What to Do with Your New M6700: Windows 7 Clean Install and Minor Tweaks

Thanks for the reply. So I'm still confused about which drivers to download. When I enter my service tag it doesn't list them all. I also don't know what to do with the Intel Rapid storage drivers, there's no exe. - which device in Device Manager should I point to those .inf files ?

After my first installation attempt (I created a bootable USB 3.0 key with Windows 8) Windows 8 seems a little sluggish compared to the original windows 7 installation that came with the system. I swapped the SSD with a Samsung 840 Pro so I can alternate between the 2. The windows 8 drive will be setup as a graphics workstation with only the adobe cs suite installed (so it remains clean and fast .

What is this F6 driver install I keep reading about ?

 

I think you need to use Startmenu, Run, Browse to the folder you extracted then show all files *.* select the one with .msi and it will install/detect from there.

F6 to install a RAID driver during windows install.

 

For the F6 install, download this file: Driver Details | Dell US and extract it. Then go into the device manager. From there, display the list of devices under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click on the Intel Series 7 Chipset... and choose update driver software.


Click on browse my computer for driver software.


Browse to where the F6 folder you downloaded and extracted is, then click next:


Continue with the on screen instructions to install the driver, Windows will know what to do with the files once pointed to the right folder. After it's done installing, you will be asked to restart, restart and you're done. The procedure is the same for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 by the way.

Once done, it should look like this, without the various ATA Channels:


If you want to get the full list of drivers, instead of entering your service tag, choose laptops, Precision Mobile Workstations, M6700 and you will have access to the full list of drivers for all versions of Windows support by the M6700: both Windows 7 and Windows 8 32-bit and 64-bit versions, make sure you pick the right operating system before downloading the drivers. That also gives you access to drivers that you will not need, so make sure you grab the ones for your devices. For example, if you have a system with a nVidia video card, don't grab the firepro drivers, if you have an IPS display, you don't need the Intel display drivers either.

 

If you wouldn't mind me asking, what is the difference installing it this way F6 than just a regular install or is there no other way to do it?

 

The F6 files don't have a bundled installer, that's why you have to do it that way. If there was a .msi or .exe file, it would make no difference which way you'd do it. There is no .msi or .exe because those files are meant for loading them during the windows installation process. It is the only way I found to install the RST driver without having to install the RST software which does absolutely nothing if you don't use RAID. Having a startup entry and service for something that served no purpose to me was just nagging my OCD side so now I install through the F6 files since I don't use RAID.

Using the device manager sometimes allows you to force a driver to install when it won't install any other way. That happened to me once with my Mobility Radeon HD5870, Windows for some reason didn't recognize it as what it was and neither did the Catalyst Install Manager (AMD's installer software for the Radeon drivers). Forcing the driver to install through the device manager did the trick.

 

HaHa, That's why I asked, I too have been plagued with OCD - can you tell
For the 6600 version we can extract .inf only using a switch.
This is the first explanation I've heard for it (and makes perfect sense) since I'd seen it mentioned awhile back without any.

Tijo, follow up thanks for helping me out here. For the M6600 it is indeed what is called Pre-OS Driver package for the F6 install method. Worked as expected, no more un-needed application or all the extra files. Only the ones needed got extracted.

Appreciative

 

You're welcome. I started using the F6 package when I was still using HDDs. The IRST service was set as delayed by default and took its sweet time to start, meaning that you had to wait a couple of minutes to be able to launch the utility without getting an error message. Setting the the service to automatic so that it starts right at boot fixes that, but I like my windows installs as lean as possible. Since the utility didn't really do anything for me because I wasn't using RAID, using the F6 package to get rid of it altogether seemed like a good idea. I took the habit of doing that afterwards even though I'm mostly using SSDs now.

Windows 8 didn't like me installing a version for Intel desktop boards that was more recent than the one Dell offered to fix the non working eSATA on windows 8 issue and pushes an older version of IRST through Windows update, so watch out for that if you install manually and WU is set to install important updates automatically. I haven't observed that behavior on windows 7 though.

I'm a tinkerer at heart though, so I tend to install new drivers more often than most, so I usually end up looking for solutions to problems or uncommon behavior in my rigs more often than the average person. I've been burned a few times by not so good driver updates (I'm looking at you AMD and nVidia video drivers!) that break things.

 

very helpful thread
thanks

 

Just found this benchmark online(Firepro M6100 vs M6000). However the latest mark for M6000 is 643 which runs under Windows 8. I just tested mine under the same system also gave me similar performance. Should we use Win7 rather than Win8?

 

I have seen no evidence of a noticeable performance loss between 7 and 8, only in benchmarks so far.