MedRxMan said:
Thank you for you great suggestions.
If need be I do have theDell MediaDirect DVD for reinstallation of Media
files and also have the Dell Drivers and Utility DVD. Why she does not
have the XP Home disk is unknown. She said this is all Dell sent. I
checked the original configuration on the Dell site with the service tag
number and a resore image was not applied to this PC.
Dell's MediaDirect is *not* the same thing as XP Media Center Edition.
MediaDirect runs from a special partition. So probably the laptop has the
operating system XP Home with Dell's MediaDirect installed.
How to install Dell MediaDirect 2.0 in XP -
http://tinyurl.com/eb5b8
Dell MediaDirect FAQ -
http://tinyurl.com/2u9rqm
Do the Repair Install with the CD coming from Dell (Dell probably did send
your friend one originally, but no big). You will probably not need to
reinstall MediaDirect or drivers.
If you need to do a Clean Install, you can make the choice whether or not to
reinstall MediaDirect. if you do, simply leave the special partitioning
scheme alone when you do the installation and only delete/recreate the
system partition (C
. If your friend has never used MediaDirect and would
prefer to have that space on the hard drive for XP, delete the special
MediaDirect partition during the initial stages of the new Windows
installation. If there is a special small partition for Dell Diagnostics,
you can leave it.
Malke