Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

For pascal I need to find an ES vbios compatible with the M6700, right ? What is so special with that vbios (precisely) ?

 

Newer vBIOS prevent the laptop from completing the boot process. No one understands what the issue is exactly. You can look for @iieeann's posts, he tried it with both the M6700 and M6800 and basically every combination of settings and was unable to get it to work until he found the P5000 ES vBIOS and got that flashed.

 

Okay, thanks a lot, I'll stick with a 980M or maybe a 970M upgrade.
I'll be back if I have any other questions or problem during the upgrade

 

So, what happen if we tried to flash this P5000 ES vBios on a GTX1070 ? would this work ? or we also need to hardware mod the device ID ?
I know that flashing bios wouldn't "unlock core" but it's not what I wanted, I think that even if we hardware mod the device ID and flash the P5000 ES vBios, the card should work with P5000 "name" but with a different amount of cuda core & co.

Also, is the M6600 keyboard ribbon is the same as the M6700 one ? I bought my M6700 without keyboard and ribbon but I couln't find a "cheap" (less than 20€) shipped from europe (because I don't want to wait more than 2 week xD), maybe I will try to find a compatible ribbon in my stock :/

Thanks again

 

The M6600 and M6700 have the exact same keyboard so the ribbon cable should be the same.

Cross-flashing the vBIOS is highly unlikely to work.

 

So I'm back, I bought a new keyboard for my M6700 and I also bought a not working M4700 (dead motherboard), I thought that using a M4700 keyboard cable should work on my M6700, even if it is a different length, it has the same "pinout" but it doesn't work, neither with the M4700 keyboard nor with the "brand new M6700 keyboard", what could I miss ?

 

On one of my machines (M4800 or M6800) I had the issue of a keyboard not working when I tried to install a backlit one in place of a non-backlit keyboard. I remember having to be very careful about installing the ribbon cable. I despise those ribbon cables. They seem too fragile and prone to getting destroyed.

If the M6700 you bought didn't have a keyboard to begin with, is it possible that the receptacle on the board is messed up? I knew that my computer worked because the non-backlit keyboard it came with did work.

 

So with the same ribbon worked on one keyboard but not the other one ? Did you changed the ribbon and the keyboard worked ?
The receptable on the board look good for me

 

New system BIOS today, A20.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/u...ls?productCode=precision-m6700&driverId=9JNJY

Fixes
- Fixed a potential issue where the system stops responding when an incorrectly formatted password is entered at the BIOS Security Manager (BIOS pre-boot password) prompt.
- Updated CPU microcode to address security advisory Intel Security Advisory INTEL-SA-00115 (CVE-2018-3639 & CVE-2018-3640)

Enhancements
- Added BIOS Password Feature: Master Password Lockout

 

M6700 No-POST. Need help

Dear fellow M6700 owners,

I need help with the machine refusing to boot. I am now stuck at No-POST. The problem is that I don't observe a stable No-POST behavior and deal with conflicting interpretations of the same diagnostic information. Because of that, I need your help to be able to repair it.

Here is what happened.

While the laptop was running, the screen went completely dark, with a slight sign of being back-lit. It happened during a routine task that was not at all resource-intensive (I had Firefox and an office app running). The laptop was powered through a power surge protector, and when it happened, there were no thunderstorms or any other signs of possible power surge, anyway.
It has never happened before.

After a while, I switched it off and tried switching it on again but wasn't able to get to BIOS screen. Since then, I haven't been able to start the computer. I am stuck at the no-POST stage and need some directions on how to repair my laptop. Here are the two issues that I need your help coping with.

#1 Not stable behavior

The no-POST start-up behavior is not stable. Sometimes the screen is a little bit back-lit and sometimes it is completely black. After querying the devices the laptop gets stuck with nothing going on --- that's the stable part. In a while the fans would kick in, if the temperature has increased enough.

The diagnostics is not stable, either. While I never had a problem starting the LCD test by pressing 'D' while powering on, the other test, launched by pressing 'Fn' while powering on, is much less stable. Sometimes I am able to launch it and sometimes I am not. And when it starts, it sometimes shows only the blinking diagnostic LEDs (blinking-blinking-off) and sometimes, after they stop blinking, continues with a more elaborate sequence, including the LCD cycling through red-green-blue-white-black colors (very much like during the 'D+PowerOn' test but with accompanying single-time beeps) and then, after the LCD goes off, just firing the 3-3-3 beep sequence forever (each 3-3-3 beep sequence is separated by a longer pause and a melody beep with a varied pitch).

The only stable variant of 'Fn+PowerOn' test is when I remove all the memory modules, in which case it always starts and consistently shows solid-blinking-blinking.

#2 Conflicting interpretations of the diagnostic information

Different sources on dell.com provide conflicting interpretations of the diagnostic information that I have. Thus, the table located at

https://www.dell.com/support/articl...le-diagnostic-indicators?lang=en#2011_to_2015

interprets the blinking-blinking-solid LED combination as "The keyboard is preventing the system from completing POST".

However, M6700 Owner's Manual, located at

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/...bile/precision-m6700_owner's manual_en-us.pdf

interprets the same LED combination as "System failed on hard drive initialization OR System failed in Option ROM initialization."

Finally, the beep codes reference guide located at

https://www.dell.com/support/articl...ding-beep-codes-on-a-dell-notebook-pc?lang=en

interprets the "3-3-3" beep sequence as "System board, Chipset Error, Clock failure, Gate A20 failure, Super I/O Failure, Keyboard controller failure"

Given the above discrepancies, I have difficulty in deciding what shall I do to repair my beloved machine.
Thank you in advance.