Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Hello All

I want to set up dual operating systems. Best advise seems to be use seperate hard drives-agreed? So I think one OS (Linux) on 128 mSATA mini and the other OS (Windows) on 500gb SSD with 3rd drive as 750gb HDD.This will leave optical for future expansion.

Good way to go? Suggestions?

Thanks in advance for input.

 

Windows 7 and 8 on separate hard drives will cause issues as the drive letters change when you switch between them. You will end up with hard drive checks being run when you switch. I think it caused mainly by the W7 and W8 hidden partitions, but have not had enough time to look into it.

I have not tried mixing Ubuntu and W8.

 

Sorry - I meant to say nVidia Inspector.

 

I checked on my M6700. Both of the issues you described are not normal. If your system came with Windows 8 then fine. If not then I'd make a backup and restore the factory image. I'd also re-flash BIOS A06 on top of your system. If the issue persists then give Dell a call.

Yes, call them. The M6700 in my possession had some other build issues:

1) Slightly deformed LCD back cover
2) Hard drive screw wouldn't tighten down (it looks like it overtightened).
3) Stripped WLAN antenna leads
4) Ribbon cable pinched and caught in an opening in the battery bay.

I asked for fix. Dell, on their own, decided to send a replacement system. I wonder if both of your problems point to similar build issues but in different areas. Ask for fixes or get the laptops replaced.

Thanks... I figured. What frequencies are you running at in nVidia Inspector? 720/1800 is the default clock for the 680M. I've seen people running their 680M cards much faster with a modified VBIOS hence why I'd like NiBiTor and KGB support. I think we all understand that this is not what this laptop was designed for BUT the idea of tweaking sounds fun.

 

Thanks for checking, hrana.

Yes, my M6700 came with Windows 8 and BIOS version A06 installed out-of-the-box.

I'll try the factory image restore. If that doesn't fix it, I'll give Dell Tech Support a call.

 

Not if you use a Boot Manager.

I use the Boot Manager that comes with Acronis Disk Director 11 on my desktop PC. You can specify which partitions should be visible and which should be hidden when you boot a certain operating system. This way, the operating systems don't 'see' each others partitions and drive letters are changed by the Boot Manager before the operating systems boot. Both operating systems have the same drive letter (C:\). You can also share (data) partitions between operating systems by making them visible for both.

I haven't done this with Windows 8 yet, though...

Also, no idea if you can do this with Secure Boot ON.

 

I don't think you'll be able to boot Windows 7 with secure boot on so it's somewhat less of an issue, unless you're just dual-booting multiple Windows 8 installs...

 

I did a factory restore, but unfortunately this didn't fix the problem.

At first, I was unable to do a factory restore from the Windows 8 Recovery Media DVD. I kept getting the error "Unable to restore your pc. A required drive partition is missing." I tried a couple of times to boot from the Recovery DVD using both UEFI mode and legacy mode, and also tried both Dutch and English language for Windows 8. To no avail, because I kept getting the error message.

At a certain point, and I can't reproduce this, when rebooting, the laptop automatically started ePSA and displayed a number of colored bars in full screen and asked me to confirm if the colored bars were showing. After I confirmed, the usual ePSA screen was displayed and Bluetooth was actually listed as 'Installed'. Also, the LCD panel test didn't produce the "Unable to modify brightness" error and the title bar contained the laptop's service tag, where before it said "Service Tag To be filled by OEM". So far, so good.

I booted from the Recovery DVD once more and this time I was able to do a full factory restore. Afterwards, I started ePSA to check if Bluetooth was still recognized. Unfortunately, the "Unable to modify brightness" error popped up again, Bluetooth was again listed as "Not installed", and the title bar said "Service Tag To be filled by OEM". So, I'm back to square one.

I will give Dell Tech Support a ring in the morning.

 

If the system is still within a week or two of being delivered then politely ask for a new one rather than having them do a motherboard swap (which is probably what they'll suggest) to chase down this ghost of a problem.

I just received my replacement M6700. I wasn't expecting it because the Dell website still says the unit is in production and my CS rep couldn't determine if it had been shipped or not so it was a pleasant surprise. So far so good. The build quality on this one is perfect. Not a single flaw. I noticed that the primary hard drive in my old unit didn't have the 4 screws holding it down either (in addition to all the other build quality problems). I'm glad I sent the original one back.

A couple of notes... The post-Windows 8 M6700 has a new keyboard. The Windows key now looks like the Windows 8 logo rather than the old Windows logo with the circle around it. Beyond that I can see no other cosmetic changes.

My original M6700 came with a Seagate/Samsung 1TB 5400 RPM drive. The new one came with a Western Digital 1TB 5400 RPM drive (model # WD10JPVT). The WD drive is a much more reliable unit. I had two of these in RAID0 in my old Lenovo W520. Since then I have bought one more and they've been repurposed elsewhere (1 in an external enclosure for Time Machine backups and 2 more in a desktop in RAID0 for media storage). I'll keep the one from the new M6700 as a replacement in case any of the others fail.

I bought 4 new Hitachi 1TB 2.5" 7200RPM drives (model # 0S03563). Three go in the M6700 while one is a spare (actually 1 drive is bad so I'm going to exchange it). The secondary bay needs 4 M3x3 screws. The screws come inside the M6700 but I used spares. I'm using the NewModeUS hard drive caddy in the optical bay. The caddy is black while the external color of the M6700 is slightly brown-ish. Beyond that the caddy sticks out about 1mm (it isn't flush). For the time being it is the only thing that will allow a non-factory three-drive RAID5 setup on the M6700 because Dell can't seem to find me a part number for the official optical bay hard drive caddy (if anyone knows it then let me know). The array is rebuilding right now but I'll throw up some benchmarks later.

One more thing on screw sizes... the WWAN, mSATA, WLAN, and spare 1/2 length mini-PCIe slots all use M2x3 screws that are not included in the M6700. Buy spares (I got them off eBay).

That is it... I'm finally happy. Great system.



EDIT: I think I may have spoken too soon. The IPS panel has a slight reddish orange tint on the bottom left, slight green tint right above the Dell logo, and slight blue tint on the bottom right. *sigh* Maybe they can just swap out the screen.

 

Well, I doubt that this would solve the problem. Slighly blue on the right side and barely noticable red/orange on the left -> it seems that all IPS display delivered right now show this (inlcuding mine).
I would predict that you get a display showing the the same faults (maybe more or less strong).
I've got 5 more years of NBD-on-site support and there's no need to rush (at least for me since the effect is quite tame on my device).

Cheers,
Alex