No.. It has to be at the end of the physical hard drive. It doesn't matter if there are more partitions. I have a 30GB C:\ and a 60GB D:\. My Media Direct partition is at the end of the drive as partition 3. Yours might be partition 4 if you have the diag partition loaded. I don't.

It just has to be the last partition and at the end of the drive.

That's strange...that didn't work for me. I tried to install it and it came up with an error (at least one other person reported the same thing). I then had to free up 1.3Gb beyond my OS partition in addition to the 1.3Gb at the end of the drive.
Then it installed without problems at the end of the drive. However, when I tried to boot to it, it actually just booted to my third partition (well, second partition not including dell diagnostics). Now that I have moved the media direct partition so that it is the third partition, it boots correctly.
Maybe it just doesn't work as partition 4. Perhaps either partition 2 or 3 is OK.
One other thing...did you install media direct from an OS installed on your C partition or D partition? I don't know if that makes any difference, but it might be interesting to know.

My OS is intalled on C:\ and my D:\ is for all my games/MP3's/etc.. Thoes were the only two partitions on my machine. I shrunk my D:\ by 2GB for the DMD2.0 install then re-grew my D:\ to fill the blank space.

By default MD20 access's the administrator accounts documents. You would have to go to c: then docuements and setting the whatever user u named the account. Then you should be able to access the files..

In that case, I think we have to assume that it automatically loads the third partition or, if you only have two partitions, then it loads the second one.

Could be.. I don't feel like shrinking my OS partition and loading the diag partition to find out. It's working just fine.

Plays thru the speakers if I don't have my Audigy card installed, or if I do have it installed, it plays thru the head phones.

I still need to test to see if the 5.1 works thru the Audigy, but my 5.1 speakers are packed away. Since I had my 2nd child 3 year ago, I just don't have an office anymore.

Looking at Partition magic i see.
DELLUTILITY as Fat and 47mb
Local Disk Drive C: 51gb
Unallocated Space 1.5gb (this is the one I created by shrinking my C drive
Local Disk CP/M,Concurrent DOS,CTOS (this is the restore Drive I am assuming)
Unallocated Space 7.8mb (I have tried to get rid of this and I am unable)

I would prefer not to have to delete the utility partition or the restore partition.

Any Ideas?

Ok, I got it to install in the 1.5gb space I created by using Partition magic and assigning it drive letter "X". When I did that it installed fine. When i look at explorer it looks as if the drive is now hidden. When I power down and press the power button Media Direct seems to start (at least it shows the medis direct banner) but then it just sits there and does nothing.

If it doesn't work straight away, it is possible to create the partition manually. Create a 1.3Gb partition in the empty space. Load it with a Windows XP bootsector by booting from a Windows XP CD, going to recovery console and typing fixboot d: (I think this will work). Then use WinRAR to extract the contents of XPEI1.exe and XPEI2.exe from the media direct CD to this partition. Finally, run ptedit32 in the Partition Magic install folder and set the new partition to type D7.
This will hopefully work. If not, copy ptedit (which you can find somewhere in one of the Partition Magic subfolders) to a DOS boot disk. Boot from it and type ptedit at the command prompt - use that to change the partition to type D7.

As far as I know You can have only 4 primary partitions.

That is correct. So, if you have 3 or 4 primary partitions, Media Direct must be on the 3rd. If you have two partitions, Media Direct must be on the 2nd. I don't know what happens if you try to install Media Direct to an extended partition - I expect it does not work.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

i had a similar problem, the way i solved it was starting from step 1. first remove any media direct 1.0 stuff u may or may not have installed. then i would use partition magic to delete the recovery partition dell includes (you really dont need it and it just wastes space, ur much better of using a restore disk) and then i would resize C to reclaim ALL of the allocated space to the C drive (note i had to resize twice to claim everything back) i would then format the new drive media direct created and reclaim that space. make sure ur c drive has everything. then resize it again 1.5 gb smaller. u may have to restart ur computer serveral times. then install media direct, it should install smoothly and now it should boot up and it shouldnt hang at the media direct screen. i think the problem was becuase of the multiple unallocated space as well as the dell drive but i am not sure. maybe a clean install just fixed it but i reccommend doing the above steps.

edit: forgot to mention i dunno what the dellutility is there for but i did NOT delete it just in case.

I understand what you are saying Big but I would like to try this without getting rid of the restore partition. There has to be a way (I think, I hope).

hmm then do the same thing except dont delete the recovery partition. im sure it will still work but make sure u reclaim all ur space. thats what worked for me. then i just had one 1.5 gb unallocated space which media direct installed too. i was also having trouble with erd but now there is a method to get to explorer w/o it so good luck

Anyone figure out how to run MD2.0 while the lid is closed? I want to play mp3's while the lid is closed to conserve battery life. I tried running Powercfg.cpl while in the MD2.0 partition in explorer.exe mode. Changed When lid is closed to do nothing. But when I actually running MD2.0 when lid is closed it still went into hibernate. Whatcha guys think?