Arch Linux

kilolima

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 49

Website

Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

Hi All,

I tried to turn on my Vostro 1400 laptop with the mediadirect button.  I thought I had removed that partition in gparted, but wanted to see if the button still did anything.  Imagine my surprise when a) Mediadirect booted to its splash screen, and then went blank, and b) upon, reboot, arch can't mount the /boot directory (says it's not an ext2 partition) and drops me into a recovery console!

Where the heck did mediadirect get the windows files to overwrite /boot?  Did it copy it off my old xp partition?  And are they frickin' idiots at Dell to just overwrite /boot like that?!  Is mediadirect still hidden somewhere on my harddrive?  If so, I am going to find it and delete it with extreme prejudice.

So how can I restore the /boot partition?  Grub is still there, presenting me a choice between Arch and windows, so I assume the MBR is intact.  Is this something that I will need a recovery CD for?  Is that the same as the standard arch install cd?

Thanks for the help!  This is really frustrating that my carefully setup and brand new arch install can be messed up by such a stupid design flaw.  Windows strikes back!

Kilolima

sinister99

Member

Registered: 2007-04-10

Posts: 136

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Boo … recovering

kilolima

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 49

Website

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

Hi

Thanks, but I already found that in the wiki.  I don't think that's what I need to do.  As I said, the MBR and grub is fine.  I can select Arch in grub and the boot process starts before failing when trying to mount /dev/sda1.  /dev/sda1 (boot) has been replaced with the media direct filesystem.  So I believe I need to restore whatever was there earlier, and as a preventive measure, wipe out MediaDirect.

Thanks,

kilolima

kilolima

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 49

Website

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

WTF?!!

I installed an ext3 extension in windows that allows me to view ext3 filesystem (Ext2IFS), and according to it, my 60GB home partition is gone, just empty space on the drive, and there is now a 2.5 GB MediaDirect partition at the end of the drive.  The boot partition is fine.

Media Direct only ran for a few moments before it went to a blank screen and locking up.  I had to do a hard reset by unplugging the AC and the battery.

So... press the mediadirect key on a dell laptop, lose your home partition!

I imagine that MediaDirect realized there were already 4 logical partitions, so it removed one so it could add itself?  But where the heck did it come from?  I wiped all the partitions from the drive except for the windows xp ntfs one, prior to installing arch.

this sucks.

kilolima

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

If it just removed the partition without doing anything to it, you can actually run cfdisk, fdisk, or whatever and add a Linux partition in its space.  As long as you don't mess with the blank space, and as long as your mediadirect thing didn't mess with the data, you should be able to just boot up your system like nothing happened.  BUT!  I've never had to do this so you might want to wait to get a second opinion   This is a one-shot thing, you know.

edit - that 2.5G partition thing went right over my eyes as I was reading your post.  I'd still try it, you might get most of your data I would think.

Last edited by synthead (2008-02-02 05:45:02)

barebones

Member

Registered: 2006-04-30

Posts: 235

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

I believe that there's actually a setting in the vostro bios that enables/disables mediadirect, so you might want to make sure that's turned off. I'm not at my vostro right now though, so don't quote me on that.

If dell only overwrote your /boot partition and your / partition still exists, you can probably chroot into the system (check out this article about that) and re-install grub and your kernel like so:

pacman -Sy kernel26 grub

then make sure that grub is all hunky-dory

grub-install /dev/whateveryyourharddriveis

If / and /home are MIA, then you may be better off formatting and re-installing.

kilolima

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 49

Website

Re: Help! Dell MediaDirect overwrote /boot with windows!

Hi,

I had to re-install everything.  There were some directions to do this over at the ubuntu forums.  They call MediaDirect the Self-destruct Kill Linux switch.  What a bone-headed design flaw.  Basically I had to open up the hidden protected area of the hard drive where MediaDirect resides by using a boot disc HD vendor utility, and then dd the whole drive with zeroes to overwrite the mediadirect recovery stuff.  If I wasn't so satisfied with the vostro hardware and price, this lappy would be going straight back to Dell.

cheers,

kilolima