I pressed The Dell Media Direct Button & Now XP Won't Start ;-(

any updates on this?

cheers ...

thx for the feedback, maybe a dell rep will see this

cheers ...

Same thing happened to me. I didn't want to reinstall windows so I used a utility to repair the partition table and make a new master boot record.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

After that, XP booted back up normally without any data loss. I then formatted the media direct partition to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Dell Media direct crashes my PC

Hello
Not sure where to post this but could not find an answer on the web. (although 007 above seems to have found a similar solution which I only see now that I have found a different solution)

I pressed the Dell Media direct button accidentally on my friends Inspiron 1525 laptop (Vista). Dell Media direct started to do its thing. This is a new PC and this button was never pressed before. I wanted to get out of Dell media direct (as I had no idea what it was) so I hit the power button to kill it. Bad mistake.... When we tried to reboot the PC (with the Dell media direct button or Power button) the blue screen of death appeared.

I spent the last 24 hours running diagnostics (from the driver and utility DVD) and playing with Bios settings (Hitting F2 F12 and F8 during boot up). System would not boot in Safe mode either or restore the last known good configuration.

Contacted dell hardware support and they confirmed that the Hardware was OK (asked me to run the diagnostics). Told me to contact the software help line. Called and a fairly uptight guy told me to take out the battery and reboot. Then hold the Dell Media direct button for 10 seconds and reboot and then pay them €89 so they would tell me how to reformat the hard drive and re-install everything - losing my friends personal data in the process. I said I would think about it and hung up.

I should explain I am a little technical (electronics test engineer) but know only a little about PCs. At this stage I decided to "play" with the PC. I couldn't make it worse.

I had worked out (from the web) that Dell Media Direct has its own partition on the hard disk and when you press its button it boots from that partition. By powering down I fatally wounded it so everytime I boot it tries to get back into the same damaged partition.

I used Dan Goodells site (http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/ptedit.htm), which I found by accident, to create a bootable DOS usb flash drive and loaded PTEDIT.exe onto it. I rebooted the laptop and changed the bios settings to allow boot from USB and not from HDD. I then ran ptedit.exe (on the flash drive) and got a partition table like the ones in Dan Goodells web page but I noticed that under the boot column I had 80 in two locations. I guess that the 80 makes that partition bootable so I changed it to 00 on the smaller partition (guessing that this would be the Dell media direct partition) and saved and rebooted. I then went back into the BIOS settings and put the HDD back in the boot sequence and it booted correctly. (Thank God!). I have not being brave enough to hit the Dell Media direct button again.....

I put this here as a last resort. Dell were not helpful and I found a couple of other people posting about this issue but no clear solution (except re install everything). Use this at your own risk. I have no idea if doing the above could destroy your PC.....

Real tech heads please feel free to correct me if I have guessed wrongly.

Media Direct Button & Now XP Won't Start ;-(

This happened to me also... I just shut off the computer then I pushed the media direct button again then restarted it and it worked fine....

Thank you so much!

I signed up for this site just so I can say thank you. I was actually looking for the disk to reinstall my operating system when I read that last post. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

We thank you for posting. Welcome to NBF.

cheers ...

Thank you!
I found this site searching google for this exact problem. this worked like a charm and took far less time than the other suggestions.

Thanks a lot!

I've never bother to ever register before to say thank you(I just say it!) but you deserve a mention. I have lost my data once before in a hard disk crash and I was terrified when I red the first few posts. And then I came to your post and did exactly that and there goes my WINDOWS XP

THANK YOU "Tazorre" and NOTEBOOKFORUMS.com

Count me in as another saved by Tazorre and Notebookforums.com. I was dreading getting on the phone with Dell and re-installing my OS AGAIN.

Maybe I can find out why my webcam doesn't work for Skype video from this forum also - so I Don't have to call Dell........
Thanks so much!

Hello all...

For those reporting that pushing the Media Direct button while the PC is powered off has trashed their OS install (won't boot), but pushing the media direct button again then restarted it fixes the Master-Boot-Record so the OS can boot again PLEASE POST what model computer you have (along with the ship /mfg date.) - along with info on what OS you have.... Along with what version of Media Direct you think your machine shipped with.
(You can enter you service tag at Dell.com under warranty status-it will list date shipped, model number, what software unit shipped with)

I'm asking because early versions of Media Direct (Below v4.xx) screw with the MBR, later ones do not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_MediaDirect

PS: If you have the 100/200mb Vista/Win7 boot partition on your machine- please note this.

