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    How many people had success with...

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by FFZERO, Oct 30, 2006.

  1. FFZERO

    FFZERO Notebook Evangelist

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    How many people had success with the short MediaDirect repair? You know, leaving the 46-48 mb dell diagnostics when formating? My e1505 is coming soon or so I hope (credit card need to be approved) and I am planning to do an OS reinstallation. I don't want to mess up my new laptop as I did with the previous one (same laptop).

    I had a blue screen stating that I have a faulty driver. Before repairing Media Direct, I deleted all the partition (bad mistake), reformat, and left the partition that the repair utility's created. After getting everything back to normal (installing drivers, software, and window updates), I decided to repair the Media Direct after thinking about it. The system work flawless with the exception with Media Direct.

    The partition that the repair ultilty created was the first one on the list and the XP's was the second.This was my 5th time reinstalling the OS as I alway get a ATA error before booting.

    After repairing (my XP drive was E if that matter), the dell symantec repair kick in automatically which lead to the blue screen and I cannot reinstall the OS or go into Safe Mode afterward. However, my hard drive was still good (technician check it out for me). I return the laptop after explaining the blue screen incident. Thanks.
     
    FFZERO, Oct 30, 2006
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  2. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    You shouldn't have any problems as long as you leave the diagnostics partition. The only thing I can think of that might have been causing your errors is the number of partitions. I think the maximum number of partitions allowed with MD is 4 including your XP and diagnostics partition.
     
    Amber, Oct 30, 2006
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  3. vespoli

    vespoli 402 NBR Reviewer

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    It worked for me, multiple times.
     
    vespoli, Oct 30, 2006
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  4. otakuoverlord

    otakuoverlord Notebook Evangelist

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    Are you reinstalling from the recovery disc or an actual XP disc? If it's the latter, you may need to force-feed the installer a SATA driver for that hard drive so it can install properly...
     
    otakuoverlord, Oct 31, 2006
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  5. extra-ordinary_guy

    extra-ordinary_guy Notebook Consultant

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    What he said.
     
    extra-ordinary_guy, Oct 31, 2006
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  6. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    Dell only sends the XP disc (OEM) now, and SATA hasn't been an issue for anyone that I know of. Most users that have SATA drives, follow the guide and install the drivers after XP has been installed with no trouble at all.
     
    Amber, Oct 31, 2006
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  7. otakuoverlord

    otakuoverlord Notebook Evangelist

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    Well I installed XP Pro on my Dimension 8400 from a full disc, and had to give the install a floppy with the SATA drivers on it for everything to work properly. It was weird because before I fed it the SATA driver it would get into the install process just fine but I'd get a similar ATA error when I went to reboot.

    According to Dell, that shouldn't have been happening. Go figure?
     
    otakuoverlord, Oct 31, 2006
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  8. FFZERO

    FFZERO Notebook Evangelist

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    Southern Girl, I only had two partition at the time. The ATA error occur when I even had only the XP partition which would make sence as the boot code is written into the XP partition itself which may cause confusion with the system.

    But if you say it will work then i will give it another try when my laptop arrive. I wanted to confirm its success before ruining the laptop again. Thanks.
     
    FFZERO, Oct 31, 2006
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  9. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    MD should repair easily with no problems as long as the diagnostics partition is there.

    As for the SATA/ATA issues, I'm not really sure what is going on. With SATA, you are suppose to load the drivers, but I've done 100+ walk throughs in formatting in the past 6 months, and all of the ones with SATA, loaded the drivers afterwards with no problems at all. I can't really explain the errors :-/
     
    Amber, Oct 31, 2006
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