Comment 73 for bug 1040557

Bricked my Samsung NP900X4c

Installed Ubuntu 12.04 from a flash drive with UEFI ENABLED. I never could get it to dual boot with Windows 7 so I completely wiped the SSD including the recovery partition. Ubuntu 12.04 worked well but I was frustrated by the lack of support for function keys, and upgraded to 12.10 via internet. Booting into 12.10 was difficult, and I frequently got kernel panics as illustrated here:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47121

see this screenshot because it looked just like mine:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=79381&action=edit

In roughly one out of 15 startup cycles, the machine would boot successfully and I could log-in. I thought I'd use suspend/resume instead of a power down because that seemed to work reliably. However starting/stopping the WIFI and starting Bluetooth also threw a Kernel panic necessitating a restart.

The only way to clear a Kernel panic was to press and hold the power switch until the computer restarted. In one of these power down cycles I had the bright idea of hitting the emergency battery reset button (small hole in the bottom plate of the computer). THIS IS THE ACTION THAT BRICKED THE COMPUTER. From this point on, I just get a light on the power button and nothing else... BIOS is toast!

FWIW- ubuntu 12.10 looked very promising. The samsung kernel module provided support for nearly all function keys with the exception of wireless on/off.

Can anybody give me some advice regarding sourcing a new motherboard?