My situation.

Dell Insprion 1420 laptop, mfg/ship 2007-09, bios A10
Originally shipped with Vista, Dell Media Direct, 3.3

Hard drive went bad- replaced with brand-spanking new hd.

Fresh install of Win7 ++++.
No bitlocker (yet)
Drive partitioned as:
1st partition= 100/200mb boot partition
2nd partition = OS, Win7 (60gb)
3rd partition = DATA- 400gb or so.


My problem:

About a hour or so ago after reading that the system would "recover" by itself after pressing the Media Direct Button while the unit was powered OFF... I tried it- figuring I'd try it while unit was not needed right away...
Media Direct splash screen loads, then aborts, and I am greeted by a screen that says windows cannot start-blah-blah. So I select the options to try to repair from that screen...

NO go...

Powered off, and on several times - and I think tried pressing the Media direct button again.. (As reported above as a "fix"). Still no go...

(Temp) Fix for me was using Win7 install disc and doing a repair - I would assume it rewriting the Master-Boot-Record...

While I'm back up and running - I do not relish the thought of myself or someone else hitting the Media Direct button by mistake -and it making the system unbootable- (EG while traveling-, or being in a location I do not have Win7 install media "with me".)

Q: Anyone have a system from early 2008, shipped with Media Direct 3.3- in which the hard drive has either been replaced OR it "Zero'ed out" to get rid of the Media Direct crap-ola and you're able to boot after pressing the MD button while unit was powered off that's running Win7 with the 100/200mb boot partition?

Q: Anyone run across a site the talks about disabling the Media Direct button altogether? I really dislike the idea of the Media Direct button screwing around with the Master-Boot-Record.

Option 1= remap MD button to something else
Option 2= Cut traces to button, or otherwise disable button.
Option 3, which should be option 1 would be to toggle on or off Media Direct in bios- but that option of course isn't in the bios.

THANK YOU so much! I was on the phone Dell for 4hrs and got nothing but the run around about fixing this same issue. They wanted to restore my computer and make me pay $59 for nothing so thank you for posting this.

Please copy & paste the system specs of your system, how old unit is, model number in the BODY of your post as TEXT. Additionally when talking about "my computer" -REFER TO IT BY IT"S MODEL ID. EG: "My Dell_Inspiron_1420.


Q: What model do you have?
Q: What OS?
Q: How old?
Q: What version of Media Direct did unit ship with?

(You can find out ALL the above via logging into Dell with the Service Tag- and do a COPY and PASTE- So there's little "typing" you have to do.)


Q: What caused the problem to occur?

Did you REPLACE the hard drive?
Delete Media Direct Partition?
ZERO out the drive?

Q: Did you reinstall Media Direct- or remap Media Direct key to another function?

************

Can I start up my computer through Dell Media Direct?

My power button will not work, but the Dell Media Direct button does. I was hoping I could boot my computer through the Dell Media Direct button?

??

Thanks!

If it does not work on your notebook, then the notebook model was not being fitted to boot up to OS from the DMD button. The DMD button just does not look at the boot list

cheers ...

I have this problem but when I try to boot from the recovery disk it still boots into Media Direct (Bios says it will try the disk first so I don't know what's going on).

 

 

What can I do?

 

Please help.

 

: What model do you have? Inspiron 1525
Q: What OS? Vista
Q: How old? 3 years
Q: What version of Media Direct did unit ship with? (Not with my comp right now, will get this info later)

Q: What caused the problem to occur?
I reinstalled windows a couple of weeks ago?
 

I had blown away a Vista install with all partitions due to extreme curruption due to maleware infection.  I did the same and accidentlly pressed the Media
Direct button trying to press the power button.  The notebook tried to start Media Direct and suddenly went to Blue Screen.  After thinking how dumb the button lay out was I unplugged the power cable, removed the battery for about 3 minutes, then reinstalled the battery and was able to restart the computer by pressing correct power button.  I then tried to find a permanant fix but have not been able to, though the battery and power cord trick have worked everytime I have ran into this since then.