HELP!! Stuck in media direct bootup screen

I just bought a new xps m1530

I got rid of vista, deleted all the dell partitions and installed xp pro following what i read in this forum.

Everything has been running great until this morning when i clicked the mediadirect button instead of the on switch.

This resulted in booting up through mediadirect, which appears to be installed in the bios. It tries to build the dell mediadirect files....which it can't and throughs the error ... cannot access your hard drive. i then click exit....it attempts to do something else and then shuts the computer down.

so basically i can't get into windows and am stuck in this mediadirect loop of trying to install and then shutting down.

does anyone have any ideas of how to bypass the mediadirect crap... thought about clearing the cmos but dont really know how to do that.

any help would be great.
thanks

 

Woah. Can't you just push the Power button instead of MediaDirect? I'm slightly confused at your problem here.

 

Sometimes pushing the Media Direct button again makes it boot normally again, acting sort of like a toggle.
Sometimes you just got a bad mess.

Did you delete the hidden partitions before installing XP?

 

It's not in the BIOS but in another partition on your hard drive. If you press your MediaDirect button, you will likely boot back into your operating system just fine. After you do that, just insert your MediaDirect installation cd in and run it. It will install back into that original MediaDirect partition and should fix your problem. After it is done, reboot and all should be well again.

 

wow....can't believe i didn't try that. i pushed the media direct button again and it toggled back to windows.

you know what. i think it is on the bios, because when i installed xp pro, i deleted all the dell mediadirect partitions.....

anyways...do you know how to get rid of this mediadirect crap

 

Not sure exactly how to remove it. I'm pretty sure it's on a partition, because that's what it says in the manual. It might be hidden since that partition is typically create first before you actually load windows. I would try to fix it.. reinstall MediaDirect (by running the disc within Windows) and then uninstall it. You can probably remove the partition easily with something like Partition Magic. I'm not sure what that MediaDirect button will do after you remove the partition though... let us know what you find out.

 

Thanks this thread saved me my fiancee pushed the media direct button on accident.

 

I believe it's a hidden partition but I'm sure there's something hardcoded somewhere that tells the computer to read that partition when the media direct button is pressed.

 

LOVE YA PEOPLE!!!!!! Thanks heaps! I was about to throw my laptop out of the window ...

 

Eh, never had this problem, but I know how it feels to have something drastic fixed.

 

Its not in bios.. there's a hidden partition on the harddrive.. that partition is setup by the media direct cd... If you want the mediadirect button to work properly, you'll need to install windows using the media direct cd first.. since that sets the partitions..

 

I just formatted my m1530 laptop, and reinstalled windows vista, mediadirect, and fedora 10.. After many reformats, i got vista and fedora 10 to work.. but, can't get mediadirect to do anything..

I'm hoping to get a hold of the new media direct 4.. which doesn't need its own partitions, etc...

 

I recommend you also try to get media direct 4.. search the forums and you'll find another thread discussing it..