Guide to install media direct 3 & vista

You will have to boot from the Mediadirect 3 dvd and allow it to format and create the partitons.
Once Vista is installed go straight to "Control Panel" and open "User Accounts and Family Safety" then into "User Accounts" and TURN OFF "User Access Control" from here and reboot when asked.

Once rebooted put the MD3 DVD in the drive and CANCEL the automatic install (Press ESC to cancel)

Explore the DVD and go into the folder called "DELLKIT" and right click on the file called "DELLKIT.EXE" and select "Run As Administrator". This will then bring up the same install screen for MD3 and hit Enter. This should now let you install MD3 into Vista with no problems and now REMOVE THE DVD from the system.

Shutdown the system.

Press the MD button on your system and it should boot Dell MediaDirect and runs its "First Time Setup" screen.

Reboot again and then load Vista and lauch MediaDirect for Windows and goto the "Settings" option to
configure the folders you want to use for Music, Video etc...

To reinstall the utility partiton you ill have to download the utility upgrade from dell and install from Windows using admin rights or from a Windows live cd if you have problems. You can you Barts PE cd and you wont get any errors then.

This should get it sorted for you.

p.s id love some rep

Doughy

 

Ps I am giving you some rep and thanks for the guide

 

Great, I accidentally deleted MD3 while messing with Linux.

So I formatted with the MD3 disc and restored my Vista partition with ghost. But to get it to boot again, I had to let Vista repair it's start sequence. Now I keep getting that the disc isn't prepaired correctly. Sadness

 

I did all the steps a while ago, but now the mediadirect button (while in windows) does not work. And when trying to press the button while the system is off, the mediadirect logo shows for a few second then boots to windows. Does this mean i have to format everything and do all steps from the beginning?? thanx.

 

Have you tried the repair utility?

 

maybe that ghost is overwriting the mbr on your hard drive. or maybe you might have to start from scratch. i cant be sure whats wrong as ive not experienced it.

 

Well, I finally got it to work. I had to format with MD3, restore my partitions, run ghstwalk.exe and let it fix the partitions, boot my Vista DVD and tell it to repair the installation. If I skipped even one of those steps, it always failed. Weird. Workign now though! This would all be fixed if ghose could backup my MD3 partition, but it always gives an error. I can only ghost my "normal" partitions, not the whole disc.

 

Do we get the MD3 disc with our 6400s? I don't know if I got one with mine. I'll have to check today. If I didn't can Dell send me one for free? I recently wiped my Vista and Recovery partitions and recreated 2 70GB partitions. Should I remove the Mediadirect partition and let the utility recreate this?

And does anyone have a link to download the Mediadirect 3 utility software?

 

is there a repair utility for MD3?? I know there is one for MD2...?!

 

Do not use the MD2 Repair Utility on MD3, you will only make things worse. I noticed that every time I repartitioned my M1210 I required 2 DVDs to get things working correctly. The MediaDirect 3 reinstallation DVD and the PowerDVD 9.0 DVD.