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Dell Media Direct 2.0 ... Running on 9300/XPS M170 - Page 9

post #161 of 444
4/28/06 at 9:56am
So after installing this, when I press a play button on my 9300, the MediaDirect splash screen shows, then it gives me the old
"The file [systemroot]\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt" and it stops booting. I can boot into my normal MCE install fine, but can't boot into MediaDirect. Any ideas? I don't want to screw up my existing install's boot.ini.
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post #162 of 444
4/28/06 at 10:45am
911medic, did you try following my instructions for using rmbr (maybe a couple of pages back) to fix a partition that does not boot properly? What is your partition layout?
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post #163 of 444
4/28/06 at 11:05am
Here's how Partition Magic shows my HDD:



You can see I created 2 unallocated, unformatted areas, one after the OS partition, and one after the Data/Programs partition. MD2 installed to the second area, leaving a little unformatted space (as well as the usual 7.8MB that's always there). It showed as drive "X" while installing, but is now invisible to Windows, as expected.

I read your instructions earlier, but it looked like they were simply alternate install instructions, and since they seemed more complex, I opted to try the way the OP described in post 1.
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post #164 of 444
4/28/06 at 12:56pm
My instructions were aimed at those with multiple partition setups (particularly including extended partitions), as the Dell Media Direct installer does not account for these correctly. Open a command prompt window in the dellkit folder of the Media Direct CD and type:

rmbr DELL 1 2

I think that should do it.
If not, try

rmbr DELL 1 3

Finally, if that doesn't do it, follow my earlier instructions to install Media Direct on a partition between your C and D drives.
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post #165 of 444
4/28/06 at 1:16pm
Thanks for replying & trying to help me out. Pardon my ignorance, but could you explain how to do this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tentonine
Open a command prompt window in the dellkit folder of the Media Direct CD
I know how to open a command prompt in general, but opening it in that particular folder I don't understand. So, within my normal Windows MCE environment, I simply explore the MediaDirect CD image on the CD, and run the cmd prompt how?

Thanks again...
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post #166 of 444
4/28/06 at 1:22pm
To open a command prompt on the CD, type

cd e:\dellkit

in the command prompt window (assuming that e is the drive letter for your CD drive).
If the numbers I supplied don't work, can you post a screenshot from ptedit32 (which you can find in the Partition Magic install folder). I just read a post in another thread that says that the partition order in the partition table (shown in ptedit32) is what is important rather than the view in Partition Magic.
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post #167 of 444
4/28/06 at 1:31pm
Here's the PTEdit screenshot:



Will try the cmd prompt and report back.
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post #168 of 444
4/28/06 at 2:37pm
OK, I open a command prompt by going to Start-->Run and typing "cmd". The prompt opens, and I type "cd e:\dellkit" (without quotes) and hit enter. The command prompt doesn't change; it still reads "C:\Documents and Settings\Tom>" which is what it opens with. Typing the rmbr commands and hitting enter causes it to display "'rmbr' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."
While it accepts the cd command (no error), it doesn't actually seem to change the directory.

EDIT: Typing "cd c:\" changes the prompt to simply read "C:\>". Typing cd e:\dellkit still doesn't change the prompt at all, and it still won't accept the rmbr command.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong here.
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post #169 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:03pm
Quote:
EDIT: Typing "cd c:\" changes the prompt to simply read "C:\>". Typing cd e:\dellkit still doesn't change the prompt at all, and it still won't accept the rmbr command.
At the command prompt try just typing e:

See if that changes the command prompt to E:\>

Mark
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post #170 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:08pm
Hey, that did it! I was able to change it to the e:\dellkit folder after that, and the rmbr command ran. Now, to shut down and try Media Direct again. Will report back soon...
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post #171 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:11pm
btw I'm not sure you have any 'mismatch' wrt the Partition Table and the boot code... And if there was, I'm not sure you'd be getting these symptoms...

Quote:
"The file [systemroot]\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt" and it stops booting. I can boot into my normal MCE install fine, but can't boot into MediaDirect. Any ideas? I don't want to screw up my existing install's boot.ini.
That does kind of point to a boot.ini 'issue'. And I'd suspect it is the one in the MediaDirect partition.... but that's just a guess....
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post #172 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:18pm
From your screenshot, it should be

rmbr DELL 1 3

If that doesn't do it, you can access the Media Direct boot.ini by changing your partition with type D7 to type 07 and saving changes (in ptedit). Then, in Partition Magic, you can right-click the Media Direct partition and choose assign a drive a letter (or words to that effect). When you try to do this, it will probably fail, but then, if you quit Partition Magic, you will be able to assign a drive letter through computer management (and then disk management) in the administrative tools section of control panel (note you have to try in Partition Magic first or Windows will not let you assign a drive letter - I think Partition Magic forces Windows to recognise that you have changed the partition type).

