[statty]

I have seen a previous post on this forum re a Dell Inspiron booting into Dell Media Direct all of the time. I have the same problem. I have tried taking out the Dell Media Direct Button I have tried powering off and hitting the Dell Media Button but each time I power off it simply reboots into Dell Media Direct. I cannot think of any other solutions. Can anyone suggest something please?

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It sounds to me like the MBR was hosed along the way. Take a look at this Dell Support Document.

[Spyderturbo007]

It sounds to me like the MBR was hosed along the way. Take a look at this Dell Support Document.

[statty]

Thank you for your reply.
This does seem helpful however when the laptop is rebooting and I press F12 it does nothing - it simply goes straight into Media Direct. I cannot get into repair or recovery modes...

[Spyderturbo007]

I've never encountered this problem personally, but from doing a little searching, the link above seemed to fix the problem for others. Have you tried burning the disk as indicated in the instructions from a working PC?

[statty]

Not yet, I will try it in the next few hours. I thought it might not work considering it wouldnt boot to the OS CD and the laptop is configured to boot from CD. I will try your option though and get back to the forum.
Thanks

[Spyderturbo007]

That's a good question. Give it a shot and let me know if it works. I saw a couple other fixes, but they were shown to have mixed results and most were destructive. Do you have a good backup of your critical files in case something goes awry?

[statty]

I burned the disk as suggested and tried booting it but with no success. The optical drive does run but it goes straight into dell media direct even though I press F12. I have tried pressing all other F* buttons as well and all that comes up is System Restart Paused Continue restart or delete restoration files... I am at a loss as to how to get to the repair disk...
Thank you again for your help...

[Spyderturbo007]

Let me do a little more research and see what I can find. If I'm not able to find anything useful, I'll go ahead and PM one of the guys around here that has forgotten more than I know.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 04 March 2011 - 07:18 AM.

[Spyderturbo007]

One additional question, are you able to enter the BIOS with the Delete key? If I remember correctly, Dell's use either the F2 key or the Delete key. I just didn't see you list that one in your post above.

[statty]

That would be great! Ive tried F2 and Delete key but no joy

[Spyderturbo007]

Hi statty. Sorry about the delay in responding, but real life has gotten in the way for the last week or so. Anyway, I'm not finding much in my travels. I'm seeing a lot of people saying that if you shut down through the DMD interface and then press the DMD button again you should find it booting into Windows. It's the button that looks like a house. Another person was commenting that they had to go back and forth a couple times before it worked properly.

Can you try that a couple times and let me know what happens? I will continue looking for a resolution in the meantime. I'm also going to PM a gentleman here that is really good with these weird problems and see if he can assist.

[rshaffer61]

Let me ask when you do the steps in post 2 how did you burn the file to cd?
Did you use a program like Burncdcc to burn the image file to the cd?
If you did it as a data disk it will not boot from that.

[statty]

Hi,
I did not burn it as a data disk. Even when I try to use the Windows XP OS disks or recovery disks it doesnt boot from them.

[rshaffer61]

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Hopefully you have already put the XP cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:

"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over. Then follow the prompts or if you need assistance we will help.

[statty]

Thank you for you reply but I have tried and tried again to reboot and tap the DEL key but it still ends up in Dell Media Direct. I exit DMD and it automatically reboots and I continuously press the DEL key and nothing happens. The Dell Media Direct screen does go black and white for a bit but then boots as normal. When I place a disk in the CD it sounds as if it is going to boot from it but nothing happens.