Media Direct on Dell e1505

There has been so many people who have had problems getting the Media Direct to work after completely wiping out and repartitioning their hard drives.

My laptop came with 50 meg partition, a 3GB partition, and a 90GB partition. The OS is loaded on the 90GB partition. If I wipe out just the 90GB partition, reformat, and reinstall windows, will Media Direct work after that?

Thanks.

 

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you will have to run the repair utility. See post #238 on http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=40902&page=24

 

You want to delete both the 90GB and 3GB partitions. The 3GB is the ghost partition, its contains a full image of everything you see now. This includes XP and all of Dell's bloatware.

Then do a quick format of all the remaining space. Install XP. At the end of the XP install, you'll get a 30 min banner: Installing Applications, Do NOT touch this.

Now to get MD back, boot from the MD repair CD you made from the download. This CD is functionally identical to a bootable floppy. It will give you a DOS prompt. Follow the directions. It takes less than 5 sec for the repair. MD is now working!!!

Hermit

 

thank you so very much

 

I've got another, hopefully easy, question concerning the partitions on my E1505. I've got a 100 GB hard drive and using Partition Magic's PatitionInfo utility I seem to have the following (GBs are approx):

C (NTFS) - 89 GB (I know what this is)

*.DellUtility - 39.2 MB - I'm assuming this is the one I need to NOT change due to MediaDirect.

Unallocated - 7.8 MB

CP/M. Concurrent DOS. CTOS - 4.5 GB - I assume this is the "bloatware", MCE, etc to return my E1505 to shipping state.

Unallocated - 7.8 MB

Does anyone know the reason for the 2 - 7.8 MB unallocated partitions? I know it's not a lot of disk space, but am curious why they are there at all and if I can simply combine them with the 4.5 GB and 89 partitions.

Thanks.

 

Others have said it is related to some extra 'breathing room' needed if you use dynamic disks. Sounds reasonable....

But dunno for sure myself...

Mark

 

It is standard for XP systems. Think most of us call it filler space.

 

Thanks for posting this, a little more info. CTOS, yet anoter Disk Operating System . . . there is no end to them.

As to the 7.8MB spaces, Mark is as correct as any explanation. When you delete C: and the 4.5GB ghost partition, then the 7.8's will be absorbed into the total unallocated space. BUT, when you repartition they will reappear at the rate of N-1, where N is the number of partitions.

The Dell utility is a much bigger mystery. While I don't believe MediaDirect will fit into 40MB, I do believe if you delete that partition you'll move into MD hell.

Hermit