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HOW-TO: mediadirect2 (all codecs) + winxp + linux

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davs

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Posted on 07-19-2006, 04:57 PM

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HOW-TO: mediadirect2 (all codecs) + winxp + linux

i have an e1505 or 6400. i live in mexico city. the moment i got it, i tried to load mediadirect without any modification to the partitions, and it didn't work. i tried the repair cd , didn't work. after reading a lot of posts and many reformats, i've finally setup my system with windows xp pro, debian linux, and still have the mediadirect button working. my mediadirect 2 also plays divx, xvid, h.264 and all the other codecs that come with k-lite codec pack. let's begin.

requirements:
-dell mediadirect 2 reinstall cd
-windows xp (pro) install cd
-debian (or any linux) install cd
-linux live cd (i used kubuntu 6.06)

if you know how to partition and set up linux, here's a summary of what we'll do. i'll explain in more detail in a minute. we'll have partitions set up as follows:

1-dell utility (primary)
2-windows xp (ntfs, primary)
3-linux (2 ext3 partitions and 1 swap within an extended partition)
4-dell mediadirect (ntfs,primary)
5-8 megs of unusable space because dells mediadirect installer cant partition properly.

the order in which you should set this up is:

1-install windows xp.
Using your windows xp cd, boot the computer and select install windows xp. when give the option of what partition to use, delete all the partitions EXCEPT the dell utility (the first) partition. now create a new partitions that will hold windows xp. make sure to leave at least 1500 mb for dell mediadirect, and a few gigs for linux. on a 100gb drive, i gave the windows xp partition 40 gigs. i left the remaining 53-54 gigs unpartitioned.

once windows xp is finished installing, boot it up and set up the drivers. when you're done, its time to install mediadirect using the REINSTALL cd. not the repair cd.

2-install dell mediadirect
you can either mount the ISO image with daemon tools or burn it and pop it in. you'll get a window asking you to press enter to install mediadirect 2. don't press it just yet.

to be able to install media codecs, you need to be able to browse and execute programs. this is accomplished by adding a task manager to the mediadirect app. this tip was taken from the nbf by someone trying to install mediadirect on a 9300 i think? all credit goes to him. anyway, open windows explorer (win+e) and browse to the c:\windows\system32. scroll down to find the file called "taskmgr.exe". once you have it, open up another windows explorer and navigate to my compute. you should see your hard dive icon. the MD2 install window is behind those 2 windows. what we're going to do is wait for the installation to pass the 10% mark, and copy the taskmgr.exe program into X:\windows\system32. you only have about 10 or 15 seconds to do this. if you miss you can always reinstall md2 and try again.

press enter to start the installation and watch the explorer window with my computer open. a new drive (X should appear. give it a second while it gets formatted with ntfs, then double click it. if it tells you its not formatted, press cancel, wait, and try again. after a few moments, files should start to appear. look for the windows\system32 folder, then drag and drop the taskmgr.exe.

wait for the installation to finish. now go to http://codecguide.com and download the k-lite codec pack (the normal one, not mega) and save it onto your hard drive or usb drive. once your done, shut down your system and try to turn it on pressing the mediadirect button. if all went well, mediadirect should load.

3-set up codecs

once in mediadirect, press ctrl+alt+del to open the task manager. now go to file-run and type c:\windows\explorer.exe . navigate to where you saved the k-lite installer (remember the drives are swapped, so it should be under D: instead of C: ). launch the installer, i removed the media player classic option, so it just installs the codecs.

now try out your brand new mediadirect with a divx file. sweet.

4-install linux

this step may vary depending on which distro you're installing. the point is you need to boot up using the install cd, and when you're asked how to partition your drive, choose "manually edit partition table" or equivalent. DON'T LET THE INSTALLER DO IT FOR YOU!!, it might screw up your work so far.

we'll create 3 logical partitions within an extended partition. this can be different if you like. i like to have a / , /home, and swap partitions. but i've seen people who have /,/boot,/tmp,/home,/var, etc the first one will hold the root file system, the next one will hold /home, and the finally swap. in case you're wondering, here's the final layout of the drive once its partitioned.

