If you have a new Dell notebook with MediaDirect and want to reformat or have already reformatted your hard drive and are looking for answers on these forums, chances are you've read 1000 different posts concerning MediaDirect, with half saying one thing and half saying the other. I thought I'd document the process I used for my Dell Inspiron E1505 (purchased August 1, 2006) to reformat the hard drive and reinstall MediaDirect. It worked flawlessly:
Before Starting the Reformat Process:
Make sure you have the following CDs:
1. Windows Operating System CD
2. Dell Drivers/Diagnostic Utilities CD (contains the MediaDirect Repair Utility)
3. Dell Media Experience (DMX) CD
These CDs may or may not come with your notebook (The first two I received with mine, although the Drivers/Diagnostic Utilities CD was for the wrong model, so I had to request the correct one along with DMX from Dell Chat Support) They are usually quite prompt with this - I had mine the day after requesting them. If you don't want to wait, however, go to support.dell.com where you can enter your Service Tag and download the necessary drivers and subsequently burn them to your own blank CD.
Drivers you will need:
1. Chipset
2. Ricoh Media Card Reader (if necessary)
3. Graphics
4. Audio
5. Modem
6. Ethernet
7. Wireless (if necessary)
8. Bluetooth (if necessary)
You may need others later, but they aren't crucial before the reformat process and can be downloaded afterwards (I'll get to that later.)
Reformatting/Repartitioning the Hard Drive
If you are like me, you want maximum utilization of your hard drive space. Dell doesn't like this idea, and creates many useless partitions with plenty of junk on them. Here's how we fix that:
1. Turn on your computer and insert the Windows Operating System CD into the CD drive. Shut down the computer.
2. Restart the computer and when you see the Dell Boot Logo, immediately press F12 to access the Boot Menu. When prompted, choose your CD drive and press Enter when asked to boot from CD.
3. When asked what you wish to do, choose to install Windows. Do NOT choose the repair utility.
4. Now we come to partitions. Delete all of these. Select the first existing partition from the list and press "D" to delete it, followed by "L" to confirm that you wish to do this. Repeat for the remaining partitions until you are left with one big unpartitioned space.
5. Press Enter to set up Windows XP on this unpartitioned space.
6. When prompted, choose to "Format the partition using the NTFS file system"
7. Windows XP will now install, which will take some time. You can customize settings if you wish when prompted, but Typical settings are fine.
Driver Installation
Once XP is installed, it is time to install your drivers. As stated above, you will should install your drivers in the following order:
1. Chipset
2. Ricoh Media Card Reader (if necessary)
3. Graphics (You might need to install the .NET Framework before installing this Driver, if you have an ATI card. If this is the case, install either the Ethernet or Wireless driver and download it from the website before installing the Graphics driver.)
4. Audio
5. Modem
6. Ethernet
7. Wireless (if necessary)
8. Bluetooth (if necessary)
9. etc...depending on what hardware you have installed.
An easy way to determine whether you need additional drivers and to keep track of driver installation progress is to view the Device Manager. On your desktop, right click on My Computer -> Properties -> "Hardware" tab -> Device Manager. Every time you install a driver, one or more of the yellow question marks should disappear. Once they are all gone, your driver installation is complete.
***I have left off the Touchpad and Dell QuickSet drivers because they are not necessary and they require processes to run in the background, but you can install them if you wish***
Windows Update
Once your drivers are installed, run Windows Update immediately and install all High Priority updates. This might take some time. Next, choose Custom updates and install the .NET Framework 1.1 and subsequent .NET Framework 1.1 updates (these will all require a computer restart after each installation.) Of course you can download additional Custom updates if you wish (i.e. Windows Media Player 10, etc.) .NET Framework 2.0 may be required for some of your applications, but for MediaDirect you will only need version 1.1.
If you only set up one User Account during Windows installation, your computer will go to the desktop automatically when you turn it on; when you install the .NET Framework, however, it will cause the Welcome screen to show up every time you turn on your computer and require you to click on your icon. To get rid of this, go to the Start menu -> Run and type in "control userpasswords2". Click the account which you want to automatically load at Startup, then uncheck the box by "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer". Click OK. You will be prompted to enter your password; if you created one, type that in but if you did not create one during Windows setup, just leave the password fields blank and click OK.
