Aaron44126

If you are talking about a fresh install, it goes just like any other Windows install. It's been a while since I did this but I actually think it doesn't ask you for a product key during the install, you just end up unactivated and have to enter the key from settings after the install is done. If you're talking about an upgrade install, similarly it works like any other Windows install if you are upgrading from an earlier LTSC. If you want to upgrade from regular non-LTSC Windows to an LTSC version, you have to change a registry key first to allow it (I detailed this in the first post of this thread).

This is one thing that interests me about Framework... If you're willing to run a couple of generations behind, then ongoing cheap upgrades to your laptop could be a thing! It remains to be seen if they can keep this going for a string of several generations and if they will offer more variety on the 16" side.

Yeah... I guess you could check and make sure that the battery contacts are clean in your M6800. But most likely, if the battery seems good in another system, then the motherboard is the next suspect.

It is, unfortunately, poorly documented that the battery will gobble up one of the NVMe slots in the Precision 7670 unless you get an RTX A3000 or better GPU, which will get you a slightly "thicker" chassis that can hold the battery off to the side. Realized I never really followed up on the post above about the display panel. Man, I really wanted to like this laptop and I was very excited during the lead-up to purchase, and upon receiving it, coming off of 10 years on my Precision M6700. But ongoing mounting issues just made me turn sour to it and the direction that Dell is taking with this line in general. Don't get me wrong. It is great that they are offering a 17" system (...no other workstation vendors are...) with high-spec parts, up to 128 GB of RAM, and 4 NVMe slots. But... The audio situation is crap. I think most of the blame here falls on the Realtek driver so I don't know how much you can blame Dell (other than that they insist on continuing to use a Realtek audio chip in their laptops). It's not just this laptop, I have the same issue with my Precision 7560 and other Precisions that I have used. It has a long delay on switching to 3.5mm/headphones and sometimes it just stops working with 3.5mm until I reboot. Sometimes, there is a "popping sound" when the audio system turns on and off (poor power management?), which you can hear before and after a Windows alert noise. It tries really hard to make the experience better with "audio enhancements" that just make things sound weird and echo-y on VOIP calls (i.e. WebEx). Audio dropouts under certain types of load are not uncommon and work must be done to make other system-level components in the system behave well with minimal DPC latency. (None of these problems existed under Linux. I am mostly blaming the Windows driver from Realtek.) The cooling system needs work, as detailed numerous times in this thread. Maybe Intel CPU power management is at fault here too. Why is the system running hot when it is sitting idle, at <3% CPU usage? I was afraid to run it for long periods with the lid shut because the entire top lid enclosure got toasty. Fan noise on top of that. The system makes a very audible whir-up sound when the fans turn on. They run higher than needed for a second or two before settling into the normal run speed. Since the system wants to cycle the fans on and off on a regular basis when the system is running an idle workload, I had to run a program to measure the fan speed and run an artificial CPU load to keep the fans from powering off when the fan speed got too low. (My sensorimotor OCD can't handle that fan-power-up noise occurring randomly.) I had issues with inconsistent GPU performance and it randomly throttling the discrete GPU while gaming. Not just me, @Ionising_Radiation reported similar behavior on the Precision 7560. It seems like it has to do with NVIDIA Dynamic Boost and generally the CPU and GPU stealing power from each other, and it can be "worked around" with a specific configuration, but who should have to spend time figuring this out? (Also, never mind the fact that Optimus never seemed to work right and fully power off the dGPU consistently when it was not in use.) And then, then there is the OS. I have railed about the direction that Microsoft is taking with Windows 11 already (link in sig). Ongoing performance issues that "should not be there" are part of what prompted me to dump it for Linux back in April. And ongoing things like nagging pop-up windows asking you to switch to Bing bring me back to the notion of "Whose computer is this, anyway?" and really put me off from using Windows. Back to the display panel replacement... A Dell tech did show up with a second display panel replacement, and the new display panel was "fine". The whole experience was kind of the last straw for me, though. I really stopped using the system after that. I did some research and ended up buying a max-spec MacBook Pro later that week. I've been happily using it since then. A learning curve, sure, even coming off of previous professional Mac experience this is my first time using one as a daily driver. But, performance is "fine". (Even for gaming — I just finished playing through Shadow of the Tomb Raider and it ran fine at 1510p/60FPS with the "highest" graphics preset. Gaming performance is there, just getting games that you want to run is the issue sometimes.) GPTK has opened new doors for bringing newer DX11/12 Windows games to macOS (along with things like CXPatcher), and Apple has continued to refine it since the first beta release only 2.5 months ago, with each new version squeezing out more FPS. The battery life is easily triple what the Precision 7770 could provide, it is cool and silent when doing office-type work but can offer high performance when needed (and full performance on battery power to boot), the screen is wonderful, speakers are great as well, it has a giant trackpad that works great with gestures, and the OS is performing great even with two dozen apps open and a Windows VM running. On the negative side, I will complain about the keyboard layout. I miss the numeric keypad and I'm getting used to a whole new set of keyboard shortcuts. And of course, the there's the general lack of modularity or upgrade potential, and the lack of removeable storage in particular is a bummer (I just configured it with the max 8TB, which will work for now, and I have moved the drives from my Precision 7770 to work as NAS storage). Granted, Dell (and other vendors) have already been generally moving in this direction. Even in these newer Precision systems, just look at how painful it is to replace the keyboard, or the fact that the display panel is attached with adhesive rather than screws. Definitely something I would throw out to consider if your workload can tolerate it. Performance might not be quite as high as the latest Intel-based mobile workstations, but as a laptop the MacBook Pro is really the system to beat these days, not requiring you to "decide" between a cool/quiet system and a high-performance system but being able to offer both. (This is all I will say about the MacBook in this thread for now. For more discussion about a possible Mac transition I would ask to not side-rail this thread but look at my thread over in the macOS/iOS section of this forum.) Really, though, in the end everything is a compromise in the end and you have to decide what is the least annoying tradeoff for your particular situation.

