System won't reboot after Media Direct Repair

A few days ago, my new Inspiron E1505 was broken so the Dell Tech walked me through a clean reinstall (not a restore from HD) of Windows XP Pro. It was fixed and my pc was well gain.

Today, I tried using my Mei Direct and it didn't work, so I ran the repair utility on my drivers disk according to the instruction listed in the tutorial in this forum. When I press power on, the laptop turns on then get stucks at a screen with www.dell.com in a blue bar across the top and the text below reading "PBR 2 . . . done". Nothing else happens.
My Media Direct is not repaired either. When I press the MD button, I see the Media Direct Splash and then windows boots up with error messages explaining MD is not working. When I did the fresh install of Windows XP Pro, I deleted the existing partition containing windows then created a new partition in the same space as per the intructions of the Dell tech. No other partitions were modified.

I ran the Dell Diagnostics using the symptoms tree, OS won't start up or something like that. No problems found. I'm currrently running the extended test as suggested by the Dell Tech I just called.

Someone please help me; I've already loaded all my programs twice on the laptop and don't want to do it again.

 

did you leave the smaller partition on your laptop when the tech was walking you through the format process?

 

Only the second windows partition was modified. All the other ones were untouched.

 

last time i saw that error, the HDD had to be replaced. I don't think there is any way to fix it.

 

I'm a little confused....

With a normal power On the boot fails at the blue bar screen and does not proceed, but...

If you use MediaDirect button from Power OFF, it will boot into windows, but with an error message [what message exactly btw].

Let me brush up on my notes as I think you might be having trouble with the boot code.

Mark

 

You are correct, Mark. I have just completed the extended Dell Diagnostic and everything was fine. The error just says that Dell Media Direct did not start properly. I can get it verbatim once I return later tonight. Thank you both for your help.

 

Another unusual thing is that the Ram Booster program I'm using is saying, I have 256 mb of ram when it usually displays the 1.5 Gb of ram installed (1Gb Dimm and a 512 mb Dimm). The error messages are attached. I don't have the Dell Media Experience software installed, but I thought you didn't need it if you had Quickset. I have WMP 11 and PowerLink DVD installed.

 

AFAIK, you have to have quickset installed. Since you have XP Pro, you'll need Media Experience. When you hit the Media Direct button, it will load Media Experience when you are in XP. When you are not in XP, it should load Media Direct.

 

glad you got it fixed

 

get the system drivers cd and boot from that... or media direct repair iso image file..
boot from the cd and type q to go to command prompt
type:
cd md2
and then type
repair
all in command prompt
u'll get a msg saying do u wanna reapir
agree and reboot
it should work fine.
lemme know though

 

Last night, I was on the phone with the Dell tech for 3 hours. We tried
1. rerunning the MD repair on the drivers disk.
2. burning the updated repair utility from dell.com and running
3. using fixmbr
4. using fixboot
5. using bootcfg which didnt work and told me to run checkdisk which i ran and it fixed some problems
6. performed 3-5 with the same results

Still broken

I don't get the Pbr thing anymore, just a black screen with flashing underscore. after the dell start screen.

 

Just tried a parallel reinstall on the C drive which was labeled back up (partition 2 I think). It was around 17,000 mb. The largest partition was partition 3. It was around 54,000 mb. No formating was chosen after selecting the partition. You know how there's 5 choices FAT(quick), NTFS(quick), FAT, NTFS, and don't do anything. I was advised to pick the last. The blue screen was coping the files. After completion, a black screen appeared reading "Invalid Partition Table". The Dell tech said my only choice would be wiping both the D and C drives and reinstalling. I just reinstalled windows last week. This is very annoying.

 

Not that I've got anything specific, but it may be worth seeing what your Partition Table looks like. To do that you'll need

• PTEDIT32.zip
• VFD_Folders.exe

1. Run the VFD_Folders.exe [which is a self-extracting archive]. Change the default path and extract the files to a folder of your choice [e.g. C:\Part_Chk]

2. Unzip the PTEdit32.zip file and place PtEdit32.exe in the C:\Part_Chk\VFD folder

3. Now simply double click on PtEdit32.exe and that should launch "PowerQuest Partition Table Editor"

You will see four rows numbered 1-4 and multiple columns.

The Partition Table should look something like this....

07......80......0.......1.......1.......1023....254.....63......63......21318192
00......00......0.......0.......0.......0.........0........0........0........0
00......00......0.......0.......0.......0.........0........0........0........0
00......00......0.......0.......0.......0.........0........0........0........0

You'll have more values entered than what's shown above. Post a screen grab or at least post the values from the first two columns.

Mark

 

I have no access to windows anymore. The Media Direct direct does not boot up windows anymore. How can I run those 2 programs above?

 

Here's a DOS version....

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/ptedit.zip

Mark

 

It sounds like you have a problem similar to mine... except mine was w/ a BSOD, which may have been worse. Have you tried accessing the drive from another computer?

 

I know I'm going to hate to ask this, but wouldn't it be easier to call Dell and request a new drive?

 

While on the phone with Dell, I deleted all the partitions except the FAT Diagnostics partition and reinstalled windows. I'm awaiting a call back from Dell so I can reinstall Dell Media Experience using the full reinstall I received today from Dell. Thanks for all the assistance.

 

Guys, i have the same problem as PopTart21 - however, i am unable to follow MarkMcK's partition table directions because from DOS prompt i can't even find the drive that contains boot.ini or any of my prior data/system files for that matter - is there any way to physically reset the drive (ie a pinhole or something?)

Thanks,
DocTemp

 

From straight DOS you unlikely to see the partitions/volumes as they are probably NTFS.

What exactly is the 'problem'? What have you done to get where you are???

Folks will need some more 'info' to provide some thoughts/ideas.

Mark