Dell Media Direct 2.0 ... Running on 9300/XPS M170 - Page 6

Any suggestions from my post above!!!

Any assistance would be appreciated.

i had a similar problem, the way i solved it was starting from step 1. first remove any media direct 1.0 stuff u may or may not have installed. then i would use partition magic to delete the recovery partition dell includes (you really dont need it and it just wastes space, ur much better of using a restore disk) and then i would resize C to reclaim ALL of the allocated space to the C drive (note i had to resize twice to claim everything back) i would then format the new drive media direct created and reclaim that space. make sure ur c drive has everything. then resize it again 1.5 gb smaller. u may have to restart ur computer serveral times. then install media direct, it should install smoothly and now it should boot up and it shouldnt hang at the media direct screen. i think the problem was becuase of the multiple unallocated space as well as the dell drive but i am not sure. maybe a clean install just fixed it but i reccommend doing the above steps.

edit: forgot to mention i dunno what the dellutility is there for but i did NOT delete it just in case.

Got to be a way!

I understand what you are saying Big but I would like to try this without getting rid of the restore partition. There has to be a way (I think, I hope).

hmm then do the same thing except dont delete the recovery partition. im sure it will still work but make sure u reclaim all ur space. thats what worked for me. then i just had one 1.5 gb unallocated space which media direct installed too. i was also having trouble with erd but now there is a method to get to explorer w/o it so good luck

Anyone figure out how to run MD2.0 while the lid is closed? I want to play mp3's while the lid is closed to conserve battery life. I tried running Powercfg.cpl while in the MD2.0 partition in explorer.exe mode. Changed When lid is closed to do nothing. But when I actually running MD2.0 when lid is closed it still went into hibernate. Whatcha guys think?

I have just found how to specify which partition you want to use with Media Direct. There is a program called rmbr.exe in the dellkit folder on the Media Direct CD. If you run it with the /? switch from a command prompt, it tells you how to use it.

Again your the man!!! Tentonine

Now figure out how to play mp3's in MD while the lid is closed.

OK, I took a look and I still don't get it. So how would I use that to install M.D. on free space on my extended partition?

Ok you have to have 1.4GB of unpartioned space in order to install MD20. I use Partition Magic 8.0 to resize my C: Drive so that there is 1.4GB left over. After the Install I resize my c: Drive again to get the unpartioned space back. I do not know exactly how much MD20 is needed to install since 1 mB is 1024 kb's. But after the install MD partition in disk management says 1.39GB.

I don't think you can use it to install Media Direct on an extended partition (unless maybe Media Direct was the first logical partition within the extended partition, but I am not too sure about that).
The usefulness of that program is if you install Media Direct to a primary partition and the Media Direct installer does not properly detect which one it is (I think this happens if you have extended partitions too...at least, that caused a problem for me).

Media Direct 2.0 Must be installed on unpartitioned (RAW) space. You must have at least 1.45GB free unpartitioned space. I went with 2GB just to be sure. Then when I was done I combined the leftover back in to my primary partition.

An updated guide on how to install (in unpartitioned space) at any point in your drive (this assumes that you have room for a new primary partition and are not at the maximum of 4 already):

1. Create a new primary NTFS partition of 1.3Gb anywhere on the drive.
2. Use Winrar (http://www.rarlab.com) to extract the contents of the XPEI1.exe and XPEI2.exe files on the Media Direct CD to this partition.
3. Boot from a Windows XP CD. Go to recovery console when asked. If it asks which Windows XP installation you want to log onto, choose the one corresponding to your Media Direct Installation (if you only have one normal XP installation and one Media Direct installation, the letter you need to choose will be E).
4. Type fixboot e: and press enter (assuming that e: is your media direct installation. Windows XP recovery console assigns letters to drives from c upwards depending upon on the order of the partitions from the front of the drive (but d is reserved for the CD drive)).
5. Type exit and press enter.
6. When the computer restarts, open a command window in the dellkit folder of the Media Direct CD and type

rmbr DELL 2 3

(where 2 is the number of the partition corresponding to your Windows XP installation and 3 is the number of the partition corresponding to your Media Direct installation). You can find the correct partition order using ptedit (either ptedit32 in the Partition Magic folder or the free DOS version of ptedit, which you can find with a Google search).

7. Copy taskmgr.exe from your C:\Windows\System32 folder to your E:\Windows\System32 folder (replace E with whatever letter the Media Direct partition is using).

8. Load ptedit (in the Partition Magic folder) and set the type of the Media Direct partition to D7 (alternatively, you can download a free DOS version of ptedit from ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...ies/ptedit.zip).
9. That's it. It should work.

