After several reboots, failed attempts, and wanting to give up, I finally got this working on my XPS M1330. I tried to follow the directions exactly as
PhoenixFx mentioned and got the same exact error that
bongski55 got (it would flash a DOS prompt like window saying only one line: Access Denied.) It just never worked for me either and I was ready to give up until I tried a few other things. Now I want to share with everyone else how I got it to work.
FYI, I have MediaDirect 3.3 and Vista Ultimate. These instructions I am about to give will work on a XPS M1330, but not sure about other laptop models; hopefully these instructions help out. But don't take my word for it :) I won't be held responsible if it doesn't work for you; so try this at your own risk. I backed up all my data before I did any of this stuff, and I suggest you do the same, just in case (unless you are very brave or don't care ;).
I can't take full credit for these instructions. I am mostly going to copy and paste instructions I got from this url:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread194543.html but modify them such that they work in Vista (the instructions on that URL work w/ XP users, so I recommend you follow those instead of mine if you aren't using Vista). I'd also like to thank
PhoenixFx for his files and his quick instructions.
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1. You will need to turn off UAC (if you did, skip to step 2). To do that, goto Start > Control Panel > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control on or off. I found that I could NOT use MD3UTILS.EXE properly w/ UAC on. You can always turn it back on after you are done with this.
2. You'll need a copy of MD3UTILS.EXE. You can use PhoenixFX's zip package of it or use the one that comes w/ the MediaDirect CD. Put it somewhere you can launch it later. If you're not sure where to put it, then put it in the root of the C:\ drive.
3. If you had put it in the C:\ drive, then you can simply goto Start and type:
C:\MD3UTILS /mapmd3=x in the Search Box.
Otherwise, you can just goto the DOS prompt and launch the command:
MD3UTILS /mapmd3=x (assuming you are in the right directory or path location of the MD3UTILS program)
4. Goto Start > Computer. You should see the Media Direct partition listed on there, as X:. Double-click on the drive to view it. You will then need to make sure you can view system files. If you can, then skip to step 6. If you're not sure, read on to step 5.
5. In the explorer window (where you double-clicked on X:), on the upper left corner, first menu option on the top toolbar, is Organize. Click on that, then click on Folder and Search Options. Click the View tab at the top, then uncheck "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)." You will then get an error message; just click Yes. You can always change that back later if you are uncomfortable leaving it unchecked.
6. In that MediaDirect partition (X:), look for a file called "hiberfil.sys" and delete it. If you don't see it, you either never loaded MediaDirect yet, or you have "Hide protected operating system files" checked (see step 5).
7. Next, browse to X:\Windows\System32 and you will see a taskmgr.ex_ file. Just rename the file to taskmgr.exe and change the attribute to Read-Only. If you don't see a taskmgr.ex_ file, then copy over PhoenixFx's copy to X:\Windows\System32 instead and make sure you set it to Read-Only.
I had a problem using PhoenixFx's copy, but when I noticed that I already had taskmgr.ex_, I just used that copy instead and it worked. If you don't set this to Read-Only, for some reason it gets deleted when you start MediaDirect. Setting it to Read-Only bypasses this.
8. Browse to the X:\Program Files\Dell\MediaDirect folder and rename the file BGDismount.exe to something less executable like BGDismount.ex_. Just don't delete it.
9. Unmount the drive by doing the same thing as step 3, but use the /unmapmd3 switch. For example:
C:\MD3UTILS /unmapmd3=x
10. Shut down Vista, start up MediaDirect (via the MD button) and wait until you see an all blue background with the white cursor in the middle. This is the time to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del. I ended up hitting this key combo repeatedly until the darn Task Manager showed up. You might get an error about it not being able to load BGDismount. Just click OK on that error; we will fix that in the next few steps.
11. Now that you have Task Manager open, you are now free to install whatever you need to play DivX/XviD files or whatever MD doesn't seem to handle on it's own. You can do this by clicking on File > New Task, and you should be able to browse any location, even the Vista partition. Then you can either load your specified codec package/program or run explorer.exe if you wanted. I use CCCP Project's codecs (
http://cccp-project.net/) and it works great; no problems found using it in MD.
12. Once you're done with installing whatever codecs you wanted, you can restart the system from Task Manager (under the "Shut Down" menu option) or just turn it off using the power button.
13. Now boot back into Vista, and repeat step 3. In the MediaDirect Partition, browse to the X:\Program Files\Dell\MediaDirect folder and rename the file BGDismount.ex_ back to BGDismount.exe. Unmount the partition (step 9).
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Boot back into MediaDirect and you should now be able to view DivX, XviD, etc. files using the "Videos" feature. Good luck to everyone!
Re: Dell Mediadirect:Can We Install Codecs?
lol, j/k.
