Reinstall using Reinstallation DVD from Dell but now can't boot to DVD.

Aha! OK. I am about to say something I don't normally say to Dell which is you are right and I was wrong. I carefully cleaned the DVD with a soft cloth (gently gently, of course), restarted, F12 for the one-time boot menu and she is reinstalling right now. Thanks for your assistance.

It's Windows Vista Business 32 bit. This - and MediaDirect are the same as came with this computer originally. They are the original Dell discs for this PC. It will boot using the MediaDirect CD. It will also boot using another test CD I have (Hitachi HDD test CD). But it will not boot using the OS DVD. I think I've had this before where the boot process can't see the CD drive as a DVD drive until it has some drivers installed and you can't install the drivers until the OS has booted. Catch 22. I will try with the DVD once more.

Hi MikeXPSVostro,

Please share the operating system you are trying to install.

Installing Media Direct shouldn’t impact the working of DVD drive.

You may try installing Media Direct again on the system from the disk and then try to install OS from the DVD.

You may also try to boot from the resource DVD.

Please ensure there are no scratches on the operating system DVD.

Keep me posted with the information. I will be glad to assist further.

Odd problem. The Windows Installation procedure has got to Where do you want to install Windows, it has found Disk 0 Unallocated Space 47.0 MB, Disk 0 Partition 1 295GB with 294.9 GB Primary and Disk 0 Partition 2 MEDIADIRECT 3 GB Logical. I select the Primary and it says Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets is criteria for installation.

That's a new one on me. Any suggestions?

Hi MikeXPSVostro,

It seems that the hard drive is not formatted properly.

I would suggest you to delete all the partitions except the Media Direct partition. Then create a new partition from the unallocated space.

You should be able to install Windows Vista on the new partition.

Hope this helps. Keep me posted with the findings. 

I checked the DVD in a 3rd PC and also perfectly readable. Just not in the XPS. So I use my Vostro to make a copy of the OS DVD (Roxio Burn as supplied with the Vostro). It is now working and installing Windows.

And so far so good. Now I have to catch up with three years of WIndows Updates! The only thing I add for completeness, is that this time round there were only 2 partitions after MediaDirect install:  Disk 0 Partition 1 Primary and Disk 0 Partition 2 MEDIADIRECT Logical. Selected the Primary and away it went.

The interesting thing is that the original DVD could be read on 2 PCs but not the XPS and that a copy of the DVD worked fine in the XPS. Will now keep both DVDs carefully.

Hallo Amogh, it took 4 or 5 days but eventually success. I am adding these comments in case it helps anyone else with similar issue. I think you are right in that the original DVD was some years old (obviously) and had been used. Although not heavily marked, it was clearly used and maybe this made it marginal with the XPS drive. Making a copy and using the unscratched DVD in the XPS worked fine. I had two further issues.

One was a couple of items in Device Manager which did not install properly and reported themselves as "Base System Device" with error indication. I had to look at the device ID and vendor ID and look them up at www.pcidatabase.com/index.php this found them as Ricoh card reader so I could find the driver and install and that worked.

The other was one of the Windows updates didn't work and that prevented the install of XPS Serviice Pack 1 which of course prevented all subsequent updates. This was very tiresome after downloading the updates several times, reinstalling from scratch a few times and even trying to install updates one at a time in date order. Eventually I downloaded from Microsoft the actual service pack: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone (KB936330) and used that. This worked OK and then I could finish the rest of the updates including SP2 and the rest.

Anyhow, I now have my XPS back which I can use as a spare while Dell tries to fix my still-under-warranty Vostro which is slower than the XPS despite being Core i7 and having 6GB RAM!

Many thanks for your help, Mike

Hi MikeXPSVostro,

Thank you for the reply. I really appreciate your technical expertise and you have done an awesome job.

Please feel free to reply for any further questions. I will be glad to assist.