The quest to watch Bleach from the MediaDirect Button and searching the forums for answers to no avail has lead me to write this tutorial. I hope that someone finds it useful. If this has already been written, chock it up to the inability to search correctly and masicistic love of destroying software until I get it right

Speaking of destroying software make sure you go into this venture with a clear head and backup any files you are going to touch before altering. Nothing kills a buzz faster than the sudden realization that you just inacted the weekly reloading of your OS....

What you will need:

1. A tasty libation.
2. Most importantly, you will need a copy of MD3UTILS.EXE. This miraculous file basically will let you mount and unmount the MEDIADIRECT partion at will. It is located on the root of the MediaDirect DVD as well as the \DELLKIT folder of said disk. If you are looking for said disk, you can pull it down from your local bittorrent site, grocer's freezer, or any ACE, True Value, or Home Depot. If nothing else, I hear if you use your naughty voice that you may even get Dell to mail you one.
   *UPDATE*: A copy of MD3UTILS.EXE has been uploaded HERE
3. Taskmgr.exe is another useful file, and needed for this. You'll find it in your \windows\system32 folder. During the course of my trial and error, I grabbed a cracked version of TaskMgr.exe that basically ignores the registry entries to disable it. After extensively searching the MD registry, I feel rather confident that this isn't needed. Just in case, you can pick it up HERE.
4. Turn on the ability to view hidden files, folders and system files. This can be accomplished by opening Explorer and going to Tools | Folder Options. Navigate over to the View tab, select the "Show hidden files and folders" option and unselect "Hide protected operating system files".
5. Finally you will need storage media of some sort. In my example I am going to use a usb drive, but I would venture a guess that your normal partions would probably be fine since they are visible in the MediaDirect shell. Still, come packing heat just in case my guess turns out to be moronic.

How to do it:

1. I am going to go out on a limb and say you know how to consume item 1, so we'll skip ahead to the work at hand. Pop your Dell MediaDirect v3 disk into your drive and copy off the MD3UTILS.EXE. For ease, and to allow me to type more wittless banter, I am going to say throw it on the root C:\
2. From the Run command (Start | Run) type in:
   C:\MD3UTILS.EXE /mapmd3
   This will mount the MEDIADIRECT partition to the first available letter on your machine. Take note of this letter so that we can unmount the drive at completion of this task.
3. You should now be able to see the MediaDirect drive. Open it up, look for a hidden file called hibernate.sys and delete the sucker. This will force the os to reload our changes and allow for new files to be installed.
4. Take your taskmgr.exe and copy it to \windows\system32, then right click and select properties. You want to set the file to read only to get it to prompt you to delete. I have had the file just disappear off the partiion and have the sneaking suspicion that one of the processes is making a meal out of it.
5. Browse to the \Program Files\Dell\MediaDirect folder and rename the file BGDismount.exe to something less executable such as BGDismount.ex_.
6. Now we are ready to unmount the drive. Go back to the Run command and Type in:
   C:\MD3UTILS.EXE /UNMAPMD3=?:
   where ? is the letter of the drive that I spoke of noting in step 2.
7. Shut the computer down, and relaunch it from the MediaDirect button. You will note that it takes a little bit longer than normal to boot due to the fact that it is not launching from the hibernate.sys file. In a few seconds, you will see the familiar windows blueish background/desktop color. At the point hit ctrl-alt-del to bring up taskmanager. It is important to pull this off before the MediaDirect shell launches and get's on top.
   
8. Now that you have the Task Manager open, have a field day. Go to File | New Task and type in explorer.exe. This will launch the file browser, which in turn will allow you to browse out to your usb drive, local hard drive or where ever and fill this partiton full of codecs, viruses, porn popups and all the other vices that Dell was trying to protect it from in the first place.
9. Close out, boot back up into whendows and remount your drive (step 2). Browse to the \Program Files\Dell\MediaDirect folder and rename the file BGDismount.exe to something more executable such as BGDismount.exe.
10. Unmount your drive (step 6) and that should be it.

Good luck, and if you have any questions, make sure to ask them in the forum. This ensures that everyone learns from the questions asked and can take cracks at each others intelligence. PM's to me will be ignored due to the fact I am functionally illiterate and more importantly am going to go watch Scrubs.

Thanks for the guide, i havent got md3 installed at the moment but when i do this will be of great help.

Can this same process, with MD3UTILS.EXE be used to modify a MediaDirect 2.0 partition?

Can you upload a copy of MD3UTILS.exe to megaupload either way. I'm trying to download MD3dvd but it's going at <1kbps....

