Dell Media Direct 2.0 ... Running on 9300/XPS M170 - Page 8

If it doesn't work, deleting the data drive won't be necessary...you just need to resize it to make sure that you have a spare 1.3Gb (unpartitioned space) after your C drive as well as a spare 1.3Gb at the end of the drive.

Thanks guys for the replies. But I am still trying to figure it out. As tentonie suggested, I made another empty partition right after the C. So now my hard drive has 1st - C with XP pro, 2nd - unpartitioned 1.5GB, 3rd - D, 4th - unpartitioned 2GB. When I pressed the Enter on the blue screen, a progress bar showed up went as far as 10% and then the progress bar disappeared and stopped there. I am sorry but would you guys help again what I should do now, please. I greatly appreciate your helpful comments. Thanks a lot. Having 2GB instead of 1.3GB could be a problem?
If i could, I would like to get around having to delete the Data drive section (which is now the third partition).

I cant help you with your problem unfortunatly.

But I really wanted to point out that the way you went about asking for help is top notch man! Too many people forget the "please" and "Thank you's" and not to mention not giving any type of info that is needed to troubleshoot something.

Anyway, sorry for the off topic rant, just wanted to point that out!

wrt the size of the unallocated space... the problems I've seen tend to arise from not enough space.

And just to confirm some things... as the terminology is getting a little turned-around....

You said "... I made another empty partition right after the C" Do you really mean you made a partition or do you mean there is unallocated space after 'C'???

Sounds like you've got it right with just two 'Partitions' and two areas of unallocated space, but just want to check....

Mark

thanks Mark...
So currently my hard drive is C-Windows XP Pro, followed by 1.5GB unallocated space, followed by D-Data Section, followed by 2GB unallocated space. So yes that's right that I have two partitions and unallocated space immediately after each of these partitions.
.... I don't know what to do. I think the size of these unallocated space should be enough according to what people said in this thread.
Thanks

I got this installed but for some reason I cannot exit out of MD 2.0 by pressing the exit button.
I'm having to press the power button to shut down the laptop.

Have I missed something, I followed pugsly's new instructions.

I agree.... it should be 'ready to go'...

Guess some more info may be useful....

Try downloading ptedit. This utility runs from DOS and shows what's in your Partition Table. Would only need to know which rows have values and for those that do, what are the values for 'Type' and 'Boot'

Also look in Windows at Disk Management. Is there a 'no-name, no-drive letter' listed in the 'Volume' column???

I really don't have anything concrete to offer at this point as your symptoms are very much like those experienced by folks not setting aside enough unallocated space for the MediaDirect partition to slide into....

Sorry....

Mark

I see that my MD installation does not have the hibernate function enabled

any idea why ??

hanjlee, are you sure it is unpartitioned space and not empty space within an extended partition?
If you are, follow my instructions for creating the partition manually (a couple of pages back).

sid21177, are you sure that you correctly installed your video and audio drivers? Did you shut down media direct properly through the shut down menu in task manager after doing so?
Do you have an NVIDIA card or an ATI card?

Hello All,

I tried to get my phone connected in MD2 over Bluetooth. I´m not able to start the Bluetooth client on the PC......

Any Ideas?

Thanks to several people here, I finally installed MD2 on my 9300. Thanks!!
I found something weird, though. On XP's disk management info, it shows only three partitions, C-XP pro, D-Data (extended), and another primary partition for MD2 (having no drive letter - weird. I don't even know this is normal). And it said there is 740MB free space in this MD2 partition (I initially made this 2GB). So actually it is using about 1.3GB.

But if I looked at this using Partition Magic, it said the 2GB of the MD2 parition is "full" with no free space and I can't get back any free space. What is more weird is there is another small unallocated space right after this MD2 paritition, having about 7MB.

There must be something wrong... right?
I just followed tentonine's instruction and I am very glad to finally install it. But I can't explain what happened and don't know how to regain the free space.

And I almost lost all the data in drive D. Somehow during the installation it has turned to an unallocated free space.... with some unknown reason. Fortunately I could recover that with the partition magic. I might have to stop playing with this before losing all my data....

Anyway thanks a lot guys. Please tell me how you diagnose my current system....

I had 470 mb free space left on the drive after installing my drivers.
Let me try checking the /maxmem parameter

thx

I have a 6800U
I did install the drivers.

When I clicked the shutdown menu I saw that hibernate was disabled.

Maybe i'll try again. Thx

I think you're good to go... I don't see any major problems. I'd not mess with trying to get the minimal 'extra free space' you put in the MediaDirect partition. It see where it could probably be done with a combination of DOS ptedit and Partition Magic, but I wouldn't bother myself.

hth

Mark

Hibernate is always disabled the first time you start Media Direct. Maybe the second time too. This is because it does not work until the drivers are properly installed (only happens after a reboot). hanjlee, the 7mb free is normal. It is also normal the Partition Magic doesn't recognise it (Partition Magic doesn't know what a Media Direct partition is). It is also normal for it not to have a drive letter - the partition is set to a type not recognised by XP, so it does not know how to access it. However, it can still detect that it is formatted with NTFS (hence how it is able to tell you how much free space there is).
If you want to regain the free space, shut down Media Direct (not hibernate, as partition magic won't work if it detects that it is only hibernating). Start up Windows XP. Open ptedit32 (in the partition magic folder), type 07 in the partition type box for your Media Direct partition and save changes (note, you need to have shut down Media Direct before doing this, rather than putting it into hibernate, or partition magic will not work). You can then resize it using Partition Magic. You will probably find that it goes back to type D7 again after restarting the computer. Note that you should really leave at least the standard 1.3Gb (unless you have deleted anything), as some of this space needs to be used for temporary files (such as photo thumbnails) when Media Direct is working.

As for Bluetooth, can you describe what you tried to do to get it working? Which driver did you install?

For anyone who really knows what they are doing and needs more space,
check through the registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
This will give you the uninstall commands for any software that you don't need (like Intel graphics drivers, ATI drivers, 9400 card readers drivers, etc). Copy these commands and run them from task manager. After doing this, there are some left over Intel graphics driver files (mostly starting with the letters igrphx - or something like that) in the windows\system32 folder.
Finally, look through the hidden Installshield folder in program files - lots of setup files are stored there. When you have uninstalled any unneeded drivers, you can delete the setup files from there for a few more Mb.

Nice Job Pugsly...
Thx for the info

-Doc X

Thanks works amazingly !

Kudos Pugsly

Great guide, Thanks !

hhmm im planning to reformat my xps m170...so for my media buttons to work i just simply install dell media direct (not 2.0) without having to create a bootdisks and stuff?