Media Direct Button To Turn Off The Screen

Hello. First at all, sorry for my english. I´m Argentinian, and i live in Spain.

This is my experience changing the behaviour of media direct button INTO windows vista:
I have a Dell Inspiron 1720, with Vista Premium.
First, i have uninstalled Dell Media Direct (prefer media center), and i wanted the missing function in my Inspiron to turn off my monitor.
I have not formatted (still) the 2,5 or 3 gb hide partition that include Dell Media Direct, only uninstalled it from C:\.
Because it, if i press the button when windows vista is not running, the dell media direct, attempt to run.

My Dell 1720 don`t have the option to turn off the screen, and now, i assigned the "house" button to turn off the screen when i press it.

I was investigating, and I did not have the need to use any other software to do it than a very small program (36kb) to turn off the screen (monitoroff.exe), and put it into a new folder: (C:\program files\Apagar monitor\monitoroff.exe, for example.)
Only, i have used REGEDIT to edit the registry, and this small program.

If you want to do it, you must edit 3 entries named: "HotStartButton --> 0 --> ApplicationPath", and put the path to the program "monitoroff.exe" within each entry .

Next, you must delete the "PathName" and the "ProgramName" entries in: "HKLM\SOFWARE\DELL\MediaDirect", leaving them empty.

It´s that all folks!!! It rune fine in my Inspiron 1720 with vista premium. When i press the "house button", my screen turn off, and when press the keyboard or i move the mouse, the screen turn on.

I hope that this trick is useful for many people.

Rodrigo

 

wow very cool. rep+

Do you think there is a way to modify the program, so that the monitor stays turned off no matter what until you press on the "house button" a second time?

 

Yes, very good post! I have also seen a way to use the Media button to start Ubuntu.
I doubt you can force the monitor to remain off, because when the screen turns off as a result of a power saving plan, you can always get it back by hitting a key or moving the mouse.
Think of the screen turning off as an application, if you will, and the power plan/media button are shortcuts to that application.

 

Hey this sounds really cool, except I can't find the above registry entries. Where exactly are they? I have a clean install of Vista and I also totally deleted Media Direct and the partition it was on. So will this still work for me? Thanks

 

The entries are in these 3 sections of the vista premium registry, at least in my inspiron 1720:


HKLM\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET001\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...


HKLM\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET003\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...


HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...



There are other two great free and very small 32 bits (not 64 bits)

command-line programs, to doing MULTIPLE tasks with the "house" button, only puting them into a shortcut with multiple suffixes supported by these small utilities:

The programs are NirCmd.exe and NirCmdc.exe, and both have only 28 kb.

Visit: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html


You must crate the windows shortcut to one or other program, (in vista premium, i see that one program run better than the other with some suffix) in this manner, for ex:

"Shortcut path to nircmdc.exe or nircmdc.exe" monitor off --> to Turn off the monitor


"Shortcut to nircmdc.exe or nircmdc.exe" standby --> to put the pc in standby

etc.

Next, the registry entries must "to point" at the shortcut.


You can download these free and small utilities here.

Yoy can see the suffixes supported in this web.


Greetings to you all

 

has anyone tried this successfully for the m1530?

 

has anyone tried this on XP? sounds great, thank you!

 

I also use Nircmd to turn off monitor and do other things, with my phone (setup as a BT remote). Very good tool. I also have a hotkey combination, for me that’s easier than pressing the MD button

 

Thanks for the guide, but I don't seem to be able to get this to work. I have added the correct registry entries (HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...) but I don't know what to put under that to get the program to work.

I am using a clean installation of Vista with no Media Direct partition present.

 

Hello:

You must put into this 3 entries:


HKLM\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET001\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...


HKLM\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET003\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...


HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\MOBILEPC\HOTSTARTBUTTONS\0\APPLICATIONPATH\...



the path to the executable monitoroff.exe, (where you have put it into your hard disc).

For ex., if you have the executable monitoroff.exe into a folder named "monitoroff", into "program files" folder, you must put into the APPLICATIONPATH entries:

"C:\Program Files\monitoroff\monitoroff.exe"




Besides, into the entry HKLM\SOFTWARE\DELL\, make a ney folder named "Media Direct", and put into it, two chains ("ab"), named "PathName", and other chain named "ProgramName",

In the "PathName" chain, type the same path to the executable monotoroff.exe, too.

Into the "ProgramName chain, type any name to the program monitoroff.exe. For ex., simply "monitoroff".

I hope can help you a bit.

Regards.