Then tell us what boot.ini says.
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post #173 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:34pm
OK, tried the rmbr, and "rmbr DELL 1 2" causes the MediaDirect to hang at the splash screen. It just sits there and does nothing. After about 5 minutes, I rebooted, and tried "rmbr DELL 1 3" and it's back to the "missing or corrupt hal.dll" message. Again, tried "1 2", and it again hangs on the splash screen.
So, now to access the boot.ini...
Will post back soon. Thanks for the help, guys.
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post #174 of 444
4/28/06 at 3:42pm
Here's the contents of the boot.ini from the MediaDirect partition, which I relabeled "X":
Quote:
Now, I need to make that partition hidden again before rebooting, right, since the second OS installation is now visible?
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post #175 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:23pm
Whenever I have tried this, the partition has been automatically hidden again after rebooting. I am surprised that it is not working. I doubt it will make any difference, but you could first of all resize your other partitions to use up the remaining space.
Try adding this line at the bottom of your normal boot.ini:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded" /fastdetect /KERNEL=NTOSBOOT.EXE /maxmem=256

Now see what happens if you select XP embedded from the menu when you restart the computer (this is just to ensure that the problem is something to do with the Media Direct installation itself rather than the boot code).
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post #176 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:31pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by 911medic
Here's how Partition Magic shows my HDD:



You can see I created 2 unallocated, unformatted areas, one after the OS partition, and one after the Data/Programs partition. MD2 installed to the second area, leaving a little unformatted space (as well as the usual 7.8MB that's always there). It showed as drive "X" while installing, but is now invisible to Windows, as expected.

I read your instructions earlier, but it looked like they were simply alternate install instructions, and since they seemed more complex, I opted to try the way the OP described in post 1.
Looking at your partition table, it looks like you have an extended partition for your D:\ drive. Your DMD2.0 partition is after that partition. All 3 of my partitions are primary partitions. Partition 1 = C:\ 20GB, Partition 2 = D:\70GB, Partition 3 = DMD2.0 Partition. I think it's getting confused with your extended partition that you have installed.
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post #177 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tentonine
Whenever I have tried this, the partition has been automatically hidden again after rebooting. I am surprised that it is not working. I doubt it will make any difference, but you could first of all resize your other partitions to use up the remaining space.
Try adding this line at the bottom of your normal boot.ini:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Embedded" /fastdetect /KERNEL=NTOSBOOT.EXE /maxmem=256

Now see what happens if you select XP embedded from the menu when you restart the computer (this is just to ensure that the problem is something to do with the Media Direct installation itself rather than the boot code).
Modifying my boot.ini and selecting the "Embedded" version at startup gives the same "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error.

And yes, the partition became hidden again and changed back to type D7 after the reboot. Thanks again for the help. I'm about ready to scrap it and start over.
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post #178 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:40pm
Hey guys. I'm a little late to the MediaDirect reinstall party. I downloaded MD20 from the link on the first page and burnt the image onto a CD. However, when I pop in my MD2 cd the loadup screen freezes and all I see is Dell MediaDirect. Nothing else happens. Is there another image, perhaps an updated one I can download. I can't find any on the forums. Thanks.
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post #179 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pugsly0014
Looking at your partition table, it looks like you have an extended partition for your D:\ drive. Your DMD2.0 partition is after that partition. All 3 of my partitions are primary partitions. Partition 1 = C:\ 20GB, Partition 2 = D:\70GB, Partition 3 = DMD2.0 Partition. I think it's getting confused with your extended partition that you have installed.
So can this be rectified without reformatting? It is an extended partition, but it's also shown as primary (not logical). However, it contains a logical partition (D). I'm not sure why/how I set it up that way.

When I select it in partition magic, there's no option to change it from extended.
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post #180 of 444
4/28/06 at 5:49pm
Speedyturtle, did you press enter? Have you tried my manual installation method a couple of pages ago?

911medic, you can convert a logical partition (a partition within an extended partition) to a primary partition by right-clicking it in Partition Magic and choosing convert. Then click the primary partition button on the right.

If that doesn't work, I think you can just swap around the entries for Media Direct and the extended partition in ptedit (provided you swap all the values along the rows), but I am not absolutely sure about that...MarkMcK seems to know a lot about that sort of thing, so I expect he can confirm whether that is OK or not.
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