Huh. That's new. I messed around with this with Quadro M5000M and P5000 and it would never budge.

You can’t raise the power limit using this method. It will not allow you to set it higher than the vBIOS limit.

I wouldn't worry that much about it. The marketing is way overblown and relies on completely ideal conditions. It is always that way for Wi-Fi. It will be measurable faster than Wi-Fi 6, sure, and probably offer improvements with multiple devices being active at the same time. 5× faster is not going to happen under regular use. Wi-Fi 6 made similar claims that do not pan out with the regular "a laptop with two antennas talking to a router" use case. In my case, even switching from 80 MHz to 160 MHz wide channels, it was less than a 2× speed improvement over Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) despite the "theoretical data rate" being around 4× faster. If you have specialized equipment on both ends, or if you're sitting just a few feet from the access point with no line-of-sight obstructions, maybe you'll fare better. I'd suggest that you just wait until your regular upgrade cycle gets you a client device (phone or laptop) with Wi-Fi 7, and at that time, look into getting a Wi-Fi 7 router or access point to take advantage of it. No reason to go out and buy a new device just to get Wi-Fi 7.

I am not 100% sure on this, but I believe so? All that would really be needed would be that all of the screw positions are the same so that it can fit in the chassis, and I know that is the case for the screws that attach to the heatsink... and then things like the display+camera cable would need to have the same pinout, which is a reasonably safe assumption. (I have heard of Precision 7510->7520 upgrades by swapping out the motherboard because they are physically compatible. I don't think I have ever heard of a 7530->7540 upgrade in the same manner, but I can't think of anything that would stop someone from doing it.) Note that if you install an "unsupported" NVIDIA GPU / motherboard combo, then you will find yourself in a position where you have to do INF mods to get the NVIDIA driver to load (unless you are using Linux).

Then either the image is wrong, or that is not the 4000/5000 GPU heatsink.

No, it is not. The 4000 and 5000 series GPU cards have screw holes in a different place than the lower level cards. Precision 7530 never had 4000 or 5000 series GPU cards offered. You can fit this heatsink (M2F8R) in a 7530, but only if you also install a RTX 4000 or 5000 GPU from the Precision 7540. If you are thinking about using that heatsink in a Precision 7540 (RX1Y7), it would only work if you have a RTX 3000 GPU or lower.

