Hi Erik - thank you for the information about the BIOS version. My MB1 has version F5. Can I upgrade this to F6? If so:

(a) will by existing CPU run with F6?
(b) how do I carry out the upgrade from F5 to F6?

best regards - Peter

Hello Peter

You can upgrade to F6 from F5. It is a risky procedure and not something I recommend unless you really want to do it. I can give instructions but I take no responsibility if something goes wrong.

If you did it, yes the existing CPU will work fine. But you can upgrade to the i7-6700t without upgrading the BIOS. F6 and later allows for the i7-7700t to be installed but there is little performance benefit over the 6700t which can be installed without any risk.

You state that the 6700t is out of stock everywhere but at least 2 MB1 owners have recently upgraded with recent purchases. One such source is www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-i7-6700T-2-8GHz-Quad-Core-8-Thread-LGA-1151-CPU-Processor/263113626329?hash=item3d42cb52d9:g:xbEAAOSwH1NZfKG7:rk:1:pf:0

If you really want BIOS update instructions, please contact me by direct email. I would not want to publish details in the Forum.

Erik.

Hi Erik - thank you very much for your guidance and warning. I have purchased an i7-6700t via the link you gave me, so I do not need to upgrade the BIOS - best regards - Peter

Hi Erik - the supplier in China has just told me that he has no stock of the i7-6700T. Do you know of another source? Just in case, I am sending you an email asking for the F5-F6 BIOS upgrade instructions, as I fear this route might be my best option - best regards - Peter

Hello Peter - there is this one: www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-35W-CPU-SR2L3-i7-6700T-6th-Gen-Skylake-2-8-3-6GHz-1151-LGA1151-Socket-H4/262222928148?epid=1853389304&hash=item3d0db45914:g:l1UAAOSwwPhWiaJ2:rk:6:pf:0

I will email the instructions anyway.

Erik.

This link should enable you to find some available CPU's.

search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=D211US714G0&p=SR2L3+Intel+Core+i7-6700T

SR2L3 is the key to the search as noted in my guide.

I don't recommend upgrading the BIOS or trying other CPU's to be honest, Your only going to gain so much and getting the extra memory with it will help. Last thing you want is an unstable radio that randomly reboots or blue screens.

Hope this helps!

73 de NI0Z

Hi Erik - I purchased a Samsung 500GB SSD of the type you suggest in your Addendum. I can't get the Bios to recognise that the drive is inserted. Under "Advanced>Sata Configuration" it says "Serial ATA Port 3 / M.2 Empty". Under "NVMe Configuration" I get "Bus:1 Dev:0 Func:0 Samsung SSD 970 EVO 500GB". Can you suggest what I should do? Have I bought an incompatible type? - best regards - Peter

Hello Peter,

The BIOS report is normal. The Port 3 / M.2 is empty because it is not a SATA drive. The NVMe configuration is correct. Therefore BIOS has recognised the Drive and it most certainly is not an incompatible type.

So, it therefore follows that it should be recognised by WIndows. If you are to install Windows 10 on it, the Windows setup will deal with it as part of the process. If you already have Windows on it, there should not be a problem booting to it.

Since I do not know what, if anything, is installed on the new Drive, I cannot say more at this point. If you have problems, let me know.

Erik.

Hi Erik - that is reassuring! I made a memory image on an external USB hard drive last night, together with a recovery drive on a 16 GB usb memory stick. The restore from the image appeared to proceed normally, but the new ssd would not boot up into Windows on restart. I also tried restoring Windows 10 from the recovery drive, but that failed after reaching about 12%.I have now tried a second time, but the result is the same. The error report says "inaccessible boot drive". Faulty drive do you think? - best regards - Peter

Hello Peter - my initial reaction would be to not blame the Drive just yet. The image and recovery procedures seem prone to failures. It I were you, i would bite the bullet and download the latest version of Windows 10 to a clean, formatted USB Stick. See 'Create Windows 10 Installation Media' at www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

The upside of this is that once you have the Windows 10 installation media done, you merely select that Drive when booting the MB1 (I think F12 is the necessary key), and Windows will deal with the new Samsung, assuming that is not a faulty drive.

The downside is that you have to reinstall all software from your backup which is a time consuming pain - but this is what I did here.

You will have a Microsoft Digital Licence stored on their server which obviates the need to acquire another Windows 10 Key (serial number). I recorded my Serial beforehand but found that I did not need it because Activation occurred automatically.

Erik.

Hi Erik - thank you for your patient help. I did as you suggested, but now I find that Windows only sees half the drive, leaving 250 GB unreachable. Should I start again by re-formatting.re-partitioning the new drive before loading Windows 10? I am guessing that all this trouble came about because I first tried restoring from an image file - best regards - Peter

Hello Peter - oh heck.

You need to reformat and remove existing partiton(s). I am surprised that Windows installer did not offer up that option but, then again, trying to place that image on it has caused trouble as you say and it now needs a helping hand. After removing the partition and reformatting, you need only try the Windows installer again because it should partition for you with the correct allocation for main and recovery.

Erik.

Hi Erik - I have done as you suggested, and all is now well with Windows 10. Thank you. I guess the moral of this story is that I should not have attempted to restore a disk image of a smaller ssd into a new larger ssd. I installed a new version of the Windows 10 Home edition - was that the correct thing to do? The reason I ask is that I can't get the MB1 software to connect to the MB1 hardware, and yet all the settings seem to be as you show them in your addendum. When I click on the power button I get the message "Can't connect to the MB1". Can you suggest where I am at fault? - best regards - Peter

Peter,

Have you connected the internal USB-LAN adapter? Look in the manual MB1 manual 5.14.4

73
Hans Christian

Thanks you Hans Christian. That has done the job. With 16GB memory and 500GB Samsung EVO ssd, my PassMark score has gone up from 2485 to 3061. Rumour has it that a, i7-6700T will appear next week, so I am looking forward to putting that in to complete the upgrade - best regards - Peter