Dell Inspirion 7577

Yep, the newly created partitions are on the m.2 drive, so I think I'm good there.

Well, I guess I should go ahead with the BIOS update then. I know Dell pulled back the updates that had the Spectre fix on them, so I'm not exactly sure what the BIOS upgrade from 1.2.0 to 1.4.2 will offer. I have been unable to find the update reference numbers that have the S/M patch.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ustomers-to-not-install-spectre-bios-updates/

For the BIOS update, I guess it's not a good idea to do it via Windows? I have the BIOS update file on my bootable Win 10 USB stick, and if I boot from that, it will try to reinstall Windows again, I'm thinking. So I guess I need to create another bootable USB stick and put the BIOS exe by itself on there.

 

I did it via Windows, notebook rebooted and started updating BIOS. Simply run the update software. You do not need your USB stick. Also, you don't need to change boot order to install Windows. If you press f12 on boot logo, you will be presented with a devices list and you can choose, which one you wanna boot from (one-time boot).

 

i have upgrade the stock RAM to the corsair vengeance DDR4 8x2 2400mhz.

but the temperature on the ram stick is 67c is that normal ?

 

This is unnecessary considering you can explicitly disable your hard drive ports at the BIOS level prior to installation. No need to physically remove the drive.

Wow I did not realize Dell recalled the BIOS update. I'm still on old BIOS for a reason though. I would recommend archiving all the BIOS downloads you can since it can be hard to find old versions from Dell already.

 

Is it low voltage or normal voltage RAM? between the speed bump and possible voltage difference from stock RAM it is likely normal. Check out your RAM specs in something like AIDA64 and take some screenshots if you really want to compare the differences of each set of RAM.

 

1.2 volt. i mean the temperature RAM like that, is it normal ?

Summon @hmscott LOL

 

Ah, I forgot/didn't know about that one-time boot option. Thanks!

 

That's a good point. I'll have to see how far back I can get BIOS updates/downgrades.

I found it interesting that in UEFI there's an option to allow downgrades. It was checked by default on mine.

Also, the KB has a disturbing habit of turning off the backlight seconds after my last input when I'm on battery. Is there an option somewhere to allow continuous backlight when on battery? Or do I just need to get in the habit of tapping my touchpad to relight the backlight again?

 

To get to get the extra high performance speed out of that Ram it may be running a higher voltage than the stock RAM sticks that came with your laptop and More Voltage means more heat produced.

 

Is it advisable to install OEM drivers instead of dell's?

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I don't see any BIOS options on the Dell site except the current one. Here's the change info I found for 1.4.2:

Fixes & Enhancements
Fixes:
- Updated Intel ME Firmware to address security advisory INTEL-SA-00086 (CVE-2017-5705 & CVE-2017-5708)
- Update to the latest CPU microcode to address CVE-2017-5715 and associated Intel Reboot issue.
- Updated the handling of pre-boot authentication information by firmware.
- Updated UEFI variable input validation.
- Updated the handling of 3rd party Option ROM loading.
- Updated SPI flash command configuration settings.

Enhancements:
- Enhanced the user experience for first power on date.
- Updated Dell Dock Port Type Classification in SMBIOS Table.

 

See if you can find the equivalent page for your notebook to this one for my M4800 - you'll notice many older BIOS versions can be downloaded.

 

I was looking for that exact same option for when on power that the keyboard backlight turns off when not in use... But I can't seem to find that option even in bios. It's like there is code for it in power management but no way to control it like I was able to on my VAIO.

 

No luck finding anything like that so far.

 

Unless someone chimes in with a fix, I guess we're stuck with it the way it is.

 

I think we need to harass Dell to add it to their power management options... Even adaptive backlight that turns when in bright light.

 

I hear a lot of people are overclocking the stock ram from 2400 to 2600... Is this worth it?

 

I don't think so. 2400MHz is plenty on a 60Hz screen with GTX1060MQ. It's a well-matched system to begin with. You are better off running two sticks of RAM before trying to OC your RAM speeds. Linus Tech Tips did a RAM speed vid and the returns diminish pretty quickly past 2400MHz.

 

Look in the folder: _BIOS Archive

https://mega.nz/#F!wHoTWbCZ!YXqxxF8FrTrylgb_O_yYxg

As the parent folder implies I downloaded all of these straight from Dell for my 7577 on 02-18-18.