I don't know what you can do if you have run out of primary partitions. Maybe if you create a new logical partition at the front of your extended partition, then it will boot to that. Might be worth a try (and use rmbr to set the number of the Media Direct partition to the position of the extended partition relative to the other primary partitions).

Does anyone else think this thread ought to be a sticky?

I got it to work..I'm sooo happy you can do this. Some things I've learned:

1. you adjust the memory requirement to 512 and it will let you hibernate as long as you don't install drivers (I changed it to 512 then found out I had 1.5mb space free). I tried adjusting the partition size, PM7 wouldn't let me.

2 I tried to install Xtreme-g MobileForce 84.22 v2.30 and I got BSOD's even when trying to go into safe mode for that partition. Needless to say, I am going to reinstall it

3. It allowed me to Reinstall over the old version. I didn't have to delete the partition, so perhaps this means yon can have it install on an existing partition somehow.

4. When I installed the first time, I couldn't expand the partition (after already going into media direct), but the second time, before going into mediadirect for the first time, PM7 was able to resize the partition to about 2gb (all my available space, except about a 8mb buffer inbetween). This allowed me to use 512mb of ram in mediaDirect. I am thinking I am going to readjust my partitions so that I can use 2gb of memory.

I hope this helps some of you.

Ok i figured it out finally to fix when the lid is closed that it doesn't go into hibernate. I had to reinstall MD using the Task Manager way and let me tell you It's soooo much easyier installing that way. Just the reboot after the driver installation Run explorer by starting the new task in task manager and running powersch.cpl in windows/system32 directory.

I don't know why it would work for me using the ERD Method. But now it works and now i'm happy

So if you guys want to play Mp3's with the lid closed using MD2.0 than this is the method.

Well....Just an update. I successfully have it so I can have up to 2gb of ram while in MediaDirect (4gb partition giving me an extra 500mb just in case). I also have installed the drivers for my nic card, so I have internet as long as I'm using my ethernet port. I don't know how to set it up for wireless. I installed my drivers only. It wouldn't let me install the intel software since the embedded version doesn't hae the MSI instaler (I think that's what it said).

I'll post some images when I get back into my regular windows

I should mention that there is one big problem with enabling the network controller: Media Direct is designed to be a stand alone program with minimal background services so that it never needs to be rebooted. If you have a network connection, then you will need to regularly load security updates and run a firewall, as with any other Windows installation.

About the RAM...did you notice any performance difference after changing it to 2Gb? Doesn't it load up more quickly with 256Mb? After disabling a few unneeded background services (saved 20-30Mb), I have not seen my RAM usage jump much beyond 150Mb.

One other thing...if you want to resize the partition at any time, make sure that you shut down Media Direct from task manager instead of going into hibernate (Partition Magic doesn't work if it detects that the computer was in hibernate). Change the partition type to 07 using Partition Magic's ptedit program. Now you can resize or move the partition using Partition Magic. Just change it back to D7 again afterward.

As a final thought...maybe the poor performance that some people have experienced is due to power saving mode rather than RAM? I am pretty sure that the CPU and GPU are both running in power saving mode in Media Direct. As I mentioned above, I had low RAM usage, but still had occasionally slow menus and things.

I can't say if I noticed any improvement in the performance since I never really ran it with only the 256. Currently I am only using 1gb (I don't hae 2gb yet). but I think that 512 is a nice sweet spot. It seemed to run well. Some times when running it with 256 it seemed jerky, but that may just be DirectMedia.

as far as the networking. You're probably right about the services, but Windows firewall is on anyways, and I can't access services.msc to disable any services that are unneeded (if you know how, please let me know). Not to mention I have a PC here that I keep all my mp3's on so it would be nice to be able to access it. But I guess that's not possible since it doesn't show any network drives or folders in Media direct, just explorer.

To see which services are currently running, you can use autoruns from http://www.sysinternals.com.
Just uncheck the box to stop a service from loading (note: for the settings to take effect, remember to restart Media Direct rather than just going into hibernate).
About network drives. I think that, if you map a network drive, it will probably show up in Media Experience. If it doesn't, let me know and I will advise on a registry setting that might fix that.
If you do decide to do this, I suggest that you use a firewall to block all ports except for those needed for file sharing across your network - I think internet access is a bad idea because it is almost certain that you will eventually get viruses/spyware, etc without any Windows updates (any Windows Updates almost defeat the point of this partition - if you have to worry about updating it and restarting it, there is no time saved from not loading up your normal Windows XP installation).

So according to the modified instructions at the beginning, we don't need the ERD thing any more?