You'll want to check the BIOS setup on the desktop and make sure that IRST is activated. Normally, there will be an option to switch the system between "RAID" mode and "AHCI" or "NVMe" mode (RAID support is disabled in this case). If IRST is activated, you should see an Intel RAID controller device in Device Manager under "Storage controllers". You can move the drives over and check. If IRST is working, it should recognize the array without any further configuration and let you get at the files. (IRST uses metadata stored on the drives themselves to identify the array.) If the drives show up as unrecognized, as long as you don't try to format them or anything, you can just move them back to the laptop and the array will still be intact. If it doesn't work out, you can get a 2TB desktop hard drive for like $30 and use that as a temporary holding space for the files.

What is the RAID setup that you are using? Intel Rapid Storage, or ...? Does your desktop also support it? You "should" be able to move a RAID array to a different system as long as it supports the same RAID technology.

You need support from both the router and the client (laptop / phone / whatever) to take advantage of a new version of Wi-Fi. Some laptops have swappable Wi-Fi cards so you can upgrade them, but that is increasingly uncommon.

That's weird. If I click on one of these apps to open it, it pops up in less than a second. Even Photos, where I have many thousands of pictures loaded in. I can count on one hand the number of times that I've seen the "beach ball" cursor in the last two months. I wonder if there is something with how they have the demo units configured. ———————————————————————————— With the recent release of CrossOver 23, I picked up a license and started playing around with it. I had no trouble installing the Windows version of Steam and downloading a few games. The games that I tried work fine, but I picked "simple" ones on purpose (example: Sonic Mania)... More complicated games will require CXPatcher and/or GPTK to work and I am still planning to wait for Sonoma to release before messing around with those. Even though CrossOver now has limited support for DirectX 12, from what I am reading from other people online, GPTK's support is much better (more smooth framerate / less stuttering reported in games like Diablo IV). Otherwise, I'm reasonably satisfied with the setup that I have going on and still slowly moving over data & workflows. I recently moved over my Lightroom Classic photo catalog without any difficulty, just had to help it "find" some top-level folders. I've done some development in Visual Studio, and while it is a bit "different" than the Windows version, I haven't run into any real issues. One "pain point" is that both of my ancient printers are no longer supported. I have a Samsung B&W laser that flat out won't work with macOS (or Windows on ARM), and a Canon multifunction which I can use for printing but not scanning. I scan documents frequently, so I've been doing that from Windows. The blame falls on Samsung and Canon for not keeping up support the operating systems have evolved but these printers are both over 10 years old so I wouldn't necessarily expect support at this point. They'll have to be replaced eventually. (The Canon scanner does work with VueScan on macOS, but I have found its OCR capabilities to be lacking.)

LTSC gets updates every 3 years and is supported for 5 or 10 years (depending on which edition you get). Regular Enterprise now gets update every 12 months and is supported for 36 months. Regular Enterprise will "force" you to keep upgrading, but upgrades come at no cost. LTSC will never give you a nag but you will have to pay for upgrades. You can "upgrade" from LTSC to regular at any time. Going the other way may or may not be possible, depending on the status of the current LTSC branch. (There is no way to upgrade from Windows 11 Enterprise to an LTSC version at this time, for example. This will presumably change when a Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC release drops in late 2024.) Another "feature" is that LTSC Windows excludes anything that "might change" outside of the release cycle. So, basically, if you do a fresh LTSC install then most of the crappy bundled apps are missing. You are getting a much more streamlined Windows install. The idea is that there will be nothing pushed down on you other than bugfix/security updates. You can expect your OS to remain unchanged, functionality-wise, until you explicitly choose to upgrade to a newer version. I discuss the various benefits and differences regarding LTSC in the top post in this thread. Telemetry is not disabled for either unless you go out of your way to disable it.

If you are mapping gamepad inputs to keyboard keys, then yes, I doubt that the analog sticks will feel right. (D-pad or regular button inputs would be fine, I'd think.) I tried playing the original Half Life (first-person shooter), which does not have proper (modern) gamepad support, with analog sticks mapped to mouse inputs and that even was wonky, I ended up going for traditional keyboard+mouse controls for that one.

SATA tops out at 600 MB/s. Modern SATA SSDs will run very close to that speed for both read and write. That is assuming SATA 3. Assuming you are talking about M18x (2011) and not m18 (2023), systems of that era might not support SATA 3 in all slots. IIRC, the chipset only supports two SATA 3 ports so you might see SATA 2 in the optical drive bay or mSATA slot. SATA 2 slots will deliver half of the speed of SATA 3 (300 MB/s max).

