M6600 Owners Thread

Thanks guys for enlightening me

Aaron, funny you would mention 'a drive larger than 2TB' as I'm facing this with my RAID 0 volume consisting of 3x 750 GB HDDs. It's NOT my boot drive (I have the SSD minicard for that), but I keep my swap file on it so it was reported as a 'System Drive' by both Windows and IRTS (see my post from yesterday in this thread). It originally consisted of just 2 HDDs, and when I tried to add another one IRST didn't even display the 'Add Disk" option. So I moved the swap file to C;\ drive, and voila - IRST treats it as a non-system volume, and allows to add disk without a problem. So far so good, but here comes the interesting part:

- after I rebooted and went to Computer Management->Disk Management in order to expand my partition over the entire volume (after the third HDD addition, larger than 2GB) - it says it cannot extend over the 2GB limits as this is a System Partition! And of course I tried it before moving the swap back to it, so - according to IRST - it still wasn't a System Partition...

If you still follow my poor English, I had to give up some 50GB of the volume's total space (not a big deal), but it makes me wonder if booting UEFI would solve this problem?

 

If it's not your boot drive, you don't need to switch to UEFI to get a volume larger than 2 TB. You just need to have the disk be partitioned with GPT instead of MBR.

There are two ways to do this.

1 --- The Windows Way

- Go to Disk Management.
- Delete all volumes on the disk (back up your data first!!)
- Right-click on your disk and select "Convert to GPT disk"
- Create a volume (> 2 TB will now be allowed).
- Restore your data.

Using this method you have to delete everything on the disk first which can be a pain.

2 --- "In-place" conversion using gdisk

- Boot your favorite Linux live CD.
- Install the "gdisk" tool (on Ubuntu or Linux Mint, "sudo apt-get install gdisk").
- Start gdisk, pointing it at the drive you want to convert. ("sudo gdisk /dev/sdb" --- use GParted to view your disks if you aren't sure which to use).
- gdisk will automatically prepare the conversion but you have enter "w" at the prompt to confirm it.
- Follow any "are you sure?" stuff through to completion, and then reboot the machine back to Windows.
- Go to Disk Management and "Expand" your partition to fill the remaining space.
** Don't do this on your Windows boot drive or you won't be able to boot anymore! It's possible to switch from legacy boot to UEFI doing this, but there are more steps.

I've done this a number of times without issue but I recommend backing up your stuff first in case something goes wrong.

You only need to use UEFI for boot if you need the boot drive to be larger than 2 TB --- this is because you must use GPT, and you can only boot a GPT drive if you are using UEFI.

 

Thanks man - I'm much wiser now

 

If it is a internal data disk it might be a good idea to add the Microsoft Reserved partition to the very beginning if you take the route of removing data first. It's a Microsoft specification.
Obviously if it is in place conversion that won't be possible. I don't have my links right now to the Microsoft spec but I'll post it later if you can't find it.
CREATE PARTITION MSR SIZE=128

 

I seem to have lost the ability to use F8 Recovery Options after switching to UEFI, is this normal or is there another way?

 

Googling reveals other people have this issue as well... I never ran into it because I spent very little time on Windows 7 with UEFI. (Windows 8's recovery thing is all changed.)

A common suggestion is to enter the BIOS boot menu (F12), select your drive, and start pressing F8 from there.

A more annoying way is to do it is go to msconfig, set it to safe mode on the "Boot" tab, and reboot.

 

Can someone help with an issue I have been having? For some reason Windows 7 keeps resetting my "Plugged In" screen brightness settings for no reason at all, and it is driving me crazy. I currently have my "On Battery" screen brightness setting set to 50% and my "Plugged In" screen brightness setting set to 100%. Everything seems to work fine until I unplug the power cable in (which does dim the screen brightness to 50%) and then reboot my machine. After rebooting my machine and then plugging the power cable in to my laptop, the screen stays at 50% and I have to go back in and reset the "Plugged In" screen brightness setting to 100%. This has never been an issue before, and it seems to have started happening not too long after I formatted and re-installed Windows on to a new SSD. Does anyone think this is related somehow? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue? It really is driving me nuts.

Thanks in advance for any and all help given.

 

Thanks.

Using automatic boot F8 wouldn't interrupt; Booting from F12 options - UEFI: Windows Boot Manager then F8 got it to load but then black lighted screen - hard reset needed.

Booting from F12 options then selecting first Internal HDD and then F8 got me there TWICE out of FIFTEEN tries. OOF!, Lots of repeat black screens and complete misses and errors.

There is a very teensy tiny window of opportunity . I'll see after all Windows updates are in.

Yeah I Bing'd it but must be asking the wrong question.

 

Which graphics card are you using?

You don't need to go to power options every time this happens. Just press Fn+Up/Down on the keyboard to change the brightness. It should remember the current state for battery or plugged in.

 

Not sure about what would be causing it.

Which BIOS version you have?

Could try removing all power supplies and then holding down the power button >1 minute then restoring all power supplies.

Also could try removing/reinstalling Dell System Manager: http://ftp.dell.com/FOLDER35332M/1/APP_WIN_R312259.EXE

Or are you using DFEP Dell feature enhancement pack?