 

Hey thanks! I got both 1.2.0 (came on my 7577) and also got 1.3.2 as well.

Is there a Dell support page somewhere that keeps historical files like this or do you just have to get them as they become available? I tried different modifications of the link from one of the above posts for a different Dell laptop but struck out.

 

One odd thing I'm noticing is that my battery on my 7577 is not charging. It's not going down either and seems stuck around 54%. The flyover says connected but not charging. Do I need to load the Dell power manager software or something? I don't think I loaded that after I did the clean install of Win 10.

 

I forget how I tracked it down but it took some guessing and poking around the right pages. Normally the old files are available from the OEM but Dell is apparently retarded and sucks at maintaining their product support pages I guess.

 

Yep. Or go into your BIOS to set it.

 

I have BIOS set to charge at 50% to 90%. But my battery says 54% and it's not charging up... nor is it dropping either.

Kinda weird. Maybe I should unplug the AC and see what it does for a bit. It started out around 90% and I ran it on battery down to the 50% range. And with AC plugged in, it seems to want to stay there which seems odd to me.

 

after using corsair vengeance 2400mhz and playing pubg for 2.5 hours. for the first time the gtx1060 MQ is reach above 70c, (XTU undervolted -110mV)

compare to the ram stock the GPU stay always at 68c degree and bellow

i hear the corsair vengeance have auto overclock feature, -_-

 

Hi Guys,
Glad to find this thread

I am from Central-Europe (Hungary) and I am planning to replace my 10-yrs old Toshiba notebook soon and after a lot of reading/searching the Dell 7577 seems to be a very good option.

I would like to use it roughly like this:
50% average use (websurfing, youtube, movies) - hobby
25% programming (Visual / Xamarin studio, some GPU-programming) - work / hobby
15% casual gaming (mostly with older titles (RPG,RTS genres) like Starcraft 2, Witcher 1-2-3, XCom series, Mass Effect series and alike)
5% photo editing, Photoshop - hobby
5% video editing, converting from VHS - hobby

After I examined it in a shop yesterday I have some concerns and I have some questions to you, actual owners.
I don't know if there could be regional differences but if you're from Europe (especially Central) then the probability is higher that I could have the same specs as yours.

1. Keyboard
White labels and backlighting is nice (I am happy about this; the red/black version is not being sold here) but I found it has very short key travel and felt uncomfortable to me to type on it longer (which I have to do a lot).
There was also an older 7567 in the shop and that model's keyboard felt much better to me (softer, quieter).

1.1 Is it possible to replace the 7577 keyboard with eg. the 7567 keyboard?
1.2 Is it the same in size / electronically / and could be fit seamlessly?
1.3 Has anyone of you done this already successfully? How hard was to do that?
1.4 If not the 7567's, do you know any other keyboard model which could work ?

I know that I could attach a good external keyboard (and monitor etc) but I would prefer having it included in one machine, if possible.

2. Screen (Full HD)
Seemed a little color deficient, some reviews claim around 52% srgb coverage which seems too mediocre and max brightness is also a little low.

I read in a review that the UHD config has a much better screen but it is above my planned budget unfortunately.

Could you tell me about your FHD screen, please:

2.1 What is the exact panel type you have (manufacturer, model nr) ?

2.2 Have you succeeded in replacing it to a higher color gamut (90%+ srgb) + higher brightness screen?
If so, which exact panel models could you recommend?

3. Configuration
For my planned usage I detailed above which do you think would be the best config from the price/performance perspective ?

- core i5 + 1050 Ti ( seems to be enough for those few yrs+ old games but not sure)
- core i5 + 1060 (I basically think to opt for this)
- core i7 + 1060 ( i7 configs seem a little overpriced (for HyperThreading), I'm not sure it is really worth that much extra money)
- core i7 + 1050 Ti (a little more affordable, but less graphics performance)

4. Thermals
Based on your experience does the cooling system inside is good enough to avoid thermal throttling in all of these configurations or any of these is better than the others ?

I am trying to process this thread too but it takes a lot of time so any direct hints, shortcuts in the meantime would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you for all of you, in advance and sorry for the length!

