Pls HELP! Dell MediaDirect Simple & Definite Answer Needed!!!!

did you try using search?

there are alot of threads on this and if you want to get it working i suggest reading up on it as it will be beneficial to you...but this thread may get you started....no guarantess

yea same, my notebook said i have dell emdia expereince 3.1

As of today 3.0/3.1 Is still not available to download anywhere so you will need a CD to be sent to you in order to get DME installed again.

Dell does not intially ship DME cds with systems. The $8 you paid was for the restore cd which you will require if you plan on using a different harddrive. Your warranty wont be voided however if you didnt buy the harddrive thru dell then they will not cover damages incurred on your new drive only the one they shipped to you.

First, you will need the MediaDirect 2.0 Reinstallation CD. Be sure it is correct for your system. I initially tried with DH371 and it did NOT work with my hardware/chipset. I found that RJ262 worked ok... When you set up your hard drive partitions make sure to leave 1.5GB of unpartitioned, unallocated, usused space at the END of your hard drive [i.e. after all other partitions]. Also, make sure you have a 'spot' in the Partition Table for the Reinistallation utility. The utility creates a partition in the hard drive space you 'set-aside' and needs a spot in the table for the partition values. This translates into making sure you have a maximum of 3 primary partitions or the reinstall will fail. From Windows run the Reinstallation utility.... You're done. What you will now have is a MediaDirect partition on your hard drive. This partition will be accessed whenever you run MediaDirect by depressing the MediaDirect button from Power OFF. Last note: If you are going to install something other that Microsoft MCE as your OS, you may want to consider getting a copy of Dell Media Experieince [DMX]. This should allow you to press the MediaDirect button from Windows and launch DMX. I say 'should' as I don't know this for a fact, but from other comments/posts I've seen... vr Mark

No, you'll need to ask for it. That said, an iso was being hosted and available for download by someone else here on the forum. btw If/when you get the CD from Dell, the instructions will specify 1308MB of free space. This has been pretty well shown to be incorrect. Mark

No problem.... As you're going with a single 'big' partition, that should be about it. Just make sure you size that partition so you leave the needed 1.5GB 'space' for the MediaDirect reinstall to create its own partition. Don't think I mentioned that the Reinstallation utility is run from Windows. If for some reason it 'hangs' at 10% Initialization step, something is not quite right with the partitions and/or Partition Table. First time you run MediaDirect from Power OFF, it will take a minute or two to extract the needed files within the partition. Subsequently it will run/start much faster. Cheers Mark

Now I'm doing the same thing, except I'm trying to clone my current drive to the new one. I used Acronis MigrateEasy to copy the dell diagnostics partition , my os partition, data partition and the media direct partition.
I set my OS partition to active and I get an error on bootup that says
"XLDR ATA Error".
It seems like I'm doing exactly what this posts says to do, except I'm cloning a partition instead of installing from scratch. I figure at least i would be able to boot into windows.
Any thoughts?

When you say you copied the 'media direct partition' what exactly has been done there??? Is that a partition created by a MediaDirect Reinstall??? That's an error being generated by the Dell boot code as there is some 'unhappiness' with the partition table. Need a llittle more background on what was done prior to the clone... Mark

I tried to simplify the process. I hope this is clearer. I decided to deal with media direct last.

I copied the diagnostics and os partitions to the new drive. This left about 60 gigs of unallocated space on the drive.
So now I have about 50megs in the 1st partition and 40 gigs in the 2nd(OS).
Both are primary. The OS partition is active. When I boot up I get the xldr error.

This is as simple a process as I can try without reinstalling XP.

Does Dell need anything special to be done to boot off an active partition. How picky can it possibly be? This is standard stuff.

Any help/insight would be great.

Thanks

Sorry to 'nickle and dime' you with more questions.... When you say... Was this a 'clone' or a simple copy??? Reason I ask is that I've got to wonder [if it was a 'copy'] how the Dell boot code got 'moved'... What did you copy 'from'??? Was it pretty much an 'as-delivered' by Dell hard drive or did you do any partition changes??? What's your desired 'end state'? Depending on what you started with and where you want to end up kinda drives the potential solution. Sorry to not have more for you yet.... Mark

I'll lay it all out. Here we go. I'm trying to replace my 120gig seagate with a 100gig 7200rpm hitachi. I'm doing a decent amount of work with After Effects , video rendering etc and I think my drive is a bottleneck.

Currently I have the following partitions on my Dell.

1. Diagnostics
2. OS
3. Data
4. MediaDirect

I used partitionmagic when i first got the system to split the OS into OS and Data.

All works well right now. mediadirect button and everything.

I simply want to recreate this on the new drive. Here's what I tried.

1. Hooked up both drives to a desktop system.
2. Using Acronis MigrateEasy, I cloned all 4 partitions onto the new drive maintined the size of each one except for the data drive. Its smaller.
3. Put the new drive in the laptop and boot up. I get the xldr ata error.

The OS partition is set active. I figured worst case I could still boot into windows, even if the mediadirect button didn't work, but no dice.

I hope this is clear now. Sorry about the vagueness before.