(primary)dell utility 47 mb
(primary)winxp 40 gigs
(extended)
(logical) / ext3 , 8 gigs
(logical) /home ext3, 40 gigs
(logical) swap , 256 megs
(primary) mediadirect 1.5 gigs
unusable 8 megs

finish installing linux and you'll be asked where to install the boot loader. a lot of distros come with grub, which is what i used. if your distro comes with lilo, i can't help since ive never used it. DON'T install grub to the mbr. install it to the partition that holds /boot. in our case, the 8 gig partition. grub uses a different naming scheme, so (hd0,0) is dell utility, (hd0,1) is winxp, but (hd0,2) isn't our "/" partition. its the mediadirect one. we need to tell grub to install on (hd0,4) which is the first logical partition. logical partitions always start from 4 don't ask me why.

generally, you'll have to reboot to finish the installation. this is a problem because the mbr is still going to load either windows xp, or mediadirect. shut down the computer, and bootup using the livecd.

5-edit the windows boot loader to boot linux

once you're in a live cd session, you need to copy the first 512 bytes of the first linux logical partition. in a console, type:

dd if=/dev/hda5 of=./linux.bin bs=512 count=1

this will create a linux.bin file of size 512 bytes. you need to mail this file to yourself, or save it onto a usb drive. unless you know how to use linux to write to ntfs . notice the "if=/dev/hda5". some distros with older kernels will label scsi drives hda instead of sda. kubuntu 6.06 calls it sda. i used qtparted (included in the live cd) to verify the name of the correct partition.

now that you have the linux.bin file, reboot into windows xp and edit the c:\boot.ini appending thsi line to the end:

C:\linux.bin="Linux"

more info on how to do this on this site: http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

now you can reboot into windows xp, but you'll get a choice between winxp and linux. when you choose linux, you'll get a grub menu to boot linux. you can now finish setting up linux.

6- wrapping up
in theory now you should be able to boot both windows xp and mediadirect depending on which button you press on your keyboard. try it out. if it works, you're all set. if not, and you get errors, keep reading.

during my attempts of doing this, once i got a hal.dll missing error when trying to boot mediadirect after installing linux. what i did was use the winxp cd to launch a recovery console. i logged into windows installation number 2 (you'll understand what i mean when you use the recovery console) and typed:

>bootcfg /scan
>bootcfg /add
select #1
name:mediadirect
options: /fastdetect /KERNEL=NTOSBOOT.EXE /maxmem=256

type exit. and try to launch md2 again.

don't think because you have 1 or 2 gigs of ram you can change the 256 value to something greater. since md2 relies on hibernation to function, if you use too much ram, you might not have enough space to hibernate and get errors.

pm me or reply here for questions or improvements to this guide.

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maxrule

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Posted on 07-23-2006, 06:50 PM

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Very nice guide! I can not believe nobody has not commented yet. I have one question though. You do not install video and sound drivers for media direct liek the other guide?

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davs

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Posted on 07-23-2006, 10:26 PM

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thanks for the positive feedback.

the sound and video drivers included seem to work well for the 6400/e1505. sound volume is oddly a bit louder in mediadirect than in windows (probably because its using generic drivers). i've downloaded the drivers but haven't gotten around to installing them. i'll set up the mobility catalysts and post here to explain what the results were. however, if in doubt, don't install extra drivers. it works just fine without them.

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Posted on 07-23-2006, 11:27 PM

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This is a great guide. Wish I had found it when I was trying this out on a friends Dell.

One question though, I plan on using a shared partition (ext3) for all my music/video/data and using fs-driver to mount as ext2 in Windows. I saw that md2 can search for media on your hdd, any chance that it will be able to read the ext3 partition after its mounted in Windows?

If no one knows/replies by the time I start experimenting, I'll report back my findings.

Thanks!

Last edited by sp4zzj4zz : 07-23-2006 at 11:31 PM.

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davs

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Posted on 07-23-2006, 11:35 PM

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that's a good idea. hadn't thought about it . but if you get the task manager into the md2 partition, you can easily install the ext2/ext3 fs-driver. i'm not sure if it will search hard drivers other than the normal windows one, but you'll surely be able to navigate to that disk and browse from there.

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Posted on 07-24-2006, 10:04 AM

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Well...it looks like I'm SOL. FS-Driver will install perfectly fine, but refuses to see the the two ext3 [primary(/), extended(/home & swap)] partitions. Here's a screenie...

