I'm going to do something risky........

I had lots of problem removing Dell media Direct partition and after all after pressing the button i still boot somewhere which is not c:\ and i see BSoD..so im going to do the following based Kossel thread about booting unbuntu with dell media direct key..i want the MD button behave as normal power button...

Now i dont know what should i enter for Y Z becuase i didnt install any grub Since i only have 3 partition on my HD, im going try 3 combination until one works. starting 1,2,3.
under windows disk management i have
1.10 gig utlity
2.Vista
3.3rd parition for back uo

The Question is IS IT POSSIBLE? would it harm anything on my system like MBR????

 

It looks quite possible. The media direct button just accesses a certain partition. If that partition has Ubuntu on it then it should "theoretically" book Ubuntu. I would be interested to see how this works for you.

 

Don't do it. I tried the same thing, thinking I had little to loose by experimenting, but I effectively disabled my computer. I had unknowingly used the wrong combination of partition numbers, and when I tried to fix the master boot record, Windows would not boot from either of the buttons.

Before doing this, be sure what partition numbers you are dealing with.

 

i want the MD button behave as normal power button so Y and Z should be same

Pixel: couldnt you redo the process with another #

 

Not if you can't boot into Windows.

 

Can't you fix it back the way it was with the Media Direct CD?

 

Perhaps. But I didn't try; my MD partition was deleted anyway, so I don't know what the disk would do....

 

when you bought the laptop, there was also a cd-rom named media direct cd 3.3 and the dell rmbr.exe is one the cd, so if i mess up i can just boot up from the cd and the run it again,,besides i have acronis disk director boot up disk and if something goes wrong i can boot up from that and change the active partition...
Right?

 

Well, you can give it a go. Be sure to tell us what happens!

 

Oh dear.... no post yet... RIP

Seriously if you have an update I'd also be interested in how you got on.

 

i'm still researching, i've used some third party MBR viwers like MBRwiz.exe and i got very confusing result...aparently my MD buton boot the whole dish not one partition,, WTF does ha mean i don't know,,,,i'll keep this updated,,

 

I just deleted my MD partition on my Vostro 1500 yesterday and saw your thread today. Let me summarize how I did

1- Uninstalled MD from Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs (I have Windows XP)
2- Formatted the MD partition from Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management with NTFS
3- Deleted the MD partition
4- Downloaded the latest GParted (GNU Partition Editor) Live ISO from this link and burned the CD
5- booted with the CD and expanded the main partition to its maximum size using gparted

If you are running Vista steps 4 and 5 are not needed you can do the partition expansion in Disk Management.

Now when I press the MD button computer boots to Windows. Hope this helps.

 

@imar3l

So you haven't done anything drastic yet?

@mrg666

That sounds interesting. Hmmm. What does your power button do? Do they both boot Windows?

 

When I press the MD button while the computer is off, it shows a splash screen of Dell Media Direct for a moment but Windows starts to boot immediately after that. After Windows boot completes, system gives an error message complaining that it could not find Media Direct and recommending to reinstall (yeah right ). I click OK and system is ready to use. There is another thread here on NBR to start the Web browser using the MD button while in Windows. It works great for me.

 

And what does the power button do?

 

@ mrg666 : thats exactly what i did a month ago, but still when i press MD i see MD screen and then the loading of media direct(those b&w bars) and then blue screen and then i should restart and restart again (2-3 times) until i can boot to windows.
i attached some pic..

 

Power button still does the same thing as before

 

I am looking at your partition configuration and I see that the main windows partition is between two other partitions. I had three partitions

1- Dell maintenance partition (I did not touch this one)
2- Main Windows partition
3- Media Direct partition

I merged the partitions 2 and 3. Windows was booting from partition 2 and is still booting from partition 2.

Your problem might be due to following: when you merge partitions 1, 2, and 3, Windows can not find partition 2 to boot. I think you can resolve the problem by marking the new merged partition 1 as "bootable" and "active" with the software you use for repartitioning. And, also reconfigure the Vista boot settings before doing all these. See the following link to see how to do it in Vista. If you were using XP you only had to edit boot.ini.

I hope these help, but be careful and do a backup first before doing anything else since you can still boot even after several trials.

 

tanx.
I think MD deafult boots from partition 2 and luckily when you merged the partitions your vista became partition 2...Look @ the pic with MBR, is totally messed up. I need my system right now and i wont risk anything, it running fine....maybe by the end of next week i try it and if it doest work, i put in the MD cd and boot up from it, delete everything and create single partition which would fix this problem..

 

Good luck! and keep us (I mean who are interested like me) posted.