 

As regards my battery charging issue, I unplugged the AC from it and ran it until the battery went below 50%. Plugged it back in and it began charging again. I am still puzzled as to charging activity. I have it set to 50-90% in the BIOS. But when running on AC, it won't charge until the battery drops below 50% and it will stay at whatever level it's at between 50-90% when in use and on AC. It doesn't charge and it doesn't drain. I've never seen that before.

On another note, can anyone explain to me why it takes 20 seconds to boot from cold on a 256GB PCIe NVMe m.2 drive with a clean install of Windows 10?

My wife has a several year old Toshiba Satellite with an i5-5200 cpu and 8GB ram running Win 10 x64. It had a very slow 1TB HDD and operations on it were very slow. I got tired of the sluggish performance and within the last 6 months, bought a Samsung Evo 250GB SATA drive, cloned the old HDD, and swapped out the HDD for the Evo. This Satellite absolutely flies now. It boots in 6 seconds and operations on it are remarkably fast.

So how in the heck can my brand spanking new i7-7700HQ/16GB Dell take more than 3 times as long to boot up as the Toshiba with far inferior specs? To top it off, I thought an m.2 drive on the PCIe bus with 4 lanes would easily top a SATA m.2 drive, let alone a 2.5 inch SATA SSD like the EVO.

OK, so I know we're only talking seconds here, but come on, 20 seconds to boot vs 6 seconds? What am I missing here?

 

Regarding charging - it is normal behaviour. Laptop starts charging when battery goes under lower limit and stops when it is above higher limit (as described in settings). I mostly use my laptop on charger, so i set 60-65% limits - it keeps battery healthy for years (that setting just reproduces Lenovo's battery health preserving mode).

As for boot times, are you absolutely sure you don't have boot partitions on HDD? Try disabling HDD in BIOS and try to boot Windows. Do you have hybrid shutdown enabled (Windows power setting)? Maybe POST time is above 0 seconds (BIOS setting, that makes laptop "wait" a couple seconds on Dell logo, if it is enabled, you should see a bar filling up below Dell logo).

 

I'll check those boot settings later today and confirm what I have.

As regards the battery charging, what's baffling to me is that if I crank it up with 54% remaining power and have it on AC, it will stay at 54% while I use it. It neither charges nor drains the battery. At least based on what I see reported.

I may try your charging settings and see how that works for me as I also typically use it on the charger.

 

It is supposed to be like that. You have 54% and connect the charger. Laptop starts working on charger only and "sees" that battery percentage is above 50% (54>50) and will not start charging until it will drop below 50%. If you'd disable power settings, charge battery up to 100% and enable these back, battery percentage wouldn't drop on charger. It is simple, battery is lower than 50% - start charging, higher than 90% - stop charging. Let's say you have 30% battery and plug it in - battery starts charging; when it gets about 60%, you disconnect laptop for a second and connect again. Charging won't start now and battery will stay at 60%.

 

Interesting. So it just charges to maintain where it is, as long as it's above the min threshold and below the max limit. I didn't know it worked like that.

 

Just checking settings in BIOS.

Fastboot is set to thorough. I haven't checked bios settings on the Toshiba laptop. But I wonder if that might be a difference. I'll check the Toshiba later as I'm away right now.
Extend bios post time is set to 0.
I disabled drive 0. I show SATA-0 (HDD), SATA-1 (?), and m.2 PCIe ssd-0.

Not sure what sata-1 is.

Edit: I saw no difference in disk management with sata-0 enabled or disabled. Interesting.

I'll see if I can attach an image of disk management.

Edit2: I'll have to add it later.

Edit3: Here's a shot of my disk management. I think it's pretty clear all the OS/partitions are on the 256GB m.2 drive.



I think I'll change the Fastboot setting to the quickest setting and see if that changes anything. I checked the BIOS on the Toshiba and it's a very simple and basic EUFI. I see no option to change any Fastboot settings. In fact, I don't see Fastboot at all.

 

After changing Fastboot to minimal, boot time was cut in half... from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. And yet the Samsung Evo 850 in my wife's old Toshiba Satellite is faster booting in only 6 seconds.

While 10 seconds is not bad, I cannot understand how an old i5-5200 running an SSD on the SATA bus can outperform an i7-7700HQ booting from an NMVe m.2 drive running on the PCIe bus. Perhaps this is illustrative of the speed of the Toshiba m.2 drive which has been reported to be slow.

