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Here's the background: I'm setting up a laptop for a new employee. It's a Samsung NP530U3CA0JSE, a 5 series Ultrabook. Employees find Win8 unusable, but unfortunately these things come preinstalled with it, so I have to change that to Win7 (Home Premium).

Here's what I did:

  1. Made a bootable USB from the Win7 CD, because the laptop doesn't have an optical drive.
  2. Changed the boot options for the laptop to allow both CSMOS and UEFI, disabled SecureBoot, and disabled FastBIOS.
  3. Booted Win7 installation from USB. During installation, I wiped the partitions - Win7 refused to proceed otherwise, citing some cryptic error about partition type incompatibility.
  4. Installed Win7. Set up a bunch of stuff, drivers, the works.

During one reboot while installing all the necessary third-party software we use, I removed the bootable USB from the laptop. Win7 refused to load now!

Through trial and error I've identified a workaround: if I have the bootable USB plugged in at boot, the laptop will try that first, then - when I choose not to boot it - it will move on to the Win7 installation properly. But it will completely fail to find the system without first trying the USB.

The error I'm getting in this case is:

All boot options are tried. Press F4 key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration.

I've been grappling with the issue for hours now to no avail. Some tidbits I've unearthed about the situation:

  • The laptop has two drives, a small SSD and a large HDD. The BIOS/UEFI sees the HDD (it's an option under boot priority), but does not see the SSD (it is absent from boot priority).
  • The Windows boot magic is for some reason divided between the HDD (where the Windows installation sits) and the SSD drive (where it made a 100 MB partition that is "reserved by the system").
  • Trying to meddle with bcdedit and bcdboot has caused the system not to load at all (until repaired through the use of the automatic repair utility via the bootable USB of Win7).

Could anyone help me understand what is wrong here and how to fix it so the machine boots properly without the need for a bootable USB stick inserted at startup?

EDIT:
I've figured out how to get around this. The solution was to install Linux (BackTrack 5R3) on the SSD drive, then configure the GRUB to boot Win7 by default. :microsoft:

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  • You have both a hdd and ssd installed. The solution is simply you need to place the small partition on the hdd.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 15, 2013 at 22:55
  • How do I do that? The Disk Management sub-utility won't let me touch that 100 MB partition because it's supposedly special.
    – Abu Dhabi
    Nov 15, 2013 at 23:03
  • You will have to use a non-Windows tool more then likely. This basically requires you to start over. My best advice is not to have secondary disk even installed.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 15, 2013 at 23:11
  • Simply remove SSD and run repair from USB disk.
    – week
    Nov 15, 2013 at 23:21
  • You mean... physically? Like, unscrewing the battery and taking out the disk?
    – Abu Dhabi
    Nov 15, 2013 at 23:29

1 Answer 1

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  1. Go to BIOS Menu by pressing F2 when you open your laptop.
  2. Go to Boot Options
  3. Disable the Secure Boot and go on with the "CSMOS and UEFI"
  4. Save Changes and Restart.

If the loop still persist...

  1. Close laptop.
  2. Open it again.
  3. Press F4 until such time the screen turn black.

There are two possible outcome after doing no. 3.

a. Your laptop screen will remain blank. | b. It will be fixed.

Incase your screen turns black. Turn off you PC and open it again then...

  1. Go to BIOS.
  2. Bring back the Secure Boot into Enabled.
  3. Save Changes and Restart.

In case all of these didn't work at the first try, try it again for about more than once. I nothing gets better, I suggest you seek help from a technician near you. :)

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