Media Direct Repair not working for me. Need some help!

I kept the 39mb FAT Partition when i reformated my Dell e1505 from xp home to windows media center and i made the cd with burning the image. but when i put my disc in to boot after press f12 it loads something but goes to F:/ and then i dont know what to do. any ideas?

 

When you get to this point type cd\md2 and press Return, then type repair and press Return and after a few seconds it will say done. Now turn it off and press the MediaDirect button and it should boot into MediaDirect.

 

thanks alot worked great.

 

I tried the Media Direct repair on my E1505 after upgrading the HD and running GHOST on it. The 3rd partition is still there (isn't this one the Media direct partition), but when I press the Media Direct button, the notebook comes on, and boots Windows XP, then launches Media Center. I ran the repair (as above) with no errors, but still boots to Windows when I press Media Direct button.

Any help or ideas?

Thanks!

 

Just to make sure.... Did you replace the original hard drive and then Ghost back????

The 'upgrading' comment has implications...

Mark

 

I removed the original, GHOSTED the old drive to the new drive, and installed the new drive into my E1505. The ghosting was performed in a Dell Desktop from a bootable USB key that has the "DOS" version of GHOST.

 

The MediaDirect Repair utility will not work on your new hard drive. You must use the MediaDirect Reinstallation utility.

This is because your new drive does not have the MediaDirect files [at least not yet]. On your original drive the files were located in a special 'reserved' space on the hard drive called a host-protected area [HPA]. The ghost opertion did not capture this segment of the hard drive.

A Reinstallation will create a conventional partition on your new drive to hold the MediaDirect files.

You're going to have to move some things around a bit in order to get the reinstall to work as your present configuration probably does not have the necessary unallocated hard drive space in order for the repair to create the MediaDirect partition.

Probably the simplest way to create the necessary space is to delete the Restore partition [or use something like Partition Magic to resize/move your partitions].

This thread will help explain a little more....

Mark

 

Well, I thought I had everything correct, you see...I made sure that AFTER the GHOSTing, I checked the partitions on the new hard drive, and sure enough, there was a third partition (first was DELL utility, second was my DATA partition, and last was a hidden partition). They were all there, and the hidden was the last partition at the end of the drive. I figured the repair should work. But, since the partition is there at the end, maybe reinstalling the Media Direct software is all it takes. Thanks.

 

Well that third 'hidden' partition is the Dell Restore partition and not MediaDirect.

You can't leave the Restore partition where it is. It either has to be deleted or otherwise moved out of the way before you run the reinstall. The Reinstallation utility needs 1.5GB of free, unallocated, upartitioned space sitting after all other partitions on the drive. The utility will make a partition in that free space as one of its steps during the reinstall. If there is no space available, it will fail...

Good Luck


Mark

 

I was flicking through the manual today and on page 49 there is a note that says MediaDirect will not work if Dell QuickSet isn't installed. Both times I've done a clean install I had already installed QuickSet before repairing MediaDirect without knowing this.