is now in 34Wh.
I've written the above commands in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_(DEFAULT), and it doesn't do anything, the problem still stands.

There is another problem that may be related, the device gets really hot, around 80ºC, even with the fan very 'loud'. In windows, with the fan almost silent, it reaches 40ºC, 50ºC.

Just booted:
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +75.0°C (crit = +99.0°C)
temp2: +29.8°C (crit = +99.0°C)

radeon-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +70.5°C


Could it be a problem realted with the graphic card?

I have this one:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Thames [Radeon 7500M/7600M Series]

But I haven't been able to install them, the fglrx drivers doesn't get on well with Gnome Shell (it simply doesn't run).

Any help would be really appreciated! Thank you very much!

The following is for the Samsung NP530U4B ( -S02PT in my case ). It has little to do with NP530U3B.

I know it has been a while, but this is a serious problem which I had an immense difficulty dealing with and I can imagine how others have felt.
This solution is for Linux Mint 16 and Ubuntu 13.10 (the ones I've tested this fix on) is modifying GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= and installing TLP.

The NP530U4B features Hybrid Graphics with a discrete and integrated graphics cards. The cards are an AMD Radeon HD7550M and an Intel Graphics processor HD 3000.
The very nature of Hybrid Graphics implies that in must be governed by the OS.

NOTES
I've only tested this on the above Linux branches and it was always on kernel 3.11 and above, which I believe it's the one that integrates the following solution.
The final result is extremely satisfying as the battery rate rivals that of Windows 7.
Power Statistics (on Ubuntu and Linux Mint) is your best friend when testing these changes. It tells your very fast the rate of discharge of your battery under the "History Tab".The final consumption rate is about 13 Watts when idle as opposed to the initial, which was anywhere between 20-35 watts.The temperatures go down severely which allows the louder fan to shut off. The trip point seems to be 65ºC.The BIOS does not seem to provide much help to this cause, since Samsung refuses to add an option to turn off the radeon card .There are a few interesting settings in the BIOS, but their effect is miniscule.
I did not test video games under these conditions.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=
You need root permission for both these actions.
- You can edit /etc/defaul/grub and change the respective line to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="radeon.dpm=1 quiet splash".
- Afterwards, you need to run "update-grub" (without the quotes) in order to apply the changes.
The radeon.dpm=1 allows power management of the radeon card, which is the one reason that gives the Samsung NP530U4B 1/3 or less of it's expected battery life under windows and the likelihood of overheating. The problem seemed to be that the radeon card was permanently on and at maximum potential doing who knows what. With radeon.dpm=1 the processing seems to be allocated as needed between the discrete and integrated graphics card.

TLP
This programs applies some power saving measures to your system. I have gone through the configuration files of TLP, but did not change anything as it comes configured for the standard user.
I do believe you have to issue a command to start using TLP once installed or you can just reboot your computer.
You can follow the instructions on their site on how to install if it not yet included with more up to date versions of the above OSs.

Other Programs like TLP
I did try a few similar programs and Laptop Mode Tools came about in second when watching the power consumption rate under light conditions. However, I did not try messing with anything that is Hardware related such as the CPU frequency. Most of these programs cannot run concurrently with TLP by nature.

AMD Drivers and FGLRX( the latter through apt-get and the "Additional Drivers" window.
Absolute waste of time as of 17/02/14. If you do need to manually switch graphics cards it does provide a solution for that with Catalyst Control Center. However, the chances of having something break instantly after reboot or a few reboots after is just too great. That was both with the Beta and Stable drivers. I followed days-worth of guides (including the one provided by AMD) and it only resulted in pain. The one time I thought it was already stable, it ended up breaking after some 10 shutdowns/boot-ups when I had already migrated everything into it. The temperature and battery consumption immediately go down after installing the drivers, but I did not manage to compare to the above procedure.

--- OTHER THINGS ---
SSD - I managed to install Linux on the SSD, but not with the instructions on this thread. Since I don't think it very appropriate, it's best if you send me and email (tempaccount325@outlook.com).
Battery Indicator - Sometime it gets stuck at 100% after leaving it charging for while after it has reached that value. This is fixed with a reboot at the very least.
---------
Edit1: Missed a few letters on the email account.
Edit2: Remarks on Gaming.
Edit3: Remarks about Hybrid Graphics.