Question on Dell's Re-Image; Driver installation order documents

tl;dr I ask because I will be getting my M6800 soon. My comment and takeaway is: It seems like there is "a certain fudge factor" here as long as some general guidelines or broad guidelines are adheared to (Chipset installed first, for example, and, Airplane Mode Switch or OSD (Dell System Software) software before WiFi Drivers, for example), the "exact driver order" may not matter too much. Do people agree?

From the Dell Precision Support, Drivers, and Downloads Page:
Here
- http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...t/product/precision-m6800-workstation/manuals
click
- Manuals
The first choice is "Mobile Precision Re-Image Guide PDF (985 KB)" (Revision 13.0, A13, May 20, 2015)
- http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/Common/PWS_Reimage_Guide_en-us.pdf

There is also this document:
"Precision Mobile Workstation M6800 Knowledge Base Resource Library"
- http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN289060/EN
Which has hyperlinks to:
"Windows 7 Driver Install Order" (Last Date Modified: 01/20/2015 08:30 AM)
- http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/635506
"Windows 8 Driver Install Order" (Last Date Modified: 04/30/2015 11:37 AM)
- http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/635505

The installation order in the "635505" documents is slightly different than "PWS_Reimage_Guide_en-us.pdf" document. Does anyone follow one over the other? For example, I tried on the older M6600, E4300, and E4310 that I have here. And both documents gave a working PC in the end (I did Windows 8.1 on M6600 all other were Windows 7). The ordering of the (Serial ATA & Memory card) is different (The PDF document has those installed much earlier than the HTML document. Critical? Also Audio & Video are swapped in the 2 documents. Critical? FWIW, the corresponding Lenovo Thinkpad document more closely resembles the Dell PDF document (SATA installed early, Audio comes before Video).

Normally I use the order in "PWS_Reimage_Guide_en-us.pdf", or at least we did when rolling out Windows 7 last year to the various Dell Latitudes and Precisions we had (E4200, E4300, E4310, E6510, M6400, M6500, M6600).

 

The order of driver install doesn't matter too much and everyone has their preferred order.

Here's RCB's for the M6600: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m6600-reimaging-thread.687529/
Here's mine for the M6700: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...dows-7-clean-install-and-minor-tweaks.690957/

Some things have changed for me since then, I don't bother with page file anymore given that SSDs of higher capacity have gotten cheaper.

Honestly, even the chipset driver can wait nowadays as the default Windows driver will do its job perfectly well. I just install that first out of habit and move to video very quickly since I don't have to deal with an insanely low resolution and it makes my life easier. The order in the document is most likely the install order that Dell uses and since they know it works, they recommend it. If you don't sue their utilities, there shouldn't be any interdependency between drivers/utilities at all.

Note that if you install Windows from USB, you may have to set your BIOS to legacy to allow boot and install from the USB drive and to avoid issues with having USB3.0 ports only. If you have a USB2.0 port, I suggest you use that.

 

Order hardly matter now, at least for 8.1 and win10. the driver that don't get installed(meaning you actually download them from Dell) are usually

1. Free fall sensor
2. Sound card
3. Card reader
4. Intel ME
5. Some security vault thing

For Intel stuff, just use Intel update program from Intel.

Get oem Gpu driver.



Sent from my 306SH