Next, go to the Microsoft website and download the latest version of DirectX.
Software, Programs, Codecs, etc.
Your computer should be running perfectly now. Once you start installing programs, however...things can slow down quite a bit. There are a few ways to keep this from happening. Everyone uses different software of course but I will detail what I did with the programs I use, which are fairly universal. This was the order I used:
1. Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition (University/Employer Website)
2. Microsoft Office 2003 (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint)
3. Adobe Acrobat Reader (Adobe Website)
4. Adobe Flash Player (used to be Macromedia, now Adobe Website)
5. Adobe Shockwave Player (Adobe Website)
6. DivX Codec (DivX.com Website)
7. Cyberlink PowerDVD Player (Dell CD)
8. Apple iTunes/QuickTime Player (Apple Website)
9. Dell Media Experience (Dell CD, not necessary if using XP MCE)
10. Instant Messaging Program (AIM, Yahoo Messenger, whatever)
11. File Sharing Program (LimeWire, BitTorrent, Ares, etc. etc.)
Just about every single one of these programs will add an icon to your system tray (by the clock in the lower right hand corner of your desktop) and create a background/startup process. 99% of them are unnecessary and should be disabled. To do this, you can usually right click on most of the icons in the system tray and either disable them directly from one of the options or go into the program's options and find the option which allows you to disable the system tray icon or to disable the program opening upon startup.
Next, go to the Start menu -> Run and type "msconfig" then click on the "Startup" tab. You will see a plethora of items with check marks beside them: this is a list of every program that opens when you turn on your computer. They can significantly slow your computer's startup time and minimize the capability of your CPU. The good news is, we can disable most of them.
First, go to the Windows Startup Program Database and start checking which programs are necessary and which are not. Some will be obvious (iTunesHelper is for iTunes) but others might not be...which is why it's a good idea to double check at this website - it will tell you what program the filename refers to and whether or not it is necessary. I personally only have three of these checked at all times: "ifrmewrk," "ccApp" and "VPTray." The first is for my wireless internet and the second two are for my Symantec AntiVirus software.
Once you have determined which programs are unnecessary, uncheck them and restart your computer. Once your computer is restarted, an information box will come up. Check the box at the bottom and click OK. Now if you go to msconfig again, you will see that even though the programs are not checked, they still show up. To get rid of them, you can safely remove them from the Windows Registry. To do this, go to the Run option from the Start menu again. This time, type "regedit" and go to both these registry folders:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Run
and
2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Shared Tools -> MSconfig -> Startupreg
Delete the unwanted startup items and boom you've got a clean msconfig startup tab and minimal background CPU usage = fast computer. Some of the programs might be sneaky and actually re-add themselves to the Startup tab in msconfig (I had this problem with QuickTime.) To fix this, I went to QuickTime options and in the MIME and File Association settings, I unchecked both boxes that automatically check to see if these settings have been changed by other programs. I kept the QuickTime icon checked in the msconfig Startup tab then went into the registry and deleted the QuickTime key. So far it hasn't shown it's evil head again.
MediaDirect Repair
1. Place your Drivers and Utilities CD into the CD drive and restart your computer.
2. Press F12 immediately when you see the Dell logo upon startup.
3. Highlight your CD drive from the boot menu and press Enter.
4. Press Enter again when prompted to boot from the CD.
5. When prompted, press Q to boot from CD.
6. At the prompt, type cd \MD2 and press Enter.
7. Type "repair" and press Enter. The Dell MediaDirect repair utility opens.
8. Select OK and press Enter.
9. When the Done message appears, remove the CD from the drive and press the power button to turn off the computer.
That's it! One more thing you might need to do (which I had to do) is, upon loading MediaDirect, as soon as you see the MediaDirect boot screen, press F8 and choose the option to delete the hibernation data. For some reason I couldn't view my pictures in MediaDirect until doing this.
