Dell Laptop disaster

Hi there,

Im just new to this forum, have been reading it extensively to try and solve my problems.

Ok so ill start from the beginning. I just bought a Dell Inspiron 6400:
Dual Core T2350 1.7GHZ,
Vista home premium
15.4 Widescreen XGA
2Gb DDR2 Ram
120GB HDD
Dell 355 Interbal bluetooth
Integrated Audio and Media Direct 3

Ok so when i got the laptop i was running vista. Grand. Eventually after a day or two it stopped performing, lost all vision of internet connections and was just generally slow.

So i decided to backup to XP pro for some performance. Installed the XP disc and installed Xp as ive done many times. Again no problem, Xp was working and the pc was much better. Then i realised the Media Direct wasn't working either when on or off.

So i decided to re-install Media Direct which involved re-formatting the HDD into the desired way for media direct. Then installed XP again.

Now when i turn the pc on the media direct button works but it doesnt when the pc is turned off!!!

I decided i didnt need Media direct now and so deleted its partition at the front and back of the HDD and un-installed the software aswell as Dell QuickSet.

No the button does nothing when on (what i want now) but still attempts a boot when off. Ive also noticed that the laptop cant go into Standby mode now, instead showing the "BSOD" for a second and re-starting....

Im now thinking of re-installing Vista with media direct on it again as it seems i cant stop it!

Would anyone recommend this? or have any ideas? its really frustrating me now, i dont mind the media direct half working but i at least need to be able to standy, will a re-install fix that?

Thanks for the help.

 

You can check out the Dell forums, as they'll probably be more likely to help you with your MediaDirect issues. As for the rest, XP should be just fine, so perhaps you should just wipe the hard drive (including Media Direct) and install XP again.

 

1. Completely format your entire hard drive, its a mess.

2. Try the Media Direct Repair Utility on this page:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...SPIRONI6400/E1505&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=

And again, make the post in the Dell forum because I do not know much about Dell's.

 

Would a complete re-format remove any hidden partitions that Media Direct has left behind would you know? It seems to still have something there that its booting to

 

Use Boot and Nuke.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Although I warn you it is very slow on the Core Duo or Core 2 Duo notebooks when completely formatting the hard drive, so it would be best to let it do its thing over night.

Also make sure to read the instructions.

 

Thanks for the replies people. I was onto Dell there and they had no idea (no suprise) so they are sending me a blank hard-drive with no Media direct.

I work in a software company and one of my co-workers has just started wiping the hardrive using linux which will remove ABSOLUTELY everything even stuff windows doesnt know about apparently.

My question is, does anyone know if these Media Direct buttons are ROM based and as such ill still have the same problem of the button attempting to re-boot media direct? If so then a new hard drive is useless

 

Hi there !
your original OS software is Vista , and now you wanted install Win XP . If you want Media Direct working , you must found CD Media Direct Reinstalling 3 for WinXP , i think you can find it on another laptop Dell Inspiron 6400 using Win MCE 2005 . if you not found it , you can contact with Dell Cops.

 

I have MD3 installed under XP/Vista dual boot configuration. You can install it either with XP, Vista or both.

1. First prep the HDD using MD3 DVD (I created a 20GB partition with this tool and left the rest unpartitioned; partitioned the remaining space after installing Windows)
2. Install Vista (or XP)
3. Install MD3 from Windows