Precision 7710 Owner's Thread

Hi guys,

I am totally new in this website and i have a Precision 7710. Thought i would contribute if i can. My specs are i7 6820, 512 m.2 pcie, 2TB HDD, nvidia m4000m. It is a very good machine with no problems so far. Windows 10 Pro 1607, lastest BIOS and no problem with any of the hardware at all. My only grip is the LCD back cover which have abrasion and bag scuffs and it is pretty difficult to find a messenger bag for it.

 

I've had to roll back to win10 build 1607 from Win10 Creators Update again after experiencing more crashing inside my vmware workstation pro guests this past week. The guest VMs BSOD with generic error as if losing power (not specific error to a dll like when vid drivers crash) . I also had explorer.exe crash/freeze (on my host, not guest vm) multiple times. It seemed fine the first couple days I was on Creators Update but then the 3rd day and 5th day I had the crashes with another just yesterday.

That was my 2nd attempt trying the Creators Update. I will try again in another month or so and when I try again I think I'll perform a fresh install rather than an upgrade. Seems something in the Creators upgrade process isn't cooperating with my system. A fresh install I think should circumvent whatever the problem is. I'll also have to grab all the latest drivers and reinstall my programs but that may be the solution.

 

thanks for the feedback ygohome, guess i will try to avoid the update when it auto comes

 

If you want to try it to see if it works okay you can roll it back to previous build 1607 if you don't like it. I think that recovery option is good for ten days after the upgrade and only takes about 5-10 minutes to roll back. The problems I was experiencing with Creators might be particular to just my laptop, although we have two 7710 and had the problems on both but they have almost identical images and still may be particular to our image.

 

Good idea too but this 7710 is my main machine with loads of software, better not mess since 2 forum experience. Not in a hurry to upgrade to Creators. Unfortunately MS will auto download the update even if i put it to 'defer updates'. To really defer updates i'll change it to tethering but then all updates will also be deferred.

 

Anyone here have experiences with abrasion on the LCD back panel (the carbon fiber with silicon like part). it's abrasion caused by the laptop in the bag i guess and i normally wipe it with water and it will go away, problem is over a longer period the abrasions may be permanent. Unlike the previous generation M4800 it is metal. Sharing on how to take care of the LCD back panel would be appreciated

 

Final update on that Touchpad options crashing issue in case anyone else is looking for a solution.

I found this weird pseudo-fix. Go to Recovery Options > Advanced Startup, then Reset This PC > Keep Files, confirming with your account login credentials, then clicking "cancel" before an actual reset occurs. Then "continue onto Windows 10."

Once you log in, you have about a minute to launch TouchPad Options from Start Menu Search before it crashes and stops working. Even if it crashes, any changes you make stay. Rinse and repeat until you have the settings you want.

Not a good fix, but it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I've been using Acronis 2017 lately for backups. Here are some quick and basic notes incase it helps anyone else. So far I'm pleased with Acronis True Image 2017.

I was initially unable to recover my system drive from an acronis backup image on an external HDD via eSATA (connected to my E-Port dock station) by performing recovery inside of windows itself. The system would ask to restart to perform the recover but then after reboot and it going into Acronis boot kernal it would say "Preparing" but then it would go blank and reboot back to windows. I don't know if that is because I had Legacy Boot disabled and Secure Boot enabled. Probably.

I temporarily enabled Legacy Boot and disabled Secure Boot. I booted from an Acronis recovery thumb drive rather than trying to begin the recovery from within windows. This works. I recovered my OS partition (I was recovering only OS partition and not entire disk or any hidden partitions). I was able to fully recover what I needed. Then I switched back to UEFI (disabling Legacy) and re-enabled Secure boot. And it rebooted fine into my recovered system.​

This was my first time recovering my OS from Acronis and I'm happy it worked. Whew!

I've documented with photos and detailed notes for every step along the way so I remember how to do this in future. I would post those notes here but my docx file was too large (3MB). I can maybe email if anyone cares. This recovery was from an external HDD to my system SSD (NVMe M.2) via eSATA and my old e-port dock station.

*One other caveat. If I choose to recover an entire Disk rather than an individual partition it gives "WARNING: After operation completion operating system will not boot from the destination disk in the bios". That had me puzzled/frightened and so I chose to do simpler partition recovery instead of entire disk and turned out okay.

 

I've been using Acronis True Image for many years and I'm very pleased with it.

In addition to what you're describing, you can also have Acronis True Image make backups to a network drive, which is what I do. This can either be a NAS, a network share on a PC or server, or even in the cloud.

I boot the PC or laptop I want to backup using an Acronis recovery DVD or thumb drive and make a backup directly to a NAS. To restore the PC or laptop later on, I boot from the Acronis recovery media again and restore directly from the NAS. It takes a little longer than with an HDD or SSD attached to the eSATA port, though. I use this method to store a factory pre-install image of every PC and laptop on the NAS and also to create an image after I have completely configured and updated the operating system. The NAS is switched off the rest of the time, to minimize the risk of data loss in case of a malware or ransomware infection.

Acronis True Image can also restore part of a backup image, for example one partition from a full disk backup, or only a couple of files or folders from an image. It can make backups on file-and-folder level or sector-by-sector. The latter also includes any hidden data and unused sectors on the disk. It can also do incremental backups, so you don't have to do a full backup every time.

All in all, a very powerful backup solution.

 

great forum here, after reading i got out to get a copy of ATI 2016 and UAT my desktop to clone the C drive. i just plug in a external SSD, set ATI to clone entire C drive and it took about 15 minutes for 130GB. The catch i had is at the end it says '"One or more of your removable disks may not have started at the moment. Click 'Yes' to wait for full startup of the devices(recommended). Click 'No' to ignore uninitialized devices and continue. Click 'Cancel' to stop the current operation. Do you want to wait for the devices startup?" Clicking either yes, no or cancel will lead ATI in a loop, so basically just go to Bios and Boot sequence back to source disk and it will boot like normal, after that remove the source disk and replace with destination disk which is the clone drive and it will boot up. That's how easy it was. Have not tried with a NVME m.2 though