Hopefully this will help people who are having reformat issues/reinstallation issues with XP Home and MediaDirect. Let me know if you have any questions!
-SGMD1
Before Starting the Reformat Process:
Make sure you have the following CDs:
1. Windows Operating System CD
2. Dell Drivers/Diagnostic Utilities CD (contains the MediaDirect Repair Utility)
3. Dell Media Experience (DMX) CD
These CDs may or may not come with your notebook (The first two I received with mine, although the Drivers/Diagnostic Utilities CD was for the wrong model, so I had to request the correct one along with DMX from Dell Chat Support) They are usually quite prompt with this - I had mine the day after requesting them. If you don't want to wait, however, go to support.dell.com where you can enter your Service Tag and download the necessary drivers and subsequently burn them to your own blank CD.
Drivers you will need:
1. Chipset
2. Ricoh Media Card Reader (if necessary)
3. Graphics
4. Audio
5. Modem
6. Ethernet
7. Wireless (if necessary)
8. Bluetooth (if necessary)
You may need others later, but they aren't crucial before the reformat process and can be downloaded afterwards (I'll get to that later.)
Reformatting/Repartitioning the Hard Drive
If you are like me, you want maximum utilization of your hard drive space. Dell doesn't like this idea, and creates many useless partitions with plenty of junk on them. Here's how we fix that:
1. Turn on your computer and insert the Windows Operating System CD into the CD drive. Shut down the computer.
2. Restart the computer and when you see the Dell Boot Logo, immediately press F12 to access the Boot Menu. When prompted, choose your CD drive and press Enter when asked to boot from CD.
3. When asked what you wish to do, choose to install Windows. Do NOT choose the repair utility.
4. Now we come to partitions. Delete all of these. Select the first existing partition from the list and press "D" to delete it, followed by "L" to confirm that you wish to do this. Repeat for the remaining partitions until you are left with one big unpartitioned space.
5. Press Enter to set up Windows XP on this unpartitioned space.
6. When prompted, choose to "Format the partition using the NTFS file system"
7. Windows XP will now install, which will take some time. You can customize settings if you wish when prompted, but Typical settings are fine.
Driver Installation
Once XP is installed, it is time to install your drivers. As stated above, you will should install your drivers in the following order:
1. Chipset
2. Ricoh Media Card Reader (if necessary)
3. Graphics (You might need to install the .NET Framework before installing this Driver, if you have an ATI card. If this is the case, install either the Ethernet or Wireless driver and download it from the website before installing the Graphics driver.)
4. Audio
5. Modem
6. Ethernet
7. Wireless (if necessary)
8. Bluetooth (if necessary)
9. etc...depending on what hardware you have installed.
An easy way to determine whether you need additional drivers and to keep track of driver installation progress is to view the Device Manager. On your desktop, right click on My Computer -> Properties -> "Hardware" tab -> Device Manager. Every time you install a driver, one or more of the yellow question marks should disappear. Once they are all gone, your driver installation is complete.
***I have left off the Touchpad and Dell QuickSet drivers because they are not necessary and they require processes to run in the background, but you can install them if you wish***
Windows Update
Once your drivers are installed, run Windows Update immediately and install all High Priority updates. This might take some time. Next, choose Custom updates and install the .NET Framework 1.1 and subsequent .NET Framework 1.1 updates (these will all require a computer restart after each installation.) Of course you can download additional Custom updates if you wish (i.e. Windows Media Player 10, etc.) .NET Framework 2.0 may be required for some of your applications, but for MediaDirect you will only need version 1.1.
If you only set up one User Account during Windows installation, your computer will go to the desktop automatically when you turn it on; when you install the .NET Framework, however, it will cause the Welcome screen to show up every time you turn on your computer and require you to click on your icon. To get rid of this, go to the Start menu -> Run and type in "control userpasswords2". Click the account which you want to automatically load at Startup, then uncheck the box by "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer". Click OK. You will be prompted to enter your password; if you created one, type that in but if you did not create one during Windows setup, just leave the password fields blank and click OK.
