Ptedit vista

Short of that, can you disable the button in the BIOS? I've seen mention of a new download to update the MediaDirect from Dell, but i haven't been able to find it in the download section. You might have to re-install the Media Direct partition along with your installation of Windows. If you have a partition utility and a single Windows partition on the drive, shrink the Windows partition as directed here and install Media Direct from the original CDs.

Media Direct appears to do some really nasty things to the partition structure in order to work. I used to think this would be cool to have but now, it sounds like a royal pain. Once everything was said and done, MediaDirect worked It's so bad that I wouldn't use it anyway I just had this problem with an XPS M this morning.

It's used by one of the staff I support, and since our office isn't on Vista yet the laptop has XP Pro installed. His troubles started when he hit the dreaded "Direct Media" button.

After that it was "Invalid Boot Partition. So that got the laptop bootable again, but now we have to hope the user doesn't touch the Media Direct button again until we can get some answers from Dell. That button has just got to go! Dell support said they are aware of issues with this button that will be addressed in a future firmware update, but the tech didn't know when or how.

You will need to have actually purchased WinHex for you to be able to do this. Such direct disk-access write functions are disabled while it is just on trial. Fig 3. When the application is first opened as in Fig 4 you should see four main lines of values. Each line is translated from the corresponding 16bytes of code in the MBR into a comprehensible form for us humans to read and to edit. If you have more than one hard drive or array in your system ensure that you choose the correct one in the drop down list at the top.

We recommend that you write down any original values on a piece of paper before committing any changes to disk; it will only take you a moment or two. Fig 4. There are some screenshots on the webpage that give you a good idea of its interface. It is a generic hard drive tester, performance analyser and information gatherer. The most comprehensive analysis will be from internally connected IDE or SATA drives not configured into any RAID, since for such drives it can dig out much information directly from the drive's firmware.

It can access RAID volumes as if they were "hard drives" and can access drives in USB enclosures - but the listed information will not be as complete. At this time we have only used the free version. Using a hard drive manufacturer's own diagnostics most of the big names except for Toshiba provide them on their websites from another boot medium, other that the hard drive, may be wise if you think your drive may be compromised or is inaccessible by normal means. It has certain limited uses in determining whether a motherboard or hard drive controller card supports 48bit LBA.

Appendix 1. Appendix 2. What is a partition table and what does it look like? Specific areas of hard drives have different uses and one such area is known as a partition. Partitions come in different formats but also need to be capable of having their boundaries defined. These definitions are stored in what are called Partition Tables.

Can also be run from a bootable USB memory stick. EasyBCD Little app that gives a graphical interface to the Microsoft tools for editing and configuring the built-in Windows bootmanager. Designed to make it easier to alter the MS bootmanager, but can produce non-native configurations. Partition Table Editor - ptedit. The DOS version is ptedit. Both can be acquired separately from Symantec. Gparted Outstanding Linux partitioning and cloning tool. Obviously won't install in Windows but can be run from boot disk or USBkey.

Can do all your Windows partitioning needs and can work to both the old and new partition alignments. It also comes on the PartedMagic bootdisk, which we highly recommend. PartitionWizard Excellent Windows partitioning and cloning tool with a free home edition. Version 7. Has a couple of minor quirks but don't let that stop you. It always wants to create logical partitions by default and so you have to be careful to select primary.