Any thoughts?

 

Someone at Dell forums reported that even presence of HDD caused longer boot times (even though all system partitions were on SSD). I guess you could try booting without HDD. I don't know if simply disabling SATA in BIOS would work - you said that disabling did not caused HDD to disappear in Windows Disk Management. Maybe you should try to disable both SATA channels.

 

I'm curious about the dual SATA channels. What exactly is SATA-0 and SATA-1?


I popped the back off my 7577 just to confirm there was only one HDD slot (that's all I saw) and the NVMe drive was in the sole m.2 slot. So I'm not sure what SATA-0 is for if the HDD is on SATA-1.

I disabled both SATA 0 and 1, then checked my boot times again with just the NVMe drive on the PCIe bus activated:


Now boot time is 14 seconds. This is crazy.

I just ran a couple more tests. It appears that having the AC connected affects boot time. If I have AC disconnected, boot to the background picture is 15 seconds. If I have AC connected, boot to the background picture is 10 seconds. That's the best I've seen.

Again, using the old Toshiba as a benchmark, this 7577 falls way short in the m.2 NVMe PCI3 vs SATA SSD boot time comparison.

First world problems, I know. But still...

 

Wow. So I called Dell Support on the 800-822-8965 support number and let a tech dink around in my system. It now boots slower than what I had it booting. So the tech referred me to another tech support line: 877-409-3272 only to find out this is a fee based support line.

Say what? On a 3 day old laptop? I don't think so.

It's looking very possible that I just may return this sucker and save myself $1000 by buying a Toshiba Satellite el cheapo or maybe something else, swapping out the HD for a Samsung Evo 860 or whatever is current and enjoy much better performance than this top of the line spec'd Dell in front of me.

This is troubling. I'm a bit miffed right now.

Edit: I'm also seeing it take about 5 seconds... yes, 5 seconds, to open file explorer from when I click on the icon. That is absolutely pathetic.

I'm tempted to wipe and reinstall Win 10 one more time before I give up on this turkey. I'm rather disappointed in the performance to this point. I also realize it could be something on my end that I've done.

Do you guys see performance issues like I'm seeing or am I out on this limb by myself?

 

I'm sorry to hear that. I guess boot time depends not only on drive speed but also on particular machine and booting procedures (diagnostics, safe boot etc.). That opening files lag may be caused by Optimus glitch, which affects all machines with Intel 7gen + Nvidia + Windows 10. There's program called TrayPwrD3, which keeps Nvidia active and gets rid of lags. Maybe you'd like to try it.

 

Dude, at least put a little effort into looking into these things first before condemning a great machine because you don't know how to tune it or be bothered to research it's specific quirks.

I posted about how to fix the explorer lag myself some time ago. I since reinstalled 3 OSs on my machine and had to re-do all the tiny mods to fix it again. It's part of getting to know your machine.

I have a feeling your BIOS might not be set completely correctly for fastest boots. And even if it is, who the **** cares how long a cold boot or warm boot takes?

You should be checking your sleep / hibernate times if anything because that's what you should be using 90% of the time anyways.

There are a number of things that contribute to lag in a few places on this machine. Get ShellExView and the other one related to it from my 7577 thread. There are two Intel igpu related context menus you'll want to disable.

For the explorer click time, I will have to dig a little to try to remember all that I did. And to be clear this is a Windows 10 issue. You can always boot Windows 7 if you want.

 

I take it you don't think I've put ANY effort into resolving the boot time and FE lag? Well, you're right about the FE lag. But I've invested a fair amount of time trying different things (perhaps limited by my knowledge) to fix/understand why this high spec laptop is getting the snot beat out of it by a lowly i5-5200 laptop that's had no configuration optimization at all. I just went into the BIOS on it the other day to see how it might vary from my 7577. But it was so basic and simple, there just wasn't much there to tweak. At least not that I found.

I think a clean install of Win 10 should count for something on this 7577. All drivers are updated to the best of my knowledge. And I'm on the latest BIOS too.

None of these things do I need to do on the old Toshiba laptop. It just runs like a scalded dog right out of the gate (now that it has an EVO 850 in place of the slow HDD). Win 10 x64 there too. And my desktop is also Win 10 x64 (Samsung 850 Pro)... no lag whatsoever when opening FE.

