Boot Ubuntu with QuickPlay Button - a brief guide

Dear all,

It has been known that HP has dropped the development of QuickPlay Direct due to compatibility issue.

For old model of Pavillion (before dv x5xx) that shipped with Vista as OS, HP did not include QuickPlay direct features anymore.

However, if you have managed to download QuickPlay Direct 2.3, you still can install QuickPlay Direct. In some models, a registry hacked was needed to install QuickPlay Windows and QuickPlay Direct. Some models of Presario that have QuickPlay button may also install QuickPlay.

For Pavillion models dv x5xx and above, installing QuickPlay Direct 2.3 would give you BSOD due to ICH8 sata driver.

I recently bought the last model of dv2700 series, dv2922tx, I prefer this old model instead of dv4 for some personal reasons. In this model, I did some try and error attempts to utilize QuickPlay button.

This brief guide was inspired by some threads in Dell section.
All compliments goes to them, I just do a little modification from their threads for HP notebook, you may found their threads here:

(guide) How to boot ubuntu using MediaDirect Button
boot XP form MediaDirect button & Ubuntu from Power button
[SOLVED] Boot Ubuntu with Media Direct Button
Dell Mediadirect button on 6400
boot XP from MediaDirect button & Ubuntu from Power button

in their case, boot UBUNTU with Media Direct Button.
The main key is the MBR setting. They utilized rmbr.exe, a cyberlink tool for Media Direct and also for QuickPlay Direct.

You may download it here

A brief guide to boot Ubuntu using QuickPlay Button

1. I did a fresh installation of VISTA using Orev guide, chose 80GB of 160GB of my hard disk.
   
2. After VISTA has been installed, eject the DVD and turn it off.
   
3. Boot with Ubuntu and select “install Ubuntu” from the menu
   
4. Choose language, location and keyboard.
   
5. At "prepare disk space", I chose manual.
   
   
   Code:

   Highlight "free space" and choose "new partition". Check "Primary", choose size (20000), check
   location "beginning", use as "ext3", and make mount point "/". (this is where we will install Ubuntu)
   
   Highlight "free space" and choose "new partition". Check "Logical", choose size (4000), check
   location "beginning", use as "swap". (this will be Ubuntu's swap-file)
   
   Highlight "free space" and choose "new partition". Check "Logical", choose size (10000), check
   location "beginning", use as "ext3", and make mount point "/home".
   

6. Click next, right before the last forward click in ubuntu installation, there is an advance button. Click and locate GRUB where to install the boot loader, I chose /dev/sda2 , the partition where my Ubuntu is going to be installed.
   
7. Choose your name and password and Ubuntu will be installed.
   
8. Shut down (wait until Ubuntu ejects the disk, then press enter).
   
9. Press power button that would launch VISTA, download rmbr.exe, copy it to anywhere, in my case c:\hp\rmbr.exe
   
10. Click start, All programs, Accessories, right click command prompt,
    choose run as administrator, change directory to directory of rmbr.exe, in my case, the command would be: cd\hp

type

Code:

rmbr hp 2 1

Note:
In my case, Partition 2 is for ubuntu that will be launched by QuickPlay button and Partition 1 for VISTA with power button.

You may choose your own partitions and see some help by typing as:

Code:

rmbr /? 

Known Problem:
The restart options in VISTA will malfunction. It will start Ubuntu instead of VISTA. Please post if someone can fix it.

 

This sounds pretty neat, but do you know if I can just use the HP recovery partition (12gb allocated already) to do this hack? Not sure how much I really want to try dual booting ubuntu like that but I think it would be a nice backup to have.

 

A clean installation of VISTA was not compulsory step.

Yes it is possible to use 12GB of HP recovery partition, and please do NOT forget to make HP recovery disks first.

In my case, UBUNTU only takes less than 3GB of my hard disk, for 12GB you may install many applications in UBUNTU.

Good luck