Anyone running Media direct with Vista + XP Dual boot ?

Yesterday and today I was playing around with Media direct. I have an XPS M140/Inspiron 630m. I managed to install Media direct 2 on this system ( as posted here). Then I installed Vista (along with XP : dual boot ), of course it broke MD as I expected. Afterwards I ran MD2 setup from XP; installation went without any errors and at the end I got a message saying it is installed and ready to use. But when I pressed MD button from power down I only got a blank screen after few seconds of MD splash screen. I deleted MD partition and reinstalled twice; also ran the repair utility (that too said it was repaired). But still blank screen.

Thinking that I might have somehow screwed up MD partition; I removed Vista, repaired XP boot record and reinstalled MD2. This time it worked. So, again I installed Vista, but again blank screen. Do you guys have any idea on how to get MD working with Vista?

or do I have to wait till dell releases a Media direct repair utility for Vista ?

 

You might want to take a look for a Linux boot loader. Check out http://gag.sourceforge.net/ It might be able to solve your issue.

Or, you could create another partition and install linux. Grub which is the main linux boot loader should be to find it. Check out www.centos.org. CentOS is a free version of Red Hat.

Good luck

 

I did a dell chat to ask them how to get Media Direct working with Vista and they told me they don't support it yet. What a waste then they wanted me to call Dell on Call and pay to talk to someone.

 

Try gag like I posted before. I think your issue is with the MBR and boot loader. It fixed LIVEFRMNYC multi boot system. Take a look at his post.

 

Hmm….. thanks, maybe I will try gag, but I have a feeling that it wont fix it the way I want. Meaning, when I press MD button I want to get into MD, if I press power button I want normal boot menu.

This MD thingy acts little bit weird. It boots with MD button so there has to be some sort of special BIOS support for it. And the MD partition is also different, cant see anything even if I assign a drive letter for it in Windows. Maybe if I tinker with gag and MD installation I might be able to get a boot option in gag boot menu to boot the hidden MediaDirect (XP) installation, but as I said before I was actually hoping for a better and easier solution.

 

Getting Vista RTM right now is actually illegal except for a couple of channels directly from Microsoft. Discussion on this topic should be closed.

 

Ok, I removed the word “RTM” from my original post. This problem is not specific only to RTM release. It is valid to all RC builds and beta builds. RC1 was available for the public therefore I am sure there are plenty of ppl out there with RC build , I also have a legitimate copy of RC1valid till May 2007. And I have seen many threads in here discussing about Vista, therefore I don’t see any reason to block this thread. Infact I think this will be helpful for others in the future, especially if we can find a solution to this problem.

 

Ms released to MSDN and Gold Partners thursday evening. There are MANY MANY people with access to it now, including many on this forum. RTM isn't illegal for MANY of us -- me included. I am downloading RTM of Vista currently and have RTM of Office 2007 -- directly from Microsoft. I'll be doing exactly what has been outlined today.

And it's completly legal, with a valid Ultimate key -- directly from Microsoft.

So, I think closing a thread discussing Vista RTM is silly. What would be illegal and should be dealt with harshly is discussing sharing a copy (which I won't).

 

A year after the latest post in this thread, has anyone gotten this to work yet? I am specifically taking about Media Direct 3.3 which is the vista version. There are numerous other posts about wiping the hard drive clean, using the MD 3.3 boot disk to repartition and format hard drive with 4 partitions (one MD, one utility, one for operating system, and one for data). This is not a problem for me. But has anyone successfully gotten a dual boot XP+Vista with a working MD button without any boot loader issues? I have heard about Vista Boot Pro, will that do the trick? Thanks

 

joining thread.