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How to reinstall Windows 8 on Samsung ATIV 500T and upgrade to Windows 10
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README.MD

How to reinstall Windows 8 on Samsung ATIV 500T and upgrade to Windows 10

I bought my Samsung ATIV 500T back in 2013 in Paris. It was preinstalled with Windows 8 Home. I soon upgraded it to Windows 8 Professional to be a part of the work domain. And later to Windows 8.1 and later to Windows 10.

I am still very happy with it and it's pen-OneNote combination is still bringing a lot of surprise to whoever is near.

Once I incidentally tryied to install SQL Express to it and it was very bad decision. I create a Windows Restore Point before so it was quite easy to roll back.

But few days ago I tried to do the factory Reset and ended up with unbootable device. There seems to be no "Boot from USB" so I have had to come with another idea.

To keep it simple:

  1. prepare a USB stick with Windows 8 32-bit first (the original operating system for Samsung ATIV 500T)
  • turn 500T off
  • stick the USB in
  1. Hold Volume Up + Power
  2. Keep Volume Up hold until you see "Wait..."
  3. Note there is no "Use a Device", but you can go to "Advanced"
  4. Run "Start command prompt"
  5. find the USB stick (it was D: for me)
  6. run the Windows installer D:\setup.exe
  7. Install Windows 8
  8. Update your drivers (hope you saved them first when you bought your 500T)
  9. remove the USB stick
  10. put Windows 10 32-bit on the USB stick
  11. run upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8
  12. enjoy
@notgittinit
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notgittinit commented Aug 14, 2025 •
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If anyone sees this in '25, I just installed Windows 10 32bit from USB. I did not install Win8 first.

  • The only way I could access the boot screen/BIOS was to use a USB hub and connect a mouse, keyboard and USB flash drive.
  • I used 'ISO to USB' to copy the ISO to the flash drive (at least 8GB).
  • Push the power button and when the 'Samsung' logo appears push the F10 key on the keyboard.
  • The connected USB drive, Windows Boot Manager and Enter Setup will appear.
  • Choose the USB option and the Win10 setup process will begin.
  • Note that it's likely only a USB 2.0 speed port (at least on mine) so it takes minutes before the setup screen shows up - not quick.
  • I found drivers on notebook-driver.com and searching for XE500T1C on the site.
  • I had to copy the drivers over via USB as the Wifi driver doesn't load automatically with Windows install.
  • There were a couple other devices still w/out drivers in Device Manager and found those by looking up the HW IDs and searching. -DriverIdentifer had them - w/out issue. No Malware issues.
  • Mine has a 60GB storage drive and after downloading the drivers and installing Chrome, I have ~40GB of free space.
  • I use a 32GB SD card for added storage.

Good luck!

@sandel382-a11y
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sandel382-a11y commented Aug 25, 2025

hey everyone. just thought i would drop by just in case anyone is still using the good old miserably slow tablet in 2025.

i just wanted to let you all know i have archived the drivers for the Samsung tab ativ 500t and uploaded them to internet archive.

i also managed to get windows 10 22h2 installed on this old boy. i used windows 10 x-lite by fbconan.

however do not install the graphics driver from the drivers on internet archive that driver only works with windows 8 and early versions of windows 10. it blue screens on windows 10 22h2. you can either use windows update mini tool to get the driver or use snappy driver installer to get the gpu driver for windows 10. although it is bugged some of the ui is invisible i.e. the start menu doesn't show correctly. only use snappy driver installer to install the gpu driver only it will detect other drivers but one of them makes the tablet reboot every time it gets to the desktop.

i have a few videos showing how to get windows 10 22h2 installed over on YouTube just search for my channel The Tech Resurrectionist.

hope this helps. also has anyone got any other operating system to run on this tablet apparently the CPU supports x64 instruction sets but the uefi bios is locked to x86 only. and most Linux distros that i have tried just kernel panic. windows 7 also doesn't work.

i wonder if anyone out there could maybe have a look at the bios and see if it can be unlocked or reshow any hidden settings.

i am shocked that this tablet supports secure boot and TPM 2.0 too. just imagine having windows 11 on it lol

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