Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

As the saga continues to get my 2 new LG 31MU97-B monitors to work with my M6700, I'm back seeking advice about the m6700 USB controller.

It would appear that my K3000M just plain won't drive these monitors at any useful resolution. The monitors work fine with desktop systems I've tested them with, but I can't get them to work at 4K res at any refresh rate using the M6700/K3000M. So I gave up on that strategy and bought two USB3 to 4K adapters here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=12-225-084.

These USB adapters work fine with a nearby desktop system, but when I install the software on my M6700, it can't see the device when I connect it. Same procedure works just fine on a nearby desktop system.

Ran the m6700 thru hardware diagnostics and it passes with flying colors. Also I frequently use several other USB3 devices with the m6700 and they work fine. But for some reason the M6700 can't see these devices. IOGEAR (manufacturer) advises no known solution and suggests I return their product to NewEgg for refund. That doesn't help me get the $3k worth of paperweights on my desk working with my M6700. Meanwhile the m6700 drives Dell 4K monitors (P2715Q's) just fine through the K3000M.

I'm seriously considering upgrading to an M6800 with K5100M, partly in hopes that system can drive these monitors, either thru the K5100M or by recognizing the USB gizmos. Any thoughts on whether that config would be meaningfully different from my current M6700/K3000M would be welcome as well.

Any suggestions on what to try next welcome. Thanks in advance!

xPat

 

The USB3 issue is weird since the M6700 uses the USB3.0 from the Intel chipset, it should work flawlessly. If you're on windows 7 you could try a different driver.

 

Weird indeed... A little more background in case it brings any ideas to mind: When you install the software for the USB to 4K gizmo, it asks you in a dialogue box to connect the device for the first time. The power LED on the device is supposed to come on and the software is supposed to recognize that you connected it. All this works fine on a desktop system I tested with, but on the M6700 it fails to recognize when the device is connected.

Also the "power" LED on the USB-to-4K adapter does not come on. But after testing with the desktop system, I learned that this "power" led doesn't normally come on until the software recognizes the device. So I don't think it has anything to do with electrical power being available on the USB port. I think it's really a "Device driver has successfully connected to your device" LED and they just call it a power-on LED. Also, I routinely run my WD My Passport external HDD on the same ports, and it works fine. Presumably the rotating HDD draws much more current than the solid state adapter.

If you later connect the device (and this is after the device drivers are reported to have been installed successfully), Windows recognizes that something was connected to USB, then shows the "Cannot find driver for device" popup near the systray. It's as if for some strange reason the m6700 is recognizing that a device has been connected to USB, but is mis-identifying it and failing to match it with the correct, already-installed device driver.

@tijo, yes, I'm on Win7x64. I assume you mean a different device driver for the USB host controller itself? I wasn't aware that there was more than once choice, given that as you say it's the Intel chipset. I did go through the process of making sure that the latest available VERSION of the chipset driver is installed, but I wasn't aware that an alternate USB Host Controller driver was available. Am I understanding you correctly? Where would I look to find an alternate driver for the USB host controller?

Thanks,
xPat

 

You can try these drivers: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...Driver-for-Intel-7-Series-C216-Chipset-Family

Something else you can try to do is to point Windows to the right drivers using the device manager. You need the unpacked driver files for that, so if they install using an exe file, you'd have to find where those drivers end up on your hard drive and then point the device in question to that location.

 

@tijo, thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I downloaded from the link you provided, and ran the setup program which reported a successful install, then rebooted as advised by the installer. No change in results with the USB-to-4K device, but what surprised me is that there are TWO device manager entries for the host controller. Screen grab:



So the fact that there are two host controler entries seems weird by itself. But what's even weirder is that I just installed the driver package dated 2/3/14 (which appeared to work fine), yet in properties BOTH of the host controller entries show driver version 9.3.0.1011 dated 8/26/2011. Seems incredibly unlikely that the 2/3/14 installer would install a 2011 driver, but maybe I'm confused and the chipset driver update does not update the host controller driver. In any case it seems weird that there are two nearly identical line items.

Meanwhile, when I plug in the USB to 4K device, it does in fact get recognized by its correct name in Device Manager, but for some reason Windows fails to find the driver. Screen grab:




I'm going to try to find the driver file on my hard drive and manually point the device to it as you suggested, but it still feels to me like something is weird with my USB driver configuration. The same installer worked fine on a desktop system I tried it with...

Thanks again for any further insights!

xPat

 

I searched my C: driver for "DisplayLink" (manufacturer of the chipset for the USB to 4K device), and got the following:



I tried going into Device Manager and using "Update Driver", then pointed the search tool to the directory in which DisplayLinkUSBCo64.dll (the only .dll in the search results) is located. No such luck - it still says it can't find a driver for the device.

xPat

 

Not sure if it makes any difference, but when installing drivers, you want to point to a directory containing an INF file (not necessarily DLL file) because that is what Device Manager looks at.

 

"Upgraded to Windows 10 (final)."

Great to hear. I hesitate a little to go from Win7 to Win10 since I earn my living with this computer...

Cheers,
Alex

 

Are all 4 ports connected to the same USB 3.0 controller hub? I've noticed some NEC USB3 drivers among the downloads which did install although I fail to see any difference. Compared to the image above, I have no USB 2.0 MTT Hubs and only have one USB 3.0 Hub while the other is USB 2.0.

I ask as I do get a message from Windows that the USB3.0 external drive would work faster if I connected it to a SuperSpeed USB3 port whatever that was.

 

On the M6700, the ports on the right side of the machine are USB 3.0 and the ports on the left side and back are USB 2.0. The USB 3 controller is Intel so you use Intel drivers (on Windows 7; Windows 8+ has native drivers). if you connected the drive on the left side, you would be operating at USB 2 speeds and get a message like that.