Disappointed with XP media center edition.....

on my new E1705. It's also buggy when trying to shut down. Several program not responding errors. Should I wait for the free Vista home premium upgrade or get a copy of XP pro and then upgrade to the business edition or do a fresh clean install of Vista? Thanks.

 

Check out the Dell reformatting guide for help. I'm guessing that you didn't do a fresh install when you got the laptop. Trust me...bloatware has to go for your laptop to work the way it should.

What are some of the programs that are hanging?

 

Try formatting your computer clean without all the preloaded Dell junk.

 

I'll agree with the reformatting comment--part of the reason dell is able to sell their notebooks for such low prices is the amount of crapware they preload. XP MCE is basically XP Pro with the ability to join a domain removed and the media features added.

reformatting link

 

wait, so is MCE is better than pro?

 

As long as you don't need domain based networking (and who does besides corporations), MCE offers the most features. I personally like the Media Center TV functionality.

But in most respects, they are about equal.

 

It really is just a preference thing. If you are into media, then MCE is better. If you aren't, then XPP is better. They are both the same core system though so it is just a difference with the addons/extras as Night suggested.

 

Okay, thanks. One more thing, when I create the 40GB partition, can I make it exactly 40GB? That's what I did and XP sees it as 37GB (approx) while my partitioning proigram sees it as 40GB..

 

Use this for the size: 40 * 1024 = 40,960 MB.

Are you sure the 27GB isn't just the available space?

 

Night 2004, Sorry I entered 27MB and then saw my error and changed it to 37MB.

Thank-you for the conversion. I've decided to reformat. (sometime soon)

Southern Girl, how large does the diag partition need to be if I want to have media direct on it? (I usually keep my data in 3 partitions however I may have to change that or just not use mediaDirect and not run diagnostics from the pc) I know Dell does offer an ISO version of diag that can be put on a cd.

 

Depends on when you ordered your laptop. If you bought between now and last Oct., then you'll have MD 3.0. You don't have to have the diagnostics partition for MD. All you need is the media direct partition. Problem is that it is in between your xp partition and you restore partition, so you can't just merge all of the unpartitition space together and then create your partitions. You have to request the Media Direct reinstallation disc, and it will create the necessary MD partition. If you do this, you might as well wait until you get the reinstallation disc cause you'll have to format.

Now if you ordered your laptop before October, chances are that you have MD 2.0 . For MD 2.0, the easiest is to keep the diagnostics partition, but you can delete all of the partitions after that. MD 2.0 is located on a hidden part of your drive so you won't see it, but it is there.

Does that help any? Yes, you can run the diagnostics from the disc. Personally, it is such a small amount of space (47mb i think), that it isn't going to effect your system one way or the other.

 

I received my laptop a week ago and it came with a MediaDirect 3 re-installation disk. I agree that 47MB is a tiny amount of space and I don't want a restore partition anyway so can I have the 47MB partition and the C partition only? If this is possible then the way I understand it is that I can only create 2 more partitions.

 

You can create up to 4 partitions in XP, but of course 1 must be your XP partition.

You aren't required to have the diagnostics or MediaDirect partition, but if you are interested in MediaDirect, then you'll have to have a separate partition for it.

Does that help any?

 

Yes it does. Thank-you. Do you know what software applications MediaDirect needs to work correctly?

 

It use to be Dell Quickset which can be downloaded was the only requirement. Some users have had difficulty with the dvd playback, so I recommend to use Cyberlink PowerDVD which is suppose to work with it by default. You can request this from Dell's Tech Support - they'll send it to you for free. As for the music part, it uses WMP 9.0 or higher versions I believe. As far as I know, there is no additional software required.

 

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks.

 

Yeah, I'd rather have Windows XP Pro, but, MCE is not so bad that I really care.

I'll never use the MCE feature, and they add a process or two to the computer, mostly schedulers and stuff like that.

It does seem to be sort of crappy on shutdown in comparision to my experience with XP Pro.

But, like I said, it's pretty minor, I'm ok enough with it that I'll keep using it.