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Greeting fellow netizens!

I cannot boot my laptop, and I've tried everything I can think of, and I'm hoping someone here can help!

The system:

Samsung Series 7 Chronos

np700z5c-s01ub

The problem:

When I power it on, the manufacturer's logo appears, then the screen turns black, and after a few moments the fans begin to spin loudly, and it stays this way until I manually power it off.

The backstory:

So a few months ago I installed Linux (Ubuntu more specifically), and in doing so I changed my BIOS boot order to allow me to boot from a USB drive, I then formatted my HDD and installed Linux from a live disk.

Everything worked wonderfully for months, until I decided that I wanted to reinstall Windows (I missed my games and couldn't get Wine to work). So I formatted my HDD, and put in a Windows install CD I had, and installed Windows. When the installation was complete, the computer restarted..... And that's when the problems started.

The journey part 1:

At first, the laptop would power up, display the manufacturer's logo, and then restart approximately 3-5 seconds later. Nothing I did worked, I was unable to access BIOS, I was unable to use any keyboard shortcuts to manually boot into a USB.... Nothing.

After a while I realized that my CD drive was making an awful noise, so I took it out and saw that it was broken.

After removing the CD drive, I was able to use the F9 keyboard shortcut to manually boot into a USB!

The journey part 2:

I then used a Windows ISO and again formatted the HDD, and installed Windows, hoping it would work, it did not.

After a lot of reading and question asking, I reached the point where I thought that perhaps the MBR was corrupted?

So I manually booted into a USB with the gParted utility, deleted everything on my HDD, created a new partition table, and then a new primary partition making sure the 'boot' flag was selected.

I then tried to clear the CMOS, I removed the battery and let it sit for a while, but when I turned on the laptop, it didn't reset the BIOS like it should have. And I don't have a dip switch on my computer so I can change the pins (or if I do, I can't find it!).

I manually booted into the window disk I had been using and again installed Windows, but this time when it went to restart..... Something was different.

The current state of affairs:

The laptop now powered on, showed the manufacturer's logo, and then the screen went black, and after a while the fan started to spin loudly until I manually powered it off.

So I decided to try other OSs, and even other USB drives in case that was an issue. I used gParted again, and then manually booted into a Ubuntu live disk, or rather I tried to, the initial screen worked fine, allowing me to navigate using the keyboard, but when I booted into the live environment, the keyboard and touch pad didn't work! Which was confusing because they do work when I use gParted.....

So I tried to boot into a Fedora live disk, it kept restarting when I selected my choice to boot into the live environment.

I tried Windows 8 (I had up until now been using Windows 7) and got an error, it was an " iaStorAV.sys file is missing" error and cannot do anything else.

I've tried using the FDISK /MBR utility, I've tried clearing the CMOS again, and deleting and creating a new partition with gParted again, I even ran Memtest...... Nothing I do seems to work.

I apologize for the exceedingly long posting, but I figured it would be best to be as detailed as possible!

Thank you for your consideration, your time, and any help you can offer!

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  • When you say the CD drive was broken, does that involve physical parts of it having come off and fallen inside the rest of the computer? Can you hear anything moving around inside the computer if you pick it up and rotate it in all directions?
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 19:55

2 Answers 2

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I'm not saying this is the reason this is happening in your particular situation but I'm just telling you that I've had the exact same problem and it turned out to be a stick of ram that died. If you have more than one stick of ram or a replacement, try alternating between them to identify if this is the problem.

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I have worked through scenarios like this many times. It looks like you are doing all of the right things. I would try again with Ubuntu (text mode sometimes works better), and if the keyboard and mouse are not working then use an external keyboard and mouse plugged into the USB port. Usually, if you cannot boot an Ubuntu live CD with standard hardware (keyboard and mouse) then you may have developed a hardware problem along the way. Some of your diagnostics seem to point to the hardware. The black screen and more importantly, the fans that run on seems to point to the bios getting stuck in self test. I don't know your hardware specifically, but generally, the fan test is in firmware, and should complete with a pass before the firmware proceeds to the boot sector. I have experienced hardware problems coming along at an inopportune moment so that my diagnostics develops a sudden shift and a problem I cannot solve. Sorry I don't have better news....

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  • Thanks very much for your help! I was beginning to suspect a hardware issue myself, I'm glad that at least I followed the necessary steps to make sure it's not just something I did!
    – user382280
    Commented Nov 11, 2014 at 7:55
  • If you can get into system bios, look for temp settings in the CPU section. Perhaps the bios reset put the alarm temp lower than is reasonable. If the cpu heatsink is dirty, then it may never be able to cool enough to pass the bios test?
    – Timbo
    Commented Nov 11, 2014 at 15:43
  • I can't access the BIOS, but that's a good idea to check the heat sink! I'll give it a good once over and see if that affects anything.
    – user382280
    Commented Nov 11, 2014 at 23:55

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