And now I can’t boot up windows. It jumps into a BSOD during the loading process. Luckily, I also have Kubuntu installed, and that works fine. However, I would really like to have windows working again.
I’ve done some searching, and it appears that the MediaDirect button messes up the partition table. However, for everyone else, this seems to mess up both windows and linux. For me, my linux works fine.
Some people said that pressing the MediaDirect button again fixed their problem, but I really don’t want to risk breaking the only part of my system that actually works.
Please help!
EDIT: I just read that I could use a program called testdisk to fix the partition table. However, People talk about using testdisk from a live CD. could I use testdisk from my linux partition, or would that break things more?
Can you boot in safe mode? Is it WIN XP? If it hosed the MBR perhaps the DOS command fdisk /mbr ?? Not sure though. And of course you would have to boot up at least to a DOS prompt. There’s also the fixmbr from the windows recovery console (requires you to insert windows disk and boot to the recovery console). Or just a repair. Details here: http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm . In theory it shouldn’t destroy any data but of course you have all your files backed up. If not, but you can boot in safe mode, then back up your data first. There’s also the “last known good configuration” option which may work. It sounds like MD was never correctly installed though. From waht I’ve seen on the Dell website the repair option may be the best. If not you may have to do a full reinstall. Good luck.
I so feel your pain. This happened to me about 2 years ago, ultimately had to re-image the drive.
I wish Dell would just remove that “feature”, as I’ve not heard of anyone yet who has had it work successfully, and more than a few who consider it the “Self Destruction” button.
I actually managed to fix the problem. Following a web guide, I used testdisk. This totally borked my computer. Having, nothing left to lose at that point, I pressed the MediaDirect button again, which fixed everything. I have no idea why it did that. Oh well. At least my computer works again.
I was just reading your OP and was going to suggest you press the media direct button again - been there once. Good you figured it out yourself
The way media direct button works is, if you press the button when your laptop is off, it tries to boot into Media Direct - which I’ve never seen working, always BSODs. and from then on, every time you press the power button, it boots into MD and BSODs. However if you press the MD button again when the laptop is off, it boots into windows and the power button gets you into windows.
Really stupid design if you ask me, and like I said I’ve never seen it work properly. Now every time buy a dell laptop, I repartition immediately and get rid of the MD partition completely.