I game almost exclusively with a gamepad on my PC and it has never seemed "off" to me. I used an Xbox One controller for a long time and have more recently switched to a Sony DualSense controller. Xbox controllers (Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S) are probably best to use on Windows if you basically just want buttons and sticks, and don't care about the other features of something like the DualSense. Xbox controllers support XInput without any extra software needed and will work with basically all Windows games released since 2008-ish with no extra configuration required. Depending on the game, I may use the d-pad instead the analog stick. (I only use the analog sticks over the d-pad when they are actually needed for 3D movement.) I will also note that I never had a good experience using an Xbox controller with Bluetooth. It frequently had odd behavior. I always plugged it in via USB. (I haven't had any issues with DualSense + Bluetooth.) I'm not sure what you mean by "emulate key to pad". Pretty much all modern games have built-in gamepad support (where it makes sense). What are you trying to play?

NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools https://www.techpowerup.com/312631/nvidia-bios-signature-lock-broken-vbios-modding-and-crossflash-enabled-by-groundbreaking-new-tools vBIOS mods have been difficult/impossible for the past few generations since NVIDIA has started implementing checks and digital signature verification into their products to prevent their GPUs from working with "unauthorized" vBIOS images. TechPowerUp is reporting that their forum members have come up with two different new tools that can work around these protections and provide what vBIOS modders want (tweaking voltages, fan curves, overclocking limts, etc.). There are details about each tool posted on the TechPowerUp forums as well. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/omg-vflash-fully-patched-nvflash-from-x-to-ada-lovelace-v5-780.312601/ https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/nvflashk-flash-any-bios-to-nvidia-gpus-safe-board-id-bypass-up-to-4xxx-series.312608/

There is currently a bug with the privilege check if you have UAC disabled on your system. The program needs to be run with UAC enabled.

There is no downgrade without a clean install. LTSC 2021 is not a "service pack". It is a whole new version of Windows (despite sharing a name with its predecessor). I have nothing to offer here other than what I have already said. I know it is not the "popular opinion" but I routinely move Windows installs around in such a way and do not have any performance issues after cleanup.

My comments in another thread about "upgrading" to Enterprise from Pro only apply to upgrading to "regular" Enterprise, not "LTSC" Enterprise. Upgrading to LTSC Enterprise requires a separate procedure which I have described in the top post of this thread. You will need a Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC product key for the specific version that you are upgrading to, and the install media as well. If you are upgrading from a current version of Windows 10, LTSC 2021 will be the only choice. You can't "upgrade" to an older version of Windows.

There is no reason for performance loss as long as you get the driver situation cleaned up properly. This might also mean uninstalling or disabling services associated with drivers on your old system that are no longer needed. To turn Windows 10 Pro into Enterprise, all you have to do is visit Settings and pick the option for "change the product key", and put in a product key for Windows 10 Enterprise.

My experience has been you can just take a drive out of one computer and put it into another computer, boot it up, and it will work fine. Windows will notice that it’s in a new computer and do a device discovery on the first boot. You’ll have to figure out the drivers and stuff (as you would with a new Windows install), and reactivate Windows, but that’s all there is to it. I’ve actually done this several times. If these are Dell systems, go to BIOS setup on the target system and make sure that it is NOT set in RAID mode for the disk controller. This method will fail if it is, because the system being moved over will not have the proper RAID driver installed. You'd get a BSOD with "inaccessible boot device". If you don’t want to “move” the drive, you can use cloning software to clone all of the data to a new drive and put that in the target system; effectively the same thing. This method did not work prior to Windows 8. On old systems you’d just get a BSOD if you did this without special preparation.

Quadro 2000M stock clock is, what, 550 MHz? It is a GF106 GPU chip from NVIDIA. That same chip is clocked at around 800 MHz in desktop GeForce cards. I think that it is safe to overclock with +200 MHz with no worries, as long as the thermals are staying under control. You might be able to go even higher with a modded vBIOS. These older Fermi/Kepler laptop GPUs had a lot of overclocking potential. NVIDIA was known to artificially limit the GPU speed back then.