M6800 Owners' Thread

Thanks Aaron, that's what I expected. I just thought maybe someone would have a trick for this.

 

Lately, I have been switching between a mechanical drive running Win8.1(right side, removable bay) and my usual SSD running Win7 (center drive bay).

Before booting the Win8.1 drive, I change the boot options to select the correct drive and UEFI.

Before booting the Win7 drive, I eject the Win8.1 drive and select the SSD/Legacy in the BIOS. However, every time I do this and reboot to the SSD/Win7, chkdsk wants to check the SSD for consistency. If I leave the mechanical drive installed, it will also want to check that drive. Chkdsk never finds any errors on the SSD and doesn't make any changes and then it boots normally.

When booting to Win8.1 with the SSD installed chkdsk is never triggered.

This only happens when doing this boot drive switch. Every subsequent reboot of the SSD does not trigger this.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? I posted above that I suspect my BIOS battery is low, could that be a potential cause?

Thanks

 

Doubt it, this is probably Windows 7 thinking that "someone else" has been accessing the drive contents and just running a safety chkdsk. (...I know something similar would happen if you booted Windows XP after a disk had been mounted by Vista.) If you don't need to access the Win7 disk from Win8, dismount the disk in Win8. (Go to "Disk Management", find the Win7 drive, and remove its drive letter.) Vice versa if you don't need to access the Win8 drive from Win7. If the OS's are not looking at each other's drives then you might not have this problem.

 

What version of display port and HDMI is in this laptop? I want to use Gsync monitors and use Quadro Sync through display port or HDMI 2.0
Just curious, thanks!!

Specs:
M6800
32GB RAM
2X SSD
2X HDD
K4100M
USB 3.0 Smartcard
240W brick
Full HD LED monitor
(Looking for a dock / dockable battery)

 

DP 1.2 & HDMI 1.4.
HDMI 2.0 output is possible with a DisplayPort adapter.

 

Thank you for your reply!

And I havey laptop in the shop right now, they have a GTX 980M and I'd like it installed. Any guides I can point them to?

 

Visit dell.com/support and pull the system manual PDF. It has directions for replacing all components, including the graphics card.

 

With the help from the graphics card upgrade for M6800 thread, I got my own M6800 spec'd out with a 970M that I got from work for a pretty great deal. Working for a system integrator certainly has its perks. I'm super happy with the performance, although Forza Horizon 4 runs a bit weakly at 1080p low and feels a bit choppy. I do have the option of upgrading to a 980M if i really want to but I think its more of an issue of running the game at 60hz. There some frame tearing and occasional dips that could be smoother with some form of adaptive sync. I'd love to get a 1080p 120hz display for my M6800 and a faster wireless card with built in bluetooth, but for now, the laptop runs great and the battery life is actually pretty good! Definitely beats my old HP Probook 6570b by a long shot.

M6800 Specs:
i7 4810MQ
32GB (4x8GB) 1600Mhz
GTX 970M 6GB w/ modified heatsink (i.e. grinding a Nvidia compatible heatsink with a dremel until it cleared a inductor that was causing the heatsink to not fit properly.)
500GB Samsung 850 Evo mSata (win 7 boot drive)
500GB Teamforce Vulcan 2.5" (win 10 boot drive for Forza & AoE DE)
2x1TB Mushkin RAW 2.5" in raid 0 (shared game and storage for both OSs)
1080p display (unsure which variant)
Intel Centrino Ultimate N 6300
Backlit keyboard
OEM Equivalent 97WH battery

 

You can't upgrade the display on M6800, it's either 1080p 60Hz with LVDS or with eDP, the result is the same, the screen is caped at 60Hz, you could try to overclock it, that's your only way yo get above 60Hz (disable optimus for easier display oc)

 

Disabling optimus is easier if you don't wanna download CRU and just use the nvidia control panel, but CRU is easy to use and I got mine up to a stable 80hz (LVDS, Tesla M6)