Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Thanks man.

I googled my way to some interesting info regarding the "System reserved" partition. It's not an actual backup of the main drive, but rather the partition from which boot is initiated, and then passed on to main OS partition.
Another interesting fact is that this partition will ALWAYS be written to the first sectors of the first drive. Which would explain why unplugging all drives except main will write the "System Reserved" on the right disk, as the SSD is otherwise always shows as second disk ("Disk 1", as "Disk 0" is the main SATA HDD).

I'll try deleting everything from 500GB HDD, unpluggin HDD, install windows on SSD and then re-plug 500GB HDD, will see if it works. I'm guessing things went wrong on last install because I hadn't removed the old "System Reserved" partition from HDD before unplugging and re-installingf Win7 on SSD.

By the way, could anyone who has the SSD minicard factory-installed check whether their "System Reserved" partition is on the same SSD drive as OS or on the "mechanical" HDD? And also, check if the SSD is labeled "Disk 0" or "Disk 1"? It can be easily done from Win7's Disk Manager.

Thanks!



EDIT: I have just erased all partitions off of 500GB HDD and plugged it off, then re-installed Win 7 on SSD minicard. It worked, except when I plug my empty 500GB HDD back in, Windows won't boot anymore... Now this is just weird.

 

Does the 500gb HDD have a jumper set to "master" by any chance? That'll confuse the hell out of your lappy

 

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/wsM4500/en/rig/reimageA00.pdf

In a much earlier post I recall the 64GB SSD must be ordered with the 256GB SSD. It is possible that the two devices must be set up in a RAID configuration?

As I look through the posts now I also see that someone states they received the M4500 with the 64GB SSD and a spinning HDD, so I'm a little confused.

I'm sure it is a BIOS setting for Boot Sequence and "Legacy or "UEFI" setting.

We are going to need someone who took delivery of an original M4500 w/64GB SSD to point us in the right direction.

 

Have you been able to get this working?

 

I was able to buy with only the 64GB SSD, but if I wanted could have bought with the 64GB SSD + any second drive, mechanical or SSD.

I bought with Win 7 Pro, and my SSD did not contain a "System Reserved" partition for recovery/bitlocker/etc as recent posts are talking about. This is probably only for people who bought Win7 Ultimate. My SSD came with 3 partitions, in no particular order:

1) The Windows partition -- the biggest one
2) The Dell Diag partition, and
3) A partition that appeared to be a restore partition or something close to one but didn't contain anything.

When I re-installed, I kept the Diag partition (although I moved it off the SSD) but did not keep the other partition of no obvious value.

 

Hi!

I have an issue and maybe you will be able to help me.

I reinstalled Win 7 after picking up laptop and installed clean one.
I have a problem becaue when I play games the screen hangs up but the sounds still works ( I can hear that characters are still speaking) but I can not do anything with my laptop and always I have to make hard restart.

I've just tried to run 3dmark and it was the same. The music in background was playing but the screen hangs up. If it would be CPU I assume the sound would would freez as well so I guess it GPU?

Do you know what can be the cause of the problem? I
Thanks in advance for any help!


P.S


I have i7 720 and Quadro 880, 8GB RAM

 

ekuns: Thanks for the insight.


Just a few more detailed questions:

1)What are your boot sequence settings:
a. AHCI, IRRT, RAID On, or RAID SATA mode?
b. Boot List Option: Legacy or UEFI
c. If UEFI: What is the option configuration?

2) Did you have to install IRST drivers during OS installation?

3) What type of second drive are you using?

 

Run Memtest (iso) to make sure your memory isn't the culprit.

Run furmark to isolate the GPU and see if it locks up/hangs due to heat

Run Prime95 max heat/threads to isolate the CPU and see if it locks up / hangs due to heat.

 

I had to return my M4500 that I bought on refurb since it would hard lock in windows no matter what I tried. Sometimes with refurbs you just get a bad apple.

They have some great deals now on the Dell outlet- on Friday I saw a i7-820 with FHD display for $929. I regret not grabbing it.

 

I did tests you recommended and:

Done! No Errors

Results from Furmark

Code:

Temperatures during Prime95 test




I tried both dell and independent drivers. I guess it helped a little when I installed Dell System Point with its additional power options.
Now I managed to run 3Dmark and it didn't freez. I thought everything is OK but the problem with freezing still exist sporidacly while wathching streaming video online or somtimes even doing sth only in Windows 7 ( I was playing with power options)



Does anyone have any idea what can be the problem? Are temperatures too high?
I have it 2 weeks so I guess I have still time to send it back but I really do not want to. Should I call Dell ?

Thank you in advance for any suggestion