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!