Next, go to the Microsoft website and download the latest version of DirectX.
Software, Programs, Codecs, etc.
Your computer should be running perfectly now. Once you start installing programs, however...things can slow down quite a bit. There are a few ways to keep this from happening. Everyone uses different software of course but I will detail what I did with the programs I use, which are fairly universal. This was the order I used:
1. Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition (University/Employer Website)
2. Microsoft Office 2003 (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint)
3. Adobe Acrobat Reader (Adobe Website)
4. Adobe Flash Player (used to be Macromedia, now Adobe Website)
5. Adobe Shockwave Player (Adobe Website)
6. DivX Codec (DivX.com Website)
7. Cyberlink PowerDVD Player (Dell CD)
8. Apple iTunes/QuickTime Player (Apple Website)
9. Dell Media Experience (Dell CD, not necessary if using XP MCE)
10. Instant Messaging Program (AIM, Yahoo Messenger, whatever)
11. File Sharing Program (LimeWire, BitTorrent, Ares, etc. etc.)
Just about every single one of these programs will add an icon to your system tray (by the clock in the lower right hand corner of your desktop) and create a background/startup process. 99% of them are unnecessary and should be disabled. To do this, you can usually right click on most of the icons in the system tray and either disable them directly from one of the options or go into the program's options and find the option which allows you to disable the system tray icon or to disable the program opening upon startup.
Next, go to the Start menu -> Run and type "msconfig" then click on the "Startup" tab. You will see a plethora of items with check marks beside them: this is a list of every program that opens when you turn on your computer. They can significantly slow your computer's startup time and minimize the capability of your CPU. The good news is, we can disable most of them.
First, go to the Windows Startup Program Database and start checking which programs are necessary and which are not. Some will be obvious (iTunesHelper is for iTunes) but others might not be...which is why it's a good idea to double check at this website - it will tell you what program the filename refers to and whether or not it is necessary. I personally only have three of these checked at all times: "ifrmewrk," "ccApp" and "VPTray." The first is for my wireless internet and the second two are for my Symantec AntiVirus software.
Once you have determined which programs are unnecessary, uncheck them and restart your computer. Once your computer is restarted, an information box will come up. Check the box at the bottom and click OK. Now if you go to msconfig again, you will see that even though the programs are not checked, they still show up. To get rid of them, you can safely remove them from the Windows Registry. To do this, go to the Run option from the Start menu again. This time, type "regedit" and go to both these registry folders:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Run
and
2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Shared Tools -> MSconfig -> Startupreg
Delete the unwanted startup items and boom you've got a clean msconfig startup tab and minimal background CPU usage = fast computer. Some of the programs might be sneaky and actually re-add themselves to the Startup tab in msconfig (I had this problem with QuickTime.) To fix this, I went to QuickTime options and in the MIME and File Association settings, I unchecked both boxes that automatically check to see if these settings have been changed by other programs. I kept the QuickTime icon checked in the msconfig Startup tab then went into the registry and deleted the QuickTime key. So far it hasn't shown it's evil head again.
MediaDirect Repair
1. Place your Drivers and Utilities CD into the CD drive and restart your computer.
2. Press F12 immediately when you see the Dell logo upon startup.
3. Highlight your CD drive from the boot menu and press Enter.
4. Press Enter again when prompted to boot from the CD.
5. When prompted, press Q to boot from CD.
6. At the prompt, type cd \MD2 and press Enter.
7. Type "repair" and press Enter. The Dell MediaDirect repair utility opens.
8. Select OK and press Enter.
9. When the Done message appears, remove the CD from the drive and press the power button to turn off the computer.
That's it! One more thing you might need to do (which I had to do) is, upon loading MediaDirect, as soon as you see the MediaDirect boot screen, press F8 and choose the option to delete the hibernation data. For some reason I couldn't view my pictures in MediaDirect until doing this.
Hopefully this will help people who are having reformat issues/reinstallation issues with XP Home and MediaDirect. Let me know if you have any questions!
-SGMD1
