Samsung Series 7 Ultra ISSUES!

[tabora587]

Hello,

I have a Samsung Series 7 Ultrabook. The laptop itself is a nice machine but boy have I had some problems with it.

A while back I tried installing Ubuntu on it. As soon as the Installer launched Ubuntu, my hard drive failed and I was unable to load either Windows or Ubuntu. Best Buy replaced my hard drive for me, but they told me that they called Samsung and Samsung admitted that their newer models are set up to not be compatible with ANY other operating systems. WTF?! I bought the laptop to downgrade to Win 7 and mess with Ubuntu! I wish this "feature" would have been better advertised. The problem is, not only is it not compatible with other OS's, the hard drive bricks out when you attempt to install one. I lost everything on my laptop. All from running Ubuntu via disc.

Windows 8 has also given me lots of issues that I really need help with. For example, my drivers automatically reset, and the latest drivers simply don't work. I have to downgrade them every couple days in order for my touch screen to support pinch-to-zoom, flash player to work properly, and for my function keys to work. There are also various settings, such as automatic brightness that, even when disabled, automatically re-enable themselves without my consent! The unit itself was just really slow, and wasn't functioning like I felt it should. I can barely stream videos. I have Fios and my connection works just fine on my phone, desktop, xbox, etc.

After some fine tuning I was able to get everything working alright for the last month or so. Until last night- my laptop tells me it is going to upgrade the OS to 8.1, and doesn't give me the option to postpone or decline. How can a company force someone to do that? That's just ridiculous!

So, after an hour of updating my laptop restarts and now all my driver setting have been changed from head to toe. The screen brightness stays on automatic, and I have NO way of changing the brightness at all. The function keys don't work and the slider under settings doesn't have any effect on the screen brightness. The unit is now slow. Very slow. Loading pages online takes forever, many times they don't ever load- I just get a white screen. When I load youtube or facebook, none of the HTML is right. It isn't even usable. The worst part is I can't even change my driver settings through the Samsung SW Updater! When I launch it I get a message saying "The procedure entry point HttpOpenDependencyHandle could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\urlmon.dll."

What do I do?! The guy at Best Buy assured me that I didn't have to worry about it being a floor model unit because I could get the extra coverage on it. I told him I wanted it, but when Best Buy looked up my receipt it didn't say I paid for it, so they told me they have no responsibility over it. It's not really their fault, I could have double checked to make sure I got the coverage, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

Can someone help me out? Long term I want to totally get rid of this Windows 8 nonsense (no offense to those who have it working right on their computers), and use Windows 7 which I am familiar with and like more than 8, but in the mean time, how can I get my laptop working?

Thanks

 

[broe23]

Personally I would not believe anything that comes out of Best Buy's Geek Squad's mouth. The only thing that would keep you from installing Linux, is if there is no bios option to disable Secure Boot and UEFI. As for the hard drive failure, it should not have if it was a new machined, or even refurbished.

In order to change the brightness, you need to install Samsung's copy of Windows 8. If you want to install Windows 7, you still have to be able to disable Secure Boot & UEFI in the bios. Then install the extra software & drivers from Samsung's support site downloads for your device.

 

[tabora587]

Personally I would not believe anything that comes out of Best Buy's Geek Squad's mouth. The only thing that would keep you from installing Linux, is if there is no bios option to disable Secure Boot and UEFI. As for the hard drive failure, it should not have if it was a new machined, or even refurbished.

In order to change the brightness, you need to install Samsung's copy of Windows 8. If you want to install Windows 7, you still have to be able to disable Secure Boot & UEFI in the bios. Then install the extra software & drivers from Samsung's support site downloads for your device.

Thanks a thousand for the reply! I haven't looked into disabling secure boot, but I'm almost positive there is no way to disable it. I will look into that though.

Each computer manufacturer has their own version of Window now!? Or is it just Samsung? That worries me that it's not just a universal operating system anymore. Why would Microsoft force me to install something that isn't going to work?!

 

[broe23]

Every company has stuff they need to be installed for their particular build. But basically Windows is the same, regardless of the OEM.

 

[FuturDreamz]

Long term you may or may not have difficulty finding drivers for Windows 7. Many laptops that came with Windows 8 do not provide Windows 7 compatible drivers. Windows 10, on the other hand, should be more familiar. maybe,

When you tried to install Ubuntu, how did you add the Linux bootloader? I think by default it might try to replace the Windows bootloader - which is very bad juju as most computers now have protection on the bootloaders.

I'm surprised that you have to constantly downgrade drivers. How did Best Buy replace the hard drive? You might need to go to samsung's support page for that model laptop and install all of those drivers, replacing the ones currently installed. That may also be why it's slow. Or maybe they used a cheap hard drive when they replaced it. I'd recommend a clean reinstall then manually install all of the drivers straight from Samsung, but I don't know what problems you would encounter.

And as for the mandatory Windows 8.1 upgrade, to be fair that's actually pretty important. Windows 8.1 is a little like a service pack that improves the useability of the interface and has enough changes that Microsoft is no longer supporting base Windows 8 (like how they don't support Windows 7 systems that don't have SP1 installed). That update really shouldn't be ignored, and the fact that it happened now is rather surprising, and has me a little bit concerned about whether your laptop has all updates installed or not.