Mediadirect: is it worth all the hassle?

Alright, a sacreligious question perhaps, but really..... I've had so many many problems getting mediadirect 3.3 to work correctly on my Vostro 1500 with a new WD 2500BEVS hard drive. I've tried (I think) every suggestion on this great forum, and it either gets stuck in the famous "reboot" cycle, or BSOD with KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR message, or any other number of, ahem, "issues."
So: Given the quick boot time to Vista on my system, and since I'm not overly concerned with battery usage, could someone try and "sell" me on mediadirect? 'Cause so far I'm thinking it's not worth it. But I think I want to like it

 

Do you want to watch DVDs without booting up your computer?

 

MediaDirect is nothing but a somewhat stripped down installation of Windows XP that only runs a single "multimedia" program.
Assuming you have an XP CD, you can install it side-by-side with whatever your main OS happens to be (Vista for you), make it boot as fast as you can, install whatever media-playing programs you want, and dual-boot between the 2 OSs as much as you like. You'd get all the advantages of MediaDirect + you'd be able to configure everything as you want, install what you want (codecs, etc.), and basically control things. Plust you'd be able to repair or backup Vista from XP, which can be sometimes useful. So, I'd go for "regular" dual-boot. Or single-boot of the main OS only with whatever media s/w you want (basically no MD and no "simulation" thereof).

Hope this helps!

 

No lithus, I don't care about watching DVDs without booting up; in fact I don't watch DVDs on my PC at all. And thanks M1chel, I was thinking along those lines, too. Might as well use use that MD button for something more practical!

 

If you don't use it, you can forget about it. I am using it to play Divx. To play the same file in full version WinXP from power off, it takes ~2.5 min before the movie starts. In MD, it takes ~30s.

 

I dont think your problem has anything to do with MediaDirect at all as it sounds like the infamous AHCI driver BSOD.

Have you installed the Intel Matrix Storage Controller (AHCI) at the point when the installation is asking what partition you want to install Vista into? If not, voila...

 

I'd rather see Dell invest its efforts in making Vista boot faster rather than setting up some alternative OS to duplicate capabilities.

I know that after doing a clean install of Vista, I was able to boot in under 40 seconds on an entry-level M1330. If Dell, which has infinitely more knowledge of the system and the OS than I do, would focus on efficient boots instead of trying to cram stuff like MediaDirect, Google Desktop, Dell Support, silly touchpad task bar icons, etc, ad infinitum, into the boot then they wouldn't need a workaround for 'slow' Vista boots. It's like digging a ditch to route the water from a leaky dam instead of just fixing the dam in the first place. It's a waste of space and resources.

 

I have had it in a few xps laptops I have owned and only used it once to see what it was about

 

If you decide MediaDirect isn't for you, here is how you can completely remove it from your hard drive:

You will need a couple of hours to repartition, format and reinstall the OS, Drivers, Utilities and Applications.

Dell notebooks hide Dell MediaDirect utility in HPA. Ordinary partitioning tools cannot detect them. You need either DiscWizard Starter Edition by Seagate Technologies or Feature Tool by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies depending on the manufacturer of your hard drive to detect and delete HPA.

If you just use any ordinary partioning tool to do your work, pressing the MediaDirect button (when the notebook is switched off) will still result in the MediaDirect boot screen but with an error message. If you do not want this MediaDirect screen with error, you will have to delete the HPA as I have suggested above. However, nothing will happen, if you press the MediaDirect button when you are in the Windows Desktop.

If you plan to replace the Dell provided hard drive with your own, you will not run into any problems. The Dell provided hard drive with HPA will not cause any problem in other computers or in Dell computers without MediaDirect. However, it is always better to delete the HPA as it does consume a miniscule amount of space.

 

The first thing I did when I got both my m1330s was wipe off Media Direct.

 

I'd be nice to re-program the button for something else.

 

That was the ticket, thanks!! But I guess that since the Vista drivers don't load, it's normal that the audio doesn't come out of my USB speakers? I'm just hearing it out of the built-in speakers (which aren't too bad, but....)
nevertheless, I might ditch it. Thanks all for your suggestions

 

Glad I could help... usb speakers really???

 

Search the forums.

 

They stopped using a HPA with MediaDirect 3. It installs into an ordinary logical partition now.

And no, it's not worth the hassle. But it's almost as big a hassle to get things set up so that powering up with the MediaDirect button doesn't brick your laptop!

 

Why not? I've gotten used to using them, as my last laptop was an Inspiron 8600, which had the same horrible problem as the vostro line seems to have: the line-out plug gets all batty and fuzzy-sounding....i suppose I could search the forums for a fix for that, too

 

Any Dell owner owes it to their purchase (and future happiness with said purchase) to nuke the damned things first and foremost. You won't get the most from the components you've paid hard currency for with all that excess crapola shoe-horned in there, scewing with your softwares and general operation and it's been proven time and again.

Buy yourself a proper fully fledged operating system license and make the magic happen. With the advent of the most modern OS's graphics driven interfaces even my grand mother could successfully format the drive.

Strip your Dell of it's curtains and blinds and let a little light through those Windows.

...

Yes, that brilliant little sentence has just been copywritten by yours truly for future marketing purposes. Muah!

 

My dell is arriving soon , so does everybody recommend a full format and vista reinstall to get rid of the bloatware ,is it really that bad ???
plus does the dell come with a proper vista disc or multiple reset factory settings disc

 

If it's on a seperate partition.....how is it possible to affect your Vista partitions performance?