Vostro 1400 Media Direct BSOD

So after fighting it for a long time I found the info on the Intel Matrix storage driver and got Vista ultimate working... but my Media Direct doesnt'... it BSOD and then goes into a nasty loop where even the normal power button brings up a weird media direct screen instead of the normal vista loading bar and the BSODs...

Has anyone done a fresh install of Vista (not reinstall from Dell CD) and got MD working? Thanks for any help!

 

well after a lengthy and worthless chat with dell support I Was told once to install Media direct incorrectly (after windows is installed) then correctly when I pointed out the instructions to the chat lady, then a level 2 came in and told me to install it correctly again... all of these solutions would have solved nothing and wasted my time.

Finally the level 2 tech said that they only support the Vostro with the Dell OEM license of Vista and if you choose to install a non OEM version they will not support it... I asked if it was Dells intent to ship a laptop with the Vista Ready logo that was not indeed fully compatable with Vista and he didn't answer it with any kind of direct answer.

They also had nothign to say when I pointed out it is clearly a Media Direct issue and not a Vista issue as my Vista works fine after installing the Intel Matrix storage option (they also don't know about this step as their solution is to send out a new hard drive which contains the standard dell build of stuff).

So... I guess the only thing to do is hope they fix up Media direct...

Did anyone run into this problem who is using their OEM license of Vista from Dell? At least then they would have to support it..

 

hey there,
i have the 1420 and reinstalled my dell media direct before windows. and i tried to start it up and it bsod. quite irritaitng.

 

Thanks for the reply... did you have to install the intel matrix driver during windows install to avoid BSODs on restarts of windows?

 

ok i can get into vista with no bsod. i can use dell media direct in windows. however, when i boot into dell media direct when the comp is off, i get a bsod when it goes to some loading thing with a stop 0x000000F4 error.
what intel matrix driver?

i recently reinstalled my computer. and followed the instructions on dell media direct with the partitioning. so not sure why it would blue screen.

 

Maybe the 1420 doesn't have the same issue needing the intel matrix driver...

On the 1400 there is something in the bios called (I believe AHCI) turned on under SATA options. Also an option called Flash Cache turned on.

If those are on and you install Vista (not sure about XP) your OS will blue screen everytime it reboots, but cold boots are ok. You have to install a special driver during the Vista install to get around this...

I was assuming this was the same issue plaguing my MD but if your laptop didn't need this driver maybe that's not really the case?

Are you running Vista?

Can you check your BIOS to see if the options for AHCI and Flash Cache are turned on?

Thanks!

 

I installed vista ultimate and kept the mediadirect partition and reinstalled the software and it works perfectly for me on my 1420 inspiron. As far as I know they are the same computers.

 

That's weird... becuase some other vostro users had the BSOD if they didn't install intel matrix driver... wonder if there are different versions of hardware out there or something that would be responsible for this...

 

If they are using a recent Dell OEM Vista disk to install, the driver is already on the DVD. If you are using s retail version, you need to kit F6 and provide the driver during installation.

 

That makes sense since I am using my own retail Vista ultimate disc...

Since hibijibis seems to have almost the exact problem I do it seems that it's at least a legit problem and not just something amiss on my computer...

 

I can confirm that the BSOD in MD is caused by the AHCI setting in BIOS. I am running XP, not Vista, but that really doesn't affect MD. If you disable AHCI in BIOS, MD should boot fine, at the expense of what I believe is a bit of overall HD performance. Though I can't really quantify the performance drop (my Vostro 1500 still feels snappy even w/o AHCI), it is annoying that MD won't work with AHCI. I suspect that's because the MD partition doesn't have the correct Intel Matrix drivers installed and there's no way to my knowledge of installing it.

 

That is annoying...