Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

You should buy the SSD yourself and save a few bucks btw

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Yes, it's fairly straightforward.

Check the video linked in the quoted post in post #1206 above and do exactly as he shows in the order he shows -- comes off fine.

 

Heads up. Dell has posted new drivers and a firmware update for the fingerprint reader on Windows 8.

I downloaded them both. Even though the instructions say to install the firmware update first, I could not install the firmware update without installing the driver package first. (It said it couldn't find ControlVault.) So I installed the driver package first, and at the end of the install it told me that I need to update the firmware. Afterwards, the I installed the firmware update and everything seemed to go fine.

It wants to reboot now so I haven't actually tested it yet. Will be checking out in the next hour or so.

 

thanks. I looked at the video (thanks for sharing) and it does seem easy, but I chickened out. I wound up going with the Kignston Ram to match my system:

Amazon.com: Kingston ValueRAM 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) Non-ECC CL11 SODIMM Notebook Memory (KVR16S11/8)

This will give me 24GB. It gets delivered tomorrow.

But if Amazon gets the 1866 back in stock, I might get that and return the Kingston and give it a try to go under the keyboard.

 

Update:

Fingerprint reader now working great in Windows 8 with WBF.

 

Hallo guys,

I have a question about the SSD:

The original SSD that was placed by Dell was a SAMSUNG 830 MZPC256HAFU-000D1

Now I would swap it for a bigger one and my local computerstore has two different types:

500GB 530MB/S 330MB/S SAMSUNG 840 BASIC SERIES SSD SATA 6G 2.5INCH - MZ-7TD500BInterface: SATA 6 Gb/s
Sequential Read: 530 MB/sec
Sequential Write: 330 MB/sec

512GB 540MB/S 520MB/S SAMSUNG 840 PRO SERIES SSD SATA 6G 2.5INCH - MZ-7PD512B
Sequential Read: 540 MB/sec
Sequential Write: 520 MB/sec


1) I suppose the M6700 will accept both ?

2) Has anyone here any experience with one of these 2 SSD's ?

3) Is the speed diffeernce in "in real life" worth the price difference ?

The Basic Series = 315 euro

The Pro Series = 420 euro

 

M6700, IPS, K4000, PremiereColor, etc.

Windows 7

I'm getting strange black screen, black portions of a screen in I.E. It'll black out when I open it, then fill, then partial black out again. Fans go on/off during this.

Doesn't seem to happen with Chrome Beta.

Anyone else???

 

Just got my m6700 delivered last week, very happy with it but yesterday i noticed the fan keeps going on and off, all day long, very annoying. Anyone shed any light on why this might be? Nothings changed, sitting on an open desk in an office and its not exactly warm in the room either

 

This weekend I am going to install Windows 8 on a second drive I will swap out for the primary drive. This will allow a new install on the drive while keeping my Win 7 install in tact in case I do not like win 8.

The existing drive has three partitions on it. Should I put those partitions on the new drive? I can use drive image to copy the existing drive to the new one and then run the win 8 upgrade. I think I need to have windows 7 on it anyway since win 8 is an upgrade.

What settings should I change in the bios before I run the upgrade?
I see where I can enable UEFI. However, under there is to add some boot options, do I need to add any?
Should I disable enable legacy options? I see that is a requirement if I want to use secure boot.
Should I enable secure boot?
With UEFI enabled, can I still boot off a USB or DVD in the future? Or is this where I need to enable legacy boot options?
Will Acronis Trueimage work with UEFI?

Last, can I just change the boot back to legacy, turn off secure boot and then my original drive with Windows 7 still work fine?

thanks,

Mike

 

Note --- to switch to UEFI you must clear out your disk and do a fresh Windows install (or do some somewhat tricky partition manipulation on your disk and reinstall the Windows bootloader). If you upgrade a "legacy" Windows 7 install to Windows 8, it is still a legacy install and will not be bootable under UEFI.

Also note that Windows 7 supports UEFI as well. If you want you can switch to UEFI, do a fresh Windows 7 install on your new disk, and then upgrade it to Windows 8.


To answer your questions:

You don't need to add boot options to UEFI. The Windows installer will take care of that for you.

If you want to enable secure boot you must disable "legacy option ROMs". This means you won't see the RAID status screen while booting or be able to get into the pre-boot RAID management menu. This may not bug you at all. RAID management stuff can still be done from within Windows using the Intel Rapid Storage utility. If you want to get into the pre-boot stuff you'll have to go to the BIOS and change the necessary settings.

I don't see any downside to enabling secure boot, do remember you'll have to disable it to boot anything that doesn't support it (pretty much anything but Windows 8).

With UEFI enabled you can press "F12" to get the boot menu and boot non-UEFI stuff. However, the Trueimage CD is bootable via UEFI.

And yes, to boot Windows 7 you'll have to switch to legacy boot or use the F12 boot menu.