Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

1) What does it mean "Legacy Boot" ? Is it 100% safe if I chang it to "ON"
Rather odd that Dell ships his laptops in such a condition....

Btw: is it pressing F12 during booting to enter BIOS settings ?




And honestly, the sceeen is a little bit too bright for me, su it woiuld be fine if I could dil that a little bit.


2) Yes, I have 1600 Mhz RAM, it was already expensive enough
For that reason I also skipped the Dell Blue Ray

3) Me too I find a slot more "clean" looking, but what if a disc got stucked....

 

Mine came with 3 discs:

0KJX6D (D0V2K) - Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit Reinstallation DVD
0X1WGC (GF1T5) - Webcam Resource Disc
02Y5M6 (CWK8H) - Driver and Utilities Disc

Yes, the WWLAN slot has 2 antennas. This will work fine with the Dell 5630 (Gobi 3000) and Dell 5560 cards.

Here some extra info that you didn't ask for but I figure I should post it... The only place where you'll run into issues are the new 4G LTE WWLAN cards. Sierra Wireless makes these models:

MC7700 for AT&T, NTT Docomo
MC7750 for Verizon
MC7710 for T-Mobile (EU)

These WWLAN cards require 3 antennas. There have been some reports (none that I can verify personally) that the bands used in the U.S. may only require 2 antennas but European bands require 3 antennas which the M6700 does not have. I'm absolutely positive that an intrepid user can explore the possibility of installing a third antenna wire in the M6700 but I haven't attempted it yet.

You can do that without any issue. Just keep in mind that some of the drives on eBay either don't come with a bezel or they come with a generic black one which will not match the external casing of the M6700. If you want a factory look then see if you can find a non-working slot-load DVD for the M6700 (perhaps M6600?) and swipe the bezel off that.

 

I gladly want to help you, but how can I check this ?
I don't use the SIM-slot.

I have everywhere wifi and in case of emergency i can theter my iPhone.

 

'Legacy Boot' is the old-fashioned way of booting, as opposed to the newer UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) boot mode. UEFI boot is supposed to allow faster booting and also supports large partitions and GPT (GUID Partition Table) formatted disks. Legacy boot only supports MBR (Master Boot Record) formatted disks.

No, it is not. Some people have reported in this thread that they were unable to start their M6700 afterwards. They didn't even see the Dell logo appearing at boot time, just a blank screen, and had to 'jump through hoops' to get their M6700 booting properly again.

If you run Windows 8, you should not switch Legacy Boot ON, nor switch Secure Boot OFF for that matter.

In case you wonder what 'Secure Boot' is:
Secure Boot is a UEFI feature that allows operating systems to be digitally signed to prevent malware from altering the boot process. The digital signature is used to verify the integrity of the operating system before booting it. Windows 8 has a digital signature, but Windows 7 and earlier versions do not.

When you see the Dell logo during booting, you can either press F2 to go directly to the BIOS Setup or press F12 to select a number of boot options from a list. When you press F12, you can also run Diagnostics (also known as Pre-boot System Assessment or ePSA).

I've been using PCs and laptops for more than 25 years now, of which 18 years in a corporate environment, and I've never needed to open a tray load CD / DVD / BR drive using the eject hole. I have also never encountered a slot load drive that had a stuck disc in it.

There's one more advantage to slot load drives. If you use burning software that cycles the tray before verifying the burned disc (like ImgBurn does), then you would have to close a tray load drive manually, because a laptop tray load drive can't close itself. A slot load drive can re-insert the disc automatically after it's been ejected (but not moved further out of the drive). In fact, it does so after a certain amount of time if you don't take the disc out of the drive, to prevent damaging the disc.

 

Thank you, Michiko for that quick reply - lucky we are in the same time zone :hi2:

I have worked with computers since the "beginning", with a ZX Spectrum, a 8088 with 2 little and big floppy disks, a Pentium, etc... etc....

but I am NOT an ICT-er.

Im am becomming more and more a "user".

When it was DOS, I could understand it, but now it is getting more and more complicated...or I am getting too old - lol.

The last years I have ben using Thinkpads and I was very pleased with them, but they don't offer the possibilities to make a laptop a la carte, like Dell allows.

But if I understand correctly, there is no safe way to adjust the brighness on my almost 4K laptop ?????????

Do you think Dell will come up with a solution ?

And don't say swapping the mobo....

Years ago, in the age of Win95 I had a very expensive Toshiba, the first one with an integrated CD-ROM player....that laptop was more at Toshiba than at my place......
And yes, they even had to swap the mobo. ( = almost ba new laptop )

Pfff....let's hope Dell comes with a solution.

 

Thank you for checking, hrana. Looks like I have the correct OS recovery DVD then.

Not sure why the recovery process 'hangs' after the Windows logo appears. I waited more than 5 minutes, but both the HDD and DVD drive showed no activity during this period.

I've switched Secure Boot OFF in the BIOS and boot from the recovery DVD in UEFI boot mode. I've tried formatting the HDD up front in both MBR and GPT mode (using Acronis Disk Director), but this doesn't seem to make any difference.

 

Another important question:

I tried to run the famous NOKIA MONITOR TEST, to check all the pixels....but it doesn't run in Windows 8....

Are there any alternatives ?

 

I started programming in Basic on an MSX and a Commodore Vic20 when I was about 11 years old. I've owned an XT (= 8088), 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc. and built my own PCs for a while. It's sometimes hard to keep up with all the different CPUs and chipsets, but it's fun to learn...

Can't you use the Fn key + arrow up/down to increase/decrease brightness?

Which operating system do you have on your Covet?

MonitorTest 3.1 from PassMark may be Windows 8 compatible (haven't tried):
http://www.passmark.com/products/monitortest.htm

PS: If you want to check for dead pixels, there's also a built-in LCD self-test. In power-off state, hold down the 'D' key and press the power button. The LCD self-test rotates a full screen green/blue/black/white/red sequence a couple of times. Afterwards, the laptop boots into Windows.

 

Nope, see no difference.
When I use the FN key, I DO SEE an OnScreenDisplay of a brighness slider, but nothing happens imho....

I use Windows 8 Pro 64 bit

Is there another way to increase/decrease brightness ....???

Graca = NVIDIA Quadro K3000M

 

I also have Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit installed at the moment and I can change display brightness in 16 different levels using the Fn + arrow up/down keys.

If you open the charms bar (move the cursor to the top right corner of the screen) and click on 'Settings' (the gear icon), you see a group of 6 icons at the bottom, including 'Brightness'.

If you have ColorPremier installed on your M6700, you can also set the display brightness under the 'display color' tab. You can open ColorPremier by right-clicking on the desktop and select ColorPremier | Tune Display.

You should also try running Diagnostics (press F12 at boot time).