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360

Provide a fix for Media Direct instead of asking user to reformat

360 points posted to Servers and Storage, Software, Desktops and Laptops by programatix Apr 26

Dell Media Direct feature is too easy to break. A minor change to the partition layout or size will simply break it. When this happen, pressing the Media Direct button when the system is turned off will not start Dell Media Direct anymore.

The current solution from Dell is to reformat the HDD. This is unacceptable. There should be a way to fix it! So far, I tried in vain.

I've encountered this problem several times and I'm tired of reformatting the HDD just to make Media Direct to work.

The problem always started with error like, "MD Extention Partition Error" when the Media Direct button is pressed when system is off. This is what I've tried to fix the problem,


  • Start using Media Direct CD. Quit the process to return to command prompt. Run "setupmd /diskno=0 /type=DD". Run "md3patch". Reboot. After this process, if I press the Media Direct button to start the system, it will just display Media Direct splash screen and stay there.
  • Boot up to Vista. Insert Media Direct CD. Go to DellKit folder. Run "md3utils /mapmd3=x". Checked drive X: and everything seems fine. Tried to rebuild the drive by running "XPS M15301.exe" and "XPS M15302.exe" but it doesn't solve the problem.
  • Since Vista is in partition 3 and MD3 is in partition 4, I tried running "rmbr DELL 3 4" in DellKit. Doesn't solve the problem either.


I also found out that the MD3 partition is hidden with unknown state because the type of the partition is set to "DD". If I set it to "OB", it will turn into FAT32 and can be viewed normally with Windows Explorer.

I don't see anything special with the implementation of MD3 partition but why is it so complicated in reviving it when it is broken? Please Dell, instead of asking users to reformat the HDD, provide a way to fix it or rebuild it without reformatting the HDD.

aikiwolfie
Apr 27		 For whatever reason this media direct crud is also on my M1330n Ubuntu laptop. All it does is start up Ubuntu and take up space. Why is it there in the first place?
winoffice
Apr 28		 Like for Windows Vista, when it cannot boot, I (most of the time) do not need to reformat, but rather just repair the system files.
hangingout
Apr 29		 Media Direct is a nice feature when properly implemented. I agree that an easier process needs to be worked on. With a dual booting laptop like mine -- you can completely forget about getting Media Direct to work correctly. I don't even use it anymore. It's on the hard drive just taking up space, but hitting the "Home" button just makes the laptop crash and burn with repeated boot errors.
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