Dead(?) Samsung Series 7. Help!

[komakino]

Hi!

Facts:

• 
  ■ Samsung Series 7 NP700Z5A-S01SE (late 2011)
  ■ Core i7-2675QM / 8GB / 750GB / HD6750M 1 GB / 15,6"
  ■ Dual boot Windows 7 / Ubuntu 14.04

What happened:
When playing game in windows suddenly the laptop went EEEEEEEEEEEERH for like three seconds and then died.

Behaviour now:
When I try to turn it on the power LED turn from green(meaning "charged" I guess) to red, the fans speed up for like two seconds, and then dies completely. This is before any BIOS operations. The screen doesn't show any signs of life whatsoever.

What I tried already:

• 
  ■ First obviously I let it cool down over night, hoping that it was just overheated. But no.
  ■ Removing battery, unplugging BIOS battery, waiting; same thing.
  ■ Unplugged the RAM to see what happened; same thing. All though this laptop has 4 Gb of normal RAM + 4Gb soldered to the motherboard, so I obviously cant remove/replace the latter
  ■ There is a little whole on the bottom for hard shutdown of the battery. Tried that. Also I read somewhere to pin the whole and push the power switch for a full minute. Did that to, but to no avail.

Additional info:
I read somewhere that this series suffers from a UEFI problem that can brick the machine, but then it wouldn't die when playing a game in windows, right?

Any ideas? Is it beyond salvation?

 

[pcmagic]

What I'm going to offer is merely a suggestion. Its incredibly difficult to test these types of issues without the proper tools and the computer in front of me. The issue could be a bad motherboard or bad GPU/CPU. It could be something as simple as bad thermal paste on the CPU or GPU. Something cheap, and worthwhile, would be to carefully disassemble of the laptop using youtube videos. I would also suggest using pieces of paper to draw each layer of the laptop and tape the screws in each location of where they go. This way you keep track of every screw and where it goes and the order it goes. Use compressed air to clean out the heatsink and other dust inside the machine. Once you get down to the GPU and CPU sockets, remove the heatsinks, clean the existing thermal paste. Inspect it before you clean it. Is it crumbly and disintegrated? If it is, then it could be the cause. Reapply thermal paste using just enough to get a thin layer over the chip and not run off the edges. Blow all the dust out of the machine and reassemble it.

Take your time taking it apart and reassembling it. Once its reassembled, you can now test it. If it works, you're good to go. If not, you will need to troubleshoot a bad motherboard or other bad components. Realistically, the best thing to do would be to talk to the manufacturer about repairing it, or even find a donor laptop on ebay or something to combine the two sets of parts to find a working combination. It all depends on the cost and time analysis if it is worth it.

Good luck, and let us know what you decide to do.

 

[komakino]

Hi pcmagic, and thanks for your answer.

I got a spare RAM chip and some thermal paste today, but sadly none of them worked. Still the same symptoms.

I guess I will contact my retailer and see how much a repair would cost. I suspect it will be too much. It's still a decent machine though. Besides I just realized that I had it in for repairs just a couple of months after my purchase, and then again six months later. The second time they did replace the mobo. I almost got a new one, but Samsung said no in the end. Maybe the repair shop will give me some slack, cause of the bad history. I actually live in the same town as the repair shop who do all Samsung repairs here in Sweden, so I could go there and talk to them.

The really weird thing is that the same thing happened to my desktop(1y old, i7-4g, 32Gb, mostly ASUS parts) last week. The symptoms are the same. I haven't even started to troubleshoot that one yet. But it has to be a coincidence, right. I mean that kind of viruses are not around anymore, and besides I only run Linux on my desktop. In the case of the desktop I suspect the power supply though. Getting a spare one next week to see if that works.

Could it be a problem with the power supply with the laptop aswell? How does power supplies work on laptops? Are they replaceable or totally integrated?

I should mention that I used to work with computer repairs in the early 00's, so I'm not a total noob. But laptop hardware is a new experience for me.

 

[pcmagic]

Did you find out how much the repair will cost? I think you've got the same ideas I do about how to fix this. I hope the desktop is only a bad PSU. That is more likely I think.

I wonder if that could be the issue with yours? I wonder if the power supply is bad? Do you get the same lights when the computer runs on batt?

 

[komakino]

Hi again!

Well, I talked to the repair shop today and to my big surprise it turns out that there is an extended third year warranty for this machine, so I reported the error to the supplier and now I'm waiting for shipin labels to send it to the repair shop.

Will they replace the motherboard again, or am I in super luck and get a new machine? Probably not, but who knows, Samsung has a policy where they replace the machine after three manufacturing error related repairs or something like that. Maybe they won't repair it at all. I'll keep you posted on what acctually happens now.

Regarding my desktop, it turns out it was not just a faulty PSU. See the new thread:
http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2418361/system-broke-year-mobo-cpu-faulty.html

 

[komakino]

Situation has been solved. Samsung acctually refunded me with a 20% use-deduction, so I got about $1100 for a three year old laptop I think it might be partly because Samsung has stopped selling laptops in Europe. I'm happy anyways and just got myself a brand new Toshiba laptop(P50-B). I've had two Toshibas before and they've never let me down. Thanks for help and input!

 

[radebaugo]

Hello komakino! I'm glad you've solved your issue!
I have the same (or very similar) laptop as you used to have and as you can imagine i'm full of problems with it as well.
What can you tell me about that 3rd year of warranty? How did you get to know about it?
Did you contact Samsung support directly?
What was the condition of the PC before you gave it back?

Thanks in advance!!
Edoardo