Media Direct, Vista Clean Install, 2 Hard Drives - Help?

I got my 1720 yesterday and it has 2 160GB hard drives.

First thing I want to do is install Vista Ultimate cleanly. I want Media Direct to work afterwards if possible.

First things first, I'd describe my level of computer savvy as superuser/expert/developer/programmer etc. I'm not an idiot, but this thing is being a *****.

I followed the instruction to have the MD3 disc setup partitions for Windows and MD3 on one of the disks.

It seems to have done this on the secondary hard disk though (Disk1) and not the primary (Disk0).

I install Vista Ultimate problem free on the same physical disk as MD3. Installation is quick and incident free, it reboots and I get:

BOOTMGR is missing.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot.

After doing this about 4 times, trying Vista installs on both physical disks, and Vista installs with no MD3 partition, I finally set the BIOS to boot off the secondary drive and that fixes it.

So I start over, have the MD3 disc setup the partitions, reinstall Vista, and it boots up fine. But it's on the secondary disk. Oh well, no biggy. Who cares.

I finish MD3 install in Windows (along with all other drivers, quickset, etc) and it hangs at 99%. It never finishes. If I try to reinstall it tells me it's already installed. If I try to launch MD from the power off state, it comes up with an MD splash screen and just hangs. No error message, just nothing.

Also, my second hard disk (D (which is really Disk0) won't let me format it, won't let me resize it or make new logical drives on it. Kind of strange. It works for storing files, but it won't let me do any disk management tasks on it. Just a weird thing I thought I'd mention.

So I'm about to start all over. I'd like to get MD3 and Windows on Disk0 as it should be, and be able to manage my secondary disk. The MD3 options when setting up partitions are very limited, and I can't figure out how to make it setup the right physical disk.

Any ideas? Anyone have a system with 2 HD's that's done this?

 

Anyone? Bueller?

 

Does this help?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=54366

 

Not really.

I don't need information on how to do it. It came with instructions. My case is unique because I have two physical hard drives and it's not working.

 

are you trying to raid them? it doesn't sound as if you are, so pull the secondary drive temporarily and install everything then reinstall secondary drive and that should take care of the problem. best i can give with no system to work with like that.

 

but i do have to ask why in god's name aren't you raiding them?

 

go into the bios and make sure that they boot disk is set to the Second Disk. Its most likely set to boot from the first disk. If you decide to format and reinstall vista again, make sure you select the correct disk, I bet you vista chose the wrong disk

 

@Liquidx - Pretty sure it doesn't support hardware RAID.

@dicecca112 - As I said, I've tried installing on every partition on every disk. There is no "correct disk" to install Windows on. The problem is MD3 doesn't account for there being 2 disks in a system and doesn't like it.

 

are you serious? They give you a dual disk system, I am 99% sure is sata, and they dont even give a raid controller? How stupid is that?

Other then that, my first suggestion is the only thing I can think of for you to do that should solve your problem. Good luck!

 

I have the exact same system, and Liquidx's solution -- pulling the second hard drive -- was the way I got through reinstallation. The problem is with the SATA driver... When you install the driver during the Windows install (which is after the MediaDirect "preparation"), the drive order goes a bit squirrelly if you have both drives plugged in. Pulling the second hard forces the system to focus on the one drive.

 

instead of pulling the drive out try disabling the second drive in the bios till you have finished installing