Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

It boils down to...

2 antennas = 300 Mbps
3 antennas = 450 Mbps
(Note, actual throughput will be significantly less as is always the case with Wi-Fi. Router must also have the same number of antennas for the band that you are using.)

If you have 802.11ac then you get a boost to...
2 antennas = 866 Mbps
3 antennas = 1.1 Gbps
(802.11ac is 5 GHz only, so you have to make sure that you are connecting at 5 GHz to get these speeds. The easiest way is to make sure your router is broadcasting a separate SSID for 5 GHz.)

I'm actually not familiar with any 3-antenna 802.11ac cards in half-height mPCIe or M.2/NGFF 2230. There are some (hard-to-find) larger cards that have it.

 

Help with two questions about going from Windows 7 to 10 on my M6700
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Hello. I'm asking for help with two questions about going from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on my M6700 that I've been using everyday since ordered/received new in 2012. Back then, I did a few clean installs (of windows 7 pro) without trouble. However, a few months ago I did a clean install of (windows 7 pro) on a Samsung 860 EVO (in my M6700) and it was very, very hard for me. Here are my two questions: 1) can anyone recommend using the Windows 10 upgrade tool? Although I imagine a clean install is much better, I am very afraid of messing it up and failing to complete it. Given this concern, could using the upgrade tool be an okay idea or is it so bad a route to go that it is never recommended? 2) Second question: Sorry for not saying/understanding this right - my M6700 seemed to come with the Windows ID somehow seemingly imprinted on some component of the M6700 and nowhere else. When I view it in system properties, I see an OEM in the middle of the ID numbers. If I upgrade to Windows 10, will I be able to activate it with my OEM Windows ID?... If anyone can give me any input on these two questions listed above, I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks for any help...

 

If you purchased the M6700 with Windows 10 preinstalled, the key is burned into the BIOS. (As long as you have not swapped motherboards.) You can reinstall Windows 10 and it should auto-activate with that key, as long as you install the same edition (i.e. Home vs Pro). The install media should not even ask you for a key if it finds one burned in, or if it does, you should be able to proceed past the prompt leaving the key field blank.

You can upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 for free, even if you did not purchase the machine with Windows 10. Microsoft has stated that the free promotion was only good for one year, but in reality they never deactivated it; Windows 10 will activate without hassle if upgraded in-place over Windows 7. Windows 10 will also accept Windows 7 product keys if installed from scratch.

Doing a Windows 10 "clean install" is certainly the "cleanest" method but I recommend an in-place upgrade if you have any reservations about that. All drivers should be carried over, except for the graphics/video driver, but that one should be pulled down via Windows Update automatically in the first few minutes after the upgrade is done (if Windows 10 doesn't have one in-box). I've done the in-place upgrade on many systems, including on the M6700, without any trouble. The upgrade process has gotten a lot better than it used to be (upgrading from something before Vista). You can just use the upgrader tool and it will handle everything. You will even have the option to roll back to Windows 7 in Settings (I think the time limit on this is 10 days).
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

At the beginning of the upgrade it will direct you to remove any software that is known to be incompatible. I do remember it asking me to remove the Intel USB3 drivers because Windows 10 has built-in USB3 drivers.

Note that after an in-place upgrade, Windows will need to rebuild the search index, which can lead to some minor issues that will resolve on their own after a few hours. (Slightly sluggish performance, lots of disk I/O activity, items missing from Start Menu and Settings search results.)

 

Thanks Aaron44126. No motherboard changes. No changes other than hard drives and RAM. My M6700 shipped with OEM Win 7 Pro. When this M6700 was new in 2012 and l was less afraid to do clean installs of Win 7, I never had to enter a Win key/ID - it always detected the valid one on/in the motherboard/bio (I guess that's what it did). Hopefully it will do the same with a Win 10 upgrade. I will keep my eyes out for anything to remove/uninstall such as the USB drivers. (If I fail to do this, could the Win 10 drivers override the older/other drives, or could potentially problematic conflicts arise?) If you, or anyone else, has any further/other input, pointers, and/or tidbits of any potentially helpful kinds, please post them here! Thanks again Aaron44126.
...worried M6700 user planning to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and asking for any input with it...

