Dell Media Direct 2.0 ... Running on 9300/XPS M170 - Page 21

Well, did you remember to copy taskmgr.exe across to the Media Direct partition during the install? Things should be fairly easy if you did. Otherwise it is a little more complicated. Either way, I can give you instructions on how to fix it.
Don't reinstall using your OS CD. It is much easier than that. You will need to run the ptedit32 utility in the Partition Magic folder (or else the ptedit utility from DOS if you did not copy taskmgr across). Then let me know which partitions occopy which slots. In other words, there are four slots. The D7 partition is your Media Direct partition. Your 07 partition is your Windows XP partition. These are the only two that are interesting. I can tell you how to fix it once I know their ordering.

I hope you have a floppy drive, if you do... there are some easy solutions, google it, there are boot floppies, I have used em, there GREAT. what it basically says is your boot.ini file is screwed up...... So the floppy will load its own boot.ini file :P

-first smart comment ive ever said-

-+1 rep for me :P-

Ok, i did copy task manager into DMD (how i installed my vid + audio drivers), but i sort of lost you with after that

so i opened the power quest partition table editior, and im seeing a bunch of diff. columns *pic*

I hope that helps some cause i really need some help
and i do have a USB floppy drive and a few floppies.

will anyone help?

bump, please someone help!

I live in the UK, so I'm afraid you can't expect an immediate answer from me...I was probably asleep during your last posts. Anyway, it is easy to fix. I'm not quite sure why you have 4 partitions shown by ptedit (did you forget to delete k?), as Partition Magic only showed 3. However, you should be able to boot into XP again as follows:
insert media direct install CD (whilst booted into Media Direct).
Press ctrl-alt-del, go to file/run and type cmd. Press enter.
Type the letter of you cd drive in Media Direct followed by a : and press enter
Type cd dellkit and press enter
Type rmbr DELL 3 4 and press enter

There is another possible cause, as D620 mentioned. To fix this, use taskmgr in media direct to open windows\notepad.exe on your Windows XP partition and then use notepad to open boot.ini (but make sure that it is the boot.ini on your Windows XP partition). You may need to show all hidden files and uncheck the read-only status of this file. Ensure that the Windows XP partition is listed as partition(3) in boot.ini.
Reboot and you should be able to start up in Windows XP.
As you did copy taskmgr, it shouldn't be necessary to use any floppies.

I have an E1705, but I believe this thread is applicable to me.

After cleaning off my MCE install, and also installing SuSE Linux, I had to reinstall MediaDirect. I was able to successfully install it, and even get it to show up in my Grub menu, but when I attempt to load MediaDirect it stalls at the "First Time" screen and ends up showing an Administrator logon button (like you'd get booting into a standard Windows startup with multiple users), and a little grey box around where the Shutdown button would be in (which in fact brings up the sleep, turn off, restart menu).

Any ideas how I can get past this and actually get MediaCenter to startup?

[Edited for wrong wording]

Although Tentonine already suggested what to do before, I just want to know if any one was able to make Media Direct work (or an alternative setup like what Tentonine suggested to me before). If so, I'd appreciate it if someone could provide a step-by-step process of how it was done. This is for notebooks like mine, an Inspiron 9200, or to any other model before the 9300 as our models were not originally made for Media Direct.
Thanks in advance...

perfect0, I can tell you what you need to know. However, I will first need to know whether you have ever installed Windows XP by yourself.

Yes, I am quite adept with computers; I have installed Windows Xp several times in the past. Thanks...

In that case, there is nothing particularly complicated to do:
Just create a new empty partition, install Windows XP to it, don't install any network drivers, install Media Experience and configure it to go into hibernate when you exit Media Experience. Remove all the icons from the desktop. You might also like to copy the Media Direct wallpaper from the Media Direct CD image (I'm not quite sure where it is on the CD, but search the XPEI1 and XPEI2 files for images). Also configure Media Experience to load on startup. That will give you a basic working Media Direct install that can be chosen from a menu at startup (you can customise the name on the startup menu in the C:\boot.ini hidden file).
Although this will work, it would be better to have a cut-down install. To do that, prepapre a new Windows XP CD by removing everything you know for sure you wouldn't need using nlite from http://www.nliteos.com - there should be a guide on the site (that means remove all network support, RAID support, SCSI support, printer support, etc). Also add your drivers to the install so you won't need to load them later. Basically, just remove everything.
When you have finished, you can add the maxmemory switch to boot.ini (see earlier in this thread).
You can also check for any running Windows services and close them.
If there is anything that seems unclear (or if there is a component you are not sure about removing), please ask and I will explain.

Where may I download Media Experience?

Post # 392 in this thread.

Thanks, WackyT. I am also trying to look for the maxmemory switch post. By the way, WackyT, the audio driver removal/reinstall didn't work for me; I still have to reinstall the audio driver each time after I turn on my laptop in order to get my WMP to work.

Which version of WMP are you running?

At the moment, 11 although I've tried it with 10 and get the same issue

Try uninstalling WMP and the SigmaTel drivers, run a registry cleaner; I like TweakNow's; reinstall the SigmaTel drivers and WMP.

Thanks, WackyT, I'll try it out.

From my lil experience:
installing Audigy 2 ZS was a bit confusing. here are latest drivers:
http://files.creative.com/manualdn/D..._2_09_0016.exe
run that and then go check C:\WINDOWS\Temp\CRF000\Drivers\ and look for setup.exe
run that and if it ask you for other random files for ex: wdmaud.drv = D:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder where you (hopefully) already have your ZS card installed. here was another file I had to locate from my normal boot partition / xp installation: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\drmk.sys

I used Hiren's BootCD 8.5 - and Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0.554 to easily increase the size of the DM2 partition. I booted up DM2 fine and installed BF2. Then I tryed to patch it but I needed MORE space. So I went back to Acronis to increase size and it looked like it went through but I booted up DM2 and saw no size change. Went back to Acronis and saw that there is a File system error with the partition. So I deleted that partition and am starting all over.
I just tryed to install DM2 again but it didn't work so I deleted the NTFS partitioned spaces for my DM2 partition to no avail. Went into Partition Magic and saw there was an extended partition that was set to Active so I deleted that and set my XP partition to Active. WINDOWS DOES NOT BOOT ANYMORE. I HAVE NO IDEA WTF I'M DOING NOW. ;( I need help please...
*FIXED*! - used Winternals Disk Commander 1.1 to rewrite MBR and now Windows boots!