You need XP or Vista installed to get Media Direct to work as intended. You can do it, though. It's not real easy but doable. If you don't want a dual boot scenario, you could install, say, Vista on a separate partition and then install Media Direct into Vista but set Ubuntu's GRUB bootloader to never boot Vista (except for the initial Media Direct installation). In any case you need the Media Direct disk and use it to completely wipe the hard drive and set up the hidden partition into which Media Direct is embedded.
Media Direct is a good idea but VERY unstable. Usually any changing of partitions after MD is installed will "break" its functionality and the only way to get it back is to start all over from scratch using the MD disk to wipe the hard drive and reestablish the correct partition structure. Dell has basically given up on MD 3.x and the newer MD 4.0 is a straight installation into Vista that boots Vista instead of the embedded XP OS that the BIOS boots and runs Media Direct.
Tom XPS 420, Q6600, 4GB, 500x2, Radeon HD2600XT, Bluetooth, eSATA, Ultimate SP1 XPS 420, Q6700, 4GB, 750GB x 2 (RAID 0), GeForce 8800 GT, Xcellerator, Bluetooth, eSATA, Ultimate 64-bit SP1 XPS M1330, 2.2GHz, 4GB, 200GB (7200), Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1 XPS M1330, 2.0GHz, 4GB, 320GB, Quad-Boot: Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1, XP Pro 64-bit, Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit & Media Direct
Sounds to me like there is a possibility for a small Linux distro that can reside on it's own partition and get triggered by the MediaDirect button.... A MediaCenter distro? Very light and efficient. I believe there are something like this available that could be adjusted for this use...
Anyone up for the challenge? What does the MediaDirect button trigger? Does anyone know how to make it fire up something else than the standard app?
zrtom
160 Posts
0
October 29th, 2008 12:00
You need XP or Vista installed to get Media Direct to work as intended. You can do it, though. It's not real easy but doable. If you don't want a dual boot scenario, you could install, say, Vista on a separate partition and then install Media Direct into Vista but set Ubuntu's GRUB bootloader to never boot Vista (except for the initial Media Direct installation). In any case you need the Media Direct disk and use it to completely wipe the hard drive and set up the hidden partition into which Media Direct is embedded.
Media Direct is a good idea but VERY unstable. Usually any changing of partitions after MD is installed will "break" its functionality and the only way to get it back is to start all over from scratch using the MD disk to wipe the hard drive and reestablish the correct partition structure. Dell has basically given up on MD 3.x and the newer MD 4.0 is a straight installation into Vista that boots Vista instead of the embedded XP OS that the BIOS boots and runs Media Direct.
Tom
XPS 420, Q6600, 4GB, 500x2, Radeon HD2600XT, Bluetooth, eSATA, Ultimate SP1
XPS 420, Q6700, 4GB, 750GB x 2 (RAID 0), GeForce 8800 GT, Xcellerator, Bluetooth, eSATA, Ultimate 64-bit SP1
XPS M1330, 2.2GHz, 4GB, 200GB (7200), Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1
XPS M1330, 2.0GHz, 4GB, 320GB, Quad-Boot: Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1, XP Pro 64-bit, Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit & Media Direct
Oceanwatcher
1 Message
0
February 9th, 2009 19:00
Sounds to me like there is a possibility for a small Linux distro that can reside on it's own partition and get triggered by the MediaDirect button.... A MediaCenter distro? Very light and efficient. I believe there are something like this available that could be adjusted for this use...
Anyone up for the challenge? What does the MediaDirect button trigger? Does anyone know how to make it fire up something else than the standard app?