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9559/ifskc3.png

I'm wondering if maybe it has something to do with those partitions not being created untill after the md2 installation was complete and the partition locked.

I really don't feel like reformating the shared partition...so I'll keep searching for some sort of workaround to be able access all music/video on the ext3 partition.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears.

Last edited by sp4zzj4zz : 07-24-2006 at 10:55 AM.

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Posted on 07-24-2006, 10:58 AM

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be careful with partitions. Windows cannot read or write to ext3. The only file format supported by both operating systems is FAT32. And Windows has some trouble reading FAT32 drives over 30something GB's.

In my opinion - don't dual boot. Its really a lot of work with the file systems. This is a good guide though.

If you are curious about linux, set up your desktop with ubuntu, fedora, whatever and use windows on your laptop.

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Posted on 07-24-2006, 11:57 AM

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Hehe. While I am certainly still quite new to *nix and am always learning, as everyone should be, there's a couple of mistakes in your post.

Actually, Ext2 IFS ( http://www.fs-driver.org/ ) allows full read/write access to ext2 and ext3 (mounted as ext2, hence, no journaling) in Windows. I've been using it for quite some time on my desktop with XP and Gentoo and so far I've had no problems at all with it.

As far as dual booting goes, yes, you're right, the safest route doesnt involve 2 OS's. Although, I think for any somewhat experienced user they should be fine as long as they do some research.

My e1505 is doing great with triple boot (md2, XP MCE, Kubuntu) right now, my only problem is that i was hoping that the fs-driver would recognize my ext3 partitions when installed on the md2 partition.

Eventually, I'll find a workaround...or I'll have to resort back to GPartEd sometime down the road. Although, I'm curious how Ext2 IFS would react if i created the linux partitions before the md2 partition was locked/protected.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback.

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davs

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Posted on 07-24-2006, 09:29 PM

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why don't you try some other ext3 driver for windows? since i don't have the need for the ext3 partition to be constantly mounted, when i want to access files , i use http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs

see if you can access the partition from that program. its just an executable. if you can, that's a start. i think the problem is related to the fs-driver itself rather than the order in which the filesystems were created. anyway, let us know if the explore2fs works.

*edit*
this site also has a link to a windows driver for ext2. from what i understand, as with fs-driver, you need to mount the ext3 partition as ext2, which would disable journaling, but should work fine for reading files. read the faq on ext2fsd.

Last edited by davs : 07-25-2006 at 09:13 AM.

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Posted on 07-26-2006, 10:45 PM

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I tried both of the tools you suggested, davs, to no avail. None of them acknowledge the existance of any partitions besides the two ntfs. They all report back as unpartitioned free space.

All in all its not a huge deal. For right now, the only partition that I'm the least bit worried about keeping is WinXP, as I'll need it for school this August. The data on the shared partition can easily be backed up to one of my externals, and the linux parts can be tinkered with to my hearts delight.

As a matter of fact, I may even be doing another(!) install of Ubuntu sooner than later. Im using KDE now, and wanted XFCE also, so I decided to give it a try using 'aptitude install xubuntu-desktop' and that didnt work out too well. All programs launched outside of the terminal, in xfce wm, pop open for a split second and close themselves out within a blink of an eye. LOL I dunno, maybe I'll just go back to trusty old Fluxbox...

Anyways, if i figure anything else out I'll be sure to report back here to document it for anyone else, should they encounter the same issues.

Last edited by sp4zzj4zz : 07-26-2006 at 10:56 PM.

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Posted on 07-27-2006, 05:39 PM

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How about this http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ ?? It goes the other way. You could make the shared partition NTFS. I haven't tried it yet but I'm setting up a box to give it a go.

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Posted on 07-27-2006, 07:59 PM

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i tried it out recently and seemed to work fine for small files, and overwriting files. i had trouble with creating large files (350 or 700 mb), which is obviously a problem if i want to save a tv show or movie. let us know how it works for you.

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Posted on 04-14-2007, 05:57 AM

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Is there anyway of installing codecs on mediadirect without going throught the whole formatting and install of xp and md2??
Or is that just wishful thinking??

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