Hands on Dell Precision 7710

I have the same problem on an HP desktop with two identical HP displays. One is connected via DP and the other via DVI. Like you, I changed the power profile settings to not let the displays go to sleep or switch off.

If I boot with one display switched off, and switch it on while Windows 10 is running, it's heavily oversaturated. If I boot with both displays switched on, they are both fine.

I think this is a Windows 10 thing. I tried all kinds of settings, both in Windows 10 and the (AMD) graphics drivers, but to no avail. I guess this is one of those quirks you have to learn to live with...

 

I am going to upgrade my Samsung 960 Pro to the new 970 Pro. I have never used the samsung magician software. If I have both in the system and used the Samsung Magician, on the next boot, how does the system know which drive it needs to boot to? Or or do I need to disable the older one in the bios? Also, I do want to make sure it leaves my 960 in tact and does not change any boot options in the event I have an issue with the new drive and just want to keep using the 960.

thanks

 

Press the "F12" key at boot while the Dell logo is showing to access the boot selection menu, and you can from there select which drive to boot from. With UEFI, it will default to the most recently used drive, I believe. If you are cloning one drive to another, I recommend that you either physically remove the old drive or disable it in the BIOS after the clone, before you start Windows for the first time from the new drive. I've had situations in the past where Windows got confused about which drive to mount when the old drive was still present at the first boot.

After the first boot goes well (and maybe after you use the new drive long enough to be satisfied that you aren't going back), you can reinstall/re-enable the old drive and wipe it for extra storage.

I've never used Samsung Magician for cloning. (I prefer to clone "offline" with Acronis TrueImage bootable media.) I actually don't think that it does cloning, I think that the tool that you're looking for is Samsung Data Migration. They have a PDF there with directions and it looks pretty straight-forward...

 

Thanks. You are correct. I meant the Data Migration Too. It the past, I have used Acronis and might use that again instead. With Acronis, I backup to an external drive, and then restore using a USB boot drive. Did tht from the 950 to 960.

 

I used the Samsung Data Migration. Put the 970 in the second slot. In windows ran the data migration tool. Took around 20 minutes to copy 750GB of data. Shut system down. Took out the 960. I went ahead and put the 970 in the 960 slot even though I probably did not have to. Booted up and worked fine. It had to re-download my Exchange Server Local Content and re-index everything. Once that is done I will see if I still have issues with renaming files in windows explorer. I also had to turn back on system restore.

 

I changed out the wireless intel 8260ac that came with my 7710 for a 9260ac. At same time I upgraded router in my home from Asus n66u to netgear r7800. Folks here in the network forum helped me decide.

But what is this third wire for in the WLAN bay of my 7710?




EDIT: I think the three wire is for something like the intel 18260. third wire I think is for 802.11Ad:
https://ark.intel.com/compare/88822,99445,86068

 

Apart from adding GSM modem (Sierra Wireless EM7455) I have also upgraded the WiFi to the same model as you (I use Linksys WRT3200ACM as a source of 1,6Gbps signal with 160 MHz channel). Third wire is needed for devices that use additional spatial signal for WiFi (3x3 antenna setup) and those new Intel WiFi cards seem to work fine with 2x2 setup.
Even though you can find this extra antenna connector on WiFi card with ad support I don't think this is a special antenna for 60 GHz band. You should be able to find regular WiFi (even N-standard) with 3 connectors.
So far until not needed just keep it in this plastic sleeve and be happy with higher wifi speeds

 

I have questions about SSD drivers. <Sorry if these are dumb questions>

I'm thinking of adding a 3rd SSD, a Samsung Pro m.2. to my 7710. My system already has two OEM Samsung drives (in my signature).

The samsung pro SSDs benefit or require the samsung drivers? The OEM Samsung drives work best with the microsoft drivers and not the Samsung drivers. That was my understanding, I may be wrong. Also these MS drivers look very old.

Do I need to worry about installing samsung ssd drivers for the new Pro SSD and it conflicting with the microsoft drivers used for my other samsung OEM drives. Are SSD drivers applied directly to each SSD, such as seen in device manager? Or are the SSD drivers installed and then shared by all of my SSDs?

 

1. The drivers are not as old as they look. Click on the "driver details" button to get a list of files. You will see .sys files that have the same version number as the current Windows release. Microsoft just never updates the date in the driver INF file. (The version number does get updated and reflects the current Windows release version.)
The date is silly anyway. Microsoft started using 6/21/2006 as their "default" driver date in Windows Vista beta builds... from before June 2006. I was in the beta program and users were complaining about future-dated drivers. Vista didn't RTM until November, so, whatever.

2. I've never actually seen drivers loaded for the SSD device itself anyway. Generally you load drivers for the SATA or NVMe controller. To find it, select your SSD in Device Manager and then flip to View -> Devices by Connection in the menu. Look at the device "above" your SSD. If you install the Samsung NVMe drivers, they apply to this device.

Summary, you're probably fine with the system in the default state, try the Samsung NVMe drivers if you like. The NVMe driver will apply to all of your NVMe SSDs.
(Here under "driver". https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/)

I use the Samsung NVMe driver on my 7510 and have no complaints but I haven't done a with/without performance comparison. We have to use it on our 5510's, the Microsoft driver BSOD's periodically for some reason.

 

I need some help. My 7710 came with one mechanical hard drive.

1. Can I add one or two additional hard drives (I'm looking at both SSD and 4TB HDDs)?
If so, what is the procedure?

2. Can I replace the HDD it came with with an SSD (or a higher capacity HDD)? How would I migrate the OS? I don't have any data to migrate.