CAUTION: Fresh install on E1505 is worth it

Oh yeaaaaahh.

Reinstalling a fresh OS makes a huge difference...and stay away from
that McAfee crap.
My personal experience with the E1505:
Went from 75+ processes down to 35.
Went from 350+ MB RAM usage down to 175.

Dell Bloatware sucks, but these systems are great when you clean 'em
up.

I 'lost' a few items in the process, such as:
1) Dell MediaDirect functionality
2) Dell Restore functionality
3) Dell Diagnostics

Each Dell desktop/notebook generally comes configured with partition(s)
dedicated for these features. The first thing I did was create a
separate partition for backup purposes (using PartitionMagic, I resized
the existing C drive and used the reclaimed space to create a D drive).
So far so good.

I back up the current C partition, which has the Dell-installed OS, and
then I perform a clean Windows XP install on drive C. It turns out
that the provided Dell driver CD doesn't have the required drivers for
my system (such as the network card)....I can't access the Internet to
download the correct drivers! So I restore the Dell-installed OS via
my backup image, download the required drivers, and revert to the fresh
XP install. After installing all drivers, everything is running
smoothly.

However, I'm missing something...the Dell MediaDirect functionality is
broken! This allows you to play DVD's/video/audio without fully
booting the system. I'm not 100% sure of the advantages, but it seems
like a 'neat' feature, and I wanted it back so I could evaluate it.

It turns out that Dell has a 'Repair' utility for MediaDirect, so I
download it and try it out. It also turns out that that was a mistake.
After running the utility, Dell MediaDirect doesn't work. And now the
system won't boot up! Using a separate diagnostic disk to boot via the
CD drive, I find that the hard drive no longer has any recognized
partitions!

ARggh. Stupid me, I didn't back up the images on the D drive to DVD.
So I've effectively lost all of the original Dell images as well as my
fresh XP install. GRRRRRR.

Forced to wipe out the drive and start all over, I manage to grab the
Dell drivers by downloading via another PC. After getting the laptop
back to normal working order, I call Dell and ask them to send me a
MediaDirect install CD. The next day, the CD arrives (extremely quick
shipping given my location) and I go through the process to get it in
working order. I tried several approaches, but could not get
MediaDirect to work with multiple (C/D) hard drive partitions....it
would only co-operate when I had a single C partition. I decided to
scrap the idea of using MediaDirect for now....

As for the Dell restore partition, I don't care about it because it was
just taking up room on my hard disk. As was the MediaDirect
'partition' (1.5 GB). Maybe one of these days I'll try to get
MediaDirect working again...but only when someone offers a compelling
reason to actually use it. My laptop boots so quickly now that I just
don't see the benefit.

Cheers,
Dave

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Reinstalling Vista: 2 unknown partitions
    ... Dell laptops. ... the 2.01GB partition will contain the re-installed MediaDirect ... MediaDirect re-installation disk. ... install the entire hard drive contents to re-install MediaDirect ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Reinstalling Vista and Dells "unknown" partitions
    ... The small MD partition is made during the 1st use of the MD ... proprietary to Dell). ... Later, after Vista has been installed, the code for the MD app can be ... | is that MediaDirect is just junk and should be discarded. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Upgrade and partition questions
    ... drivers are available. ... computer is not certified by Dell as XP compatible. ... "Mike Hall " wrote in message ... >>>> partition my harddrive, and install XP from scratch on the new ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: CAUTION: Fresh install on E1505 is worth it
    ... does ctrl + F11 not work even if the Dell partition is still ... MediaDirect repair utility, and this caused the partition information ... In my fresh install I thought I saw Dell ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: CAUTION: Fresh install on E1505 is worth it
    ... I don't use MediaDirect. ... on their download site but I saw a repair utility for it so I wondered ... If I ever need it I will call Dell or Google and find out how to ... In my fresh install I thought I saw Dell ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)