Guide has been updated with a Megaupload link to MD3UTILS.EXE

For, vista, there are some differents :
- it isn't possible to mount the MEDIADIRECT partition to the first available letter on your machine. The only solution is to use an existant partition (for me I try the recovery parition d:\) : md3utils.exe /mapmd3=d:
- hibernate.sys doesn't exit. The file to delete is hiberfil.sys on vista.
- taskmgr is already in windows\system32 but its name is taskmgr.ex_
It is just necessary to rename it to taskmgr.exe
- and the most important : to launch taskmanager on vista => press control-shift-escape.

For me, it is good.

(excuse me for my bad english)

This is good what you have written here, but there is one thing!
You all suppose that people can easily access this hidden Dell partition which contains MediaDirect 3, but in fact how can you do it??? None of the solutions above worked for me since the partiotn cannot be mounted even with the above isntruction for Vista. In my case I am having Vista ultimate, Ubuntu 7 and MD3. I did not bother myself finding some kind of software that would allow me to browser MD3 partition. Instead I went directly to Linux, and guess what Ubuntu 7 can see that partition and it is fully accessible for reading and writing. I just renamed taks manager from .ex_ to .exe and delted this hiberfil.sys files which was more that 700mb. So I turn my Dell of, and pressed MD button, and it was loaded normally and with familiar cltr-alt-del I got Taskmanager. Next step was to install K-lite 3 pack from DVD-R, and everything was working.
I suppose people are messing with MD for one reason, when you boot it you can watch videos and listen to mp3 and battery, for instance during the trip does not go very quickly in comparison with booting Vista. Am I right at this point??? This is especially relevant when your Dell is having one of those 9cell batteries which really make life easier for me.
So maybe the next step is to install some word file viewer, so I could read during my journey. Maybe acrobat reader. Do you recon it is worth of trying?????????????????

thanks, installed k-lite on 1710-vista 32-bit.

More use of the mediadirect now.

Regarding the mediadirect partition, its much simpler to use Ext2IFS_1_10c.exe
http://www.fs-driver.org/

in vista install it in winxp sp2 compatibility and as admin.

during install youll see the partitions, and an unnamed 2GB. Select a drive letter for it.

Now its available in vista, named MEDIADIRECT. Thats all.

leave it or uninstall it from ad\remove, it doesnt matter

omg! Thanks so much!!! This is exactly what I needed. Now I can get media direct to play all codecs and read off my ext3 linux drive!!!
Your effort is greatly appreciated.

I know this has probably been addressed before but the whole point of mediadirect is to boot quicker? I doubt I'd have a substantial difference in battery life.

Hi there,

Could anyone please help me solve the following problem?
Let me, first of all, inform you that I actually step by step followed the instructions put on one of the threads of this forum in order to install MediaDirect 3 with Windows Vista. Indeed, it worked perfectly! But then something went wrong when I recently ran a wrong upgrade/patch for my Dell printer 924 that I downloaded from the Dell's website in order to make my printer work with Vista. In fact, the upgrade/patch messed up with MediaDirect 3 and removed it from Windows. Now, the MediaDiect 3 botton is still working if I press the MediaDirect button when my laptop is turned off but MediaDirect 3 is not working anymore in Windows! I mean MediaDirect 3 is not opening anymore if I press the MediaDirect button or if I click on the MediaDirect icon on my desktop when my laptop is turned on!
As a matter of fact, I tried a system restore but it didn't help! And when I also tried to re-install MediaDirect 3 for Windows by running 'DELLKIT.EXE' after exploring the MediaDirect 3 DVD and after opening the folder 'DELLKIT' inside, I got a message saying 'MediaDirect is already installed on your PC. Please click Esc to exit'!
Do you have any idea about how I eventually can repair it and make it work again when the system is turned on i.e. with Windows Vista?

Thanks in advance and kind regards,

peteriiino

N.B. Additional information on the printer upgrade/patch I mentioned above.
The link is:
http://support.dell.com/support/down...&fileid=224502

I need to ask, if anyone could help me in that.
I tried every bit of the above steps. But the problem I am facing is that I cannot find the Hibernate.sys.

I am using Windows XP Home Edition.
Have 6400 Inspiron.
Thanks in advance.

Shakaib, I think your problem is that you don't have hidden files and folders switched on. What you need to do is in explorer, go to Tools | Folder Option... Select the view tab, scroll down to "Hidden Files and folders" and click "Show hidden files and folders". Click Ok, take a swig from item 1.

Well that I made sure during the process that the files are all unhide.
Still the problem was there.
Kindly if you can or anyone who faced the same problem.
Thanks

Ok, try ignoring the delete the Hibernate.sys step and keep going. If that doesn't work, I don't have any other ideas.