 

If your M6700 shipped with Windows 7, you should have a Windows 7 product key on a sticker visible if you remove the battery.
The Windows installer will require you to remove the conflicting software before proceeding to install (it even gives you a button to fire up the uninstaller).

 

Ah it seems like a good upgrade for capabilities 450-->867 if I can get a 5ghz signal, I don't see it where I am. It is an ac dual band capable router but has not been setup w a separate 5ghz signal as far as I can see. Not my equipment, so I'm not messing w it either. The actual measured speed of 168 is obv well below anyways. With my vpn it's well below that even. That would be the most useful reason for the wlan card/5ghz upgrade really, with vpn use to boost the speed. I'm only 1080p streaming capable too.

 

Usually the default setting is the same SSID for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and in that case, it will only show up as one network on the Wi-Fi network list. The client device is supposed to "decide" which network would be better to connect to. A tool like WifiInfoView would let you see the networks available in your environment in more detail, here you would actually be able to see separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signals.

I have found that with the SSID the same, devices tend to latch on to the 2.4 GHz network because the signal appears to be stronger, even though the 5 GHz network performs faster even with a weaker signal. Most Wi-Fi card drivers provide options on the "Advanced" tab in Device Manager that will let you set it to "prefer" 5 GHz, or disable the 2.4 GHz radio altogether, so that you can make sure that it stays on 5 GHz.

Most streaming services give out 1080p streams in the 5 - 7.5 Mbps range so upgrading the speed seems unnecessary if that is your primary use case.

 

Hm good to know. Nah I know that 1080p takes well below what I get speedtest(I usually do 720p anyways for smoother) that was a reason not to upgrade actually. I don't use a vpn while streaming mostly, too much slowdown for no reason, vpn also seems to have cpu overhead that contributes to choppiness at times as well as fan noise etc.

No it really was that if I get 5ghz speeds, even just faster 2.4 w an upgraded adapter, the vpn caused slowdown while doing other things would be less bc the speeds would be higher overall. The drivers for the centrino ultimate-N 6300 use intel proset software. It says I'm using rf 5.24ghz so I guess it's auto selected that then. I don't see an option to switch bands but I'll investigate. But I was just curious mostly for future if it becomes worth it, I like the plug and play one mentioned.

Edit: I went to here for the advanced adapter settings: https://www.dell.com/support/articl...nd-intermittent-connections?lang=en#Windows_7

the program you linked to is much more comprehensive than the built in proset thanks, it does have a 2.4 available. I set the preferred to 5ghz in the advanced adapter settings.

Another question is that when I'm doing ookla, it's pretty variable i.e. when I posted originally it was at 168Mbps and today it's only like 60Mbps, what gives? Another one is that when I'm doing the test a video I'm watching, NOT streaming, loses audio wtf?

 

The Win 7 product key on that sticker (thanks for pointing that out) is totally different from the Win 7 product key displayed when I right click on "Computer" and select "Properties". The product key on the sticker is mostly letters with a few numbers mixed in and the product key displayed in computer properties is all numbers with the letters "OEM" in the middle of the numbers. If the Windows 10 upgrade process will automatically detect that I have a valid/good key for the upgrade and not even ask me to enter one, that would be great. I suppose if it does ask me for one I could just try them both if need be. May I ask whether you have any comment on the two different Win 7 product keys (the one on the sticker and the one displayed in my computer properties)?

 

What you get from Computer/Properties is the "product ID" which is different from the "product key". The product ID cannot be used to reinstall. To recover the product key from an existing Windows install, you need a tool like this: https://nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

When you run the Windows 10 upgrade it should not ask you for a key at all. It will use your existing Windows 7 product key for activation which is allowed.