Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

No issues here. (K5000M with Optimus enabled.)

 

No, i'm sure it is the IPS panel 1920x1080 LG Philips LP173WF3. I bought this laptop to get this IPS screen (photo), to use it with Lightroom, and i checked in the device list, it was the good panel with the good reference. And when it works, i can confirm it is not a TN panel.

Thanks for all your anwsers. When i said "blinking", it mean that the panel switch OFF/ON one to three time each second, and i can hear a small click with each commutation. The first time it occured, i wasn't in front off it but in the same room (the computer was starting). It was like the light was flashing !
Not sure it islike the flickering of the TN panel.

 

This morning I first tried stopping all the display-specific stuff - Spyder, Premier Color, Dell Smart Settings, then tried to instal 320.00 and I got the black screen again.

After recovering the system to 311.50, I tried installing the 320.00 in safe mode - it worked and completed fine, but when I booted into normal I got a black screen as soon as the Windows initial screen would disappear.

Then I tried Boot into Safe mode, uninstall NVidia driver, go through the list of steps to complete remove it from system (folders/registry etc.), install it in Safe Mode (was successful!), then restart normally - still get black screen!

I can tell I see the initial Windows screen, I hear the Windows startup tones; it then goes black. I type my password in and hit enter, I can tell it accepted the password and it ready to go other than the black screen - it seems the laptop is otherwise running perfectly.

Something about this driver is a problem on my laptop - not sure what it could be. Oh well, wait for the next one I guess.

 

Then it may not be problem with the panel, just summit a request, Dell should get back to you pretty quickly.

 

Ill advised. Putting off the problem won't resolve it. Especially when things don't make sense and they should.

In addition, you left off some information about your set up that might prove useful in resolving it. For example, have you made any modifications of any kind or have any connections or peripherals attached that you should mention?

Are you using the defaults? Have you tried modifying the location of your download and install? Also, for good measure, which OS are you running?

 

Eh? There's been a number of times that some new version of the NVIDIA driver has hiccuped on me so I sat on the previous version, until an update came along that fixed it for me. Most recently, I avoided 311.50 because it was causing me trouble getting audio over HDMI. That issue doesn't occur in the new 320.00.

I say sit it out and wait for the next version. It's not like the drivers you have working already will cease to function. If there's still a problem after a version or two passes by, then start to worry about it.

 

You just substantiated a good point for sharing these experience. Especially, since I've never had an issue with one. At least, not that I've noticed.

In any event, I didn't mean to imply that the lack of updating will cause as complete system failure. Rather, that all malfunctions happen for a reason; and that sometimes its worth investigating to find out why.

 

BIOS update for the NVIDIA K5000M (what does it do?)

Earlier in this thread, riconmike notes that he has received a M6700 with the Quadro K5000M and BIOS 80.04.5A.00.05. Previously, only version 80.04.33.00.35 had been spotted.

A few pages earlier, EyeOfTheBeholder notes that he can't get the laptop to display anything if Optimus is off and legacy option ROMs are disabled. The latter is required to enable UEFI secure boot. This effectively means you can't use secure boot on this system (unless Optimus is turned on).

I later ran into the same issue as EyeOfTheBeholder. (My previous tests with Optimus disabled were done before BIOS A06 was released, in other worse, secure boot was not yet available, so I didn't run into this.) You can't use secure boot if Optimus is disabled, because that requires disabling legacy option ROMs, which causes no video to display on the screen. You can't even get to the BIOS to enable Optimus again. It's possible to get out of this situation by pulling the BIOS battery and resetting all of the settings --- Optimus is enabled by default.

Can this really be true? Clearly, some later systems are shipped with Windows 8 (secure boot enabled by default) and, say, the IPS screen (which does not allow Optimus), and are working just fine. So it should be possible to get the K5000M to work with secure boot and without Optimus.

Putting two and two together, I figured the updated video BIOS might have been made available to solve this exact problem, so I grabbed a copy from another forum member here and flashed it on. And sure enough, the Optimus disabled + secure boot enabled combo works just fine now.

So, if you have a pre-Windows 8 system with the K5000M, you might want to take a look at upgrading the video BIOS if you think you might install Windows 8 with secure boot sometime.

I presume the K3000M and K4000M will be similar but we don't have the data to confirm.

 

You could wait for the next driver release, but you may want to connect you laptop to an external monitor to see if you can figure out what is causing the problem. Perhaps there is some reason that the new driver is having problems detecting the laptop display. New drivers can sometimes to odd things. One driver update caused my laptop to occasionally revert to 640x480 when I woke it up after removing it from the dock. I did not revert to an earlier version since it was a relatively minor inconvenience, but the next driver version fixed the problem.

 

My own experience with drivers in general is that the common stuff works pretty well, but there might be a few edge cases where things don't work exactly as they should. eSATA with IRST is a good example of that.