So it's not like I don't have any experience with W10 or haven't done any troubleshooting. Having said that, if there's something I missed, I'll be glad to tweak some more and see what I can do to fix this. I want it to work. But right now it looks like I've overspent by about $1000 to have it underperform much lesser equipment.

If you have a link to some tweaks I can try, I'll be happy to try to rescue this situation.

I guess I already had it in the back of my mind that this 256GB Toshiba m.2 drive had issues with speed from some other support threads I've read. But I thought, "how bad can it be?" And it's worse than I thought.

So right now I'm thinking my issues are related to that drive in particular, since my other Win 10 installations do not have these issues of FE lag. And boot times, while unimportant in the scheme of things, are an indicator to me of just how fast a system might be. And when that 850 EVO in the old Toshiba laptop can boot more than twice as fast as my new supercomputer, that raises a red flag... which I've given a fair amount of effort to track down. Unsuccessfully, to this point.

 

For everyone looking for drivers and BIOS versions, here is the page I mentioned two pages back: http://downloads.dell.com/published/pages/inspiron-15-7577-laptop.html

If you go to http://downloads.dell.com/published/pages you can find the equivalent for most Dell systems.

 

@speedlever

You are calling the support because of a 5 seconds boot time difference? Let me guess, you are American?

The boot time depends on the laptop equipment. Every controller with own firmware (raid controllers, Thunderbolt, etc) will lengthen the boot time and there is nothing you can do about it. There is no boot time difference between SATA SSDs and PCI-E SSDs. So the Thunderbolt controller alone costs you a few seconds.

The Explorer lag is a well known bug and affects all Optimus laptops. It will be resolved by an April Intel gfx driver update.

 

Is Microsoft Office also free with our product? Or we need to purchase the licence separately?

Sent from my Z2 Plus using Tapatalk

 

There is an option under bios for pre boot diagnostics. It is "thorough" by default. Set it to "minimal" or "off". This will for sure decrease boot time. However I am not aware about its negative consequences.

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Pre boot diagnostics was one of the first things I changed (mentioned upthread). It cut the boot time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds changing from thorough to minimal.

I believe I fixed the FE lag by going to the nvidia control panel desktop settings and unchecking Add "run with graphics processor" to Context Menu.

But if the boot time is extended for a reason... because of the Thunderbolt controller (as mentioned above), that makes more sense and I can accept that.

OK, I'm over my tiff with Dell sending me to a pay for support line. But it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they volunteered to replace my Toshiba m.2 drive with the higher performing Samsung drive.

https://www.dell.com/community/Lapt...rage-Drivers-M-2-Lanes/td-p/5072571?pi41097=4

 

Is it possible that one of the fans spin slower than the other one? It feels like my laptop's left fan works better than the right one. I don't know if it was like this from the beginning (have been using the laptop for less then a month). It concerns me because I noticed that my GPU (1060 max q) temperature during playing overwatch (epic settings) raised from 69C to 74C (after playing 30+ minutes).

 

What are temps on CPU? if higher, that would be normal. These work independently.

 

Don't think so, I think the virus scanner is the only free subscription.

 

The CPU's (i7 7700hq) temperature is around 80-84C. But still it is kind of strange that two weeks ago maximum GPU's temps was 5 degrees lower. I tried to figure out the cause. And I think that software doesn't cause this (I reinstalled windows, so basically I had not updated GPU driver and no additional programs, but still the GPU temp didn't stayed 69C anymore). However, there must not be any problems with cooling system, because I have used my laptop for less than a month.
I think this probelm appeared after I had a 10 hours game session (senua sacrifice on maximum settings). and another one like 8-9 hours a week later. So is it possible that hardware was damaged because of that?

 

Virus scanners is for a year however afaik windows subscription is for lifetime(not sure; its free in lenovo machines) also i found an article regarding office 365( will update link further).

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Try checking your thermal paste. OEM one are crappy and will degrade after some serious thermal. Im using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaunt and its perfect...
Btw, for someone thats asking about DIMM temp. Mine running 16GB 2x8GB Hynix 2800MHz@CL17 (ram price so expensive, with the same money i could buy an Ballistix 2933 kit from last year...), temp is 45, quite warm...