Topic: Did anybody else notice Sandra and I were

[Simon]

I'm assuming that the licence transfers from one machine to the other, so when you try to use the 'old' machine, it will 'de-validate' itself when you connect to t'net, and ask you to activate it, which, of course, you can't do, as you've already used the licence.  No harm in trying it though. 

[Tony]

Nar I'll give it a miss Simon, I don't want MS to think I'm not one to be trusted regarding software piracy....that would never do.

[Tony]

Well I re imaged the XP Pro 64 bit, back onto my original PC today. It was an image I had made back end of September, straight after I first installed and activated it. 

As soon as it booted up, Microsoft auto updater downloaded the latest updates, I rebooted it and it's ticking along nicely. I suppose as nothing has changed hardware wise from the original activation, Microsoft is happy, so that makes two of us.   

I then tried the MS update site on the Medion, now running on the same OS. It downloaded 13.02MB of security fixes without a hitch,
I love these two for one deals 

[Simon]

Nice! 

[Proxima]

Medion AKOYA P7300D, sporting an nice dual boot XP Pro 32 bit, and Vista Ultima 64 bit operating systems.

These Medion machines, are set up in such a way that they just reject any OS other than what Medion put on them. Medion give you two disks, one is Vista 32 bit or Vista 64 bit, but the PC will only accept either one of them, not both on the same machine. Nor will they let you install any other OS, if you don't like either of the flavours on offer.

But "Wonder Woman" did it again.........................I'll let the proud mother tell you the tale herself, for one thing she knows what she is talking about 

So tomorrow, I'll be installing my second graphics card [PCI] and seeing if the PC will support it alongside the PCI-Express graphics card in XP Pro. As you know it would not support it in Vista, so the answer to the question, is it a  "Hardware or OS conflict" will be answered tomorrow 

Hello Sandra and Tony!

I have just bought the exact same machine, but i'm not an expert with computers, although I know the basic stuff etc.. but Vista is really doing my head in and i managed to make a partition out of the 1 TB sata hdd (120 GB), so now i have C:BOOT D: RECOVER and this 3rd partition i made in vista, but could you please tell me how to install winXP on this machine - step by step guide would be nice cause as said i know something but not much... I read somewhere you should disable sata drivers AHCI in bios, but can't find that option in Phoenix bios, also something about installing a program called n-lite and make a slipdisc or something... but could you please tell me how to format my C drive on this machine and install winXP only? I get the same blue screen when i boot from my winXP disc... much appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[Proxima]

I decided to look in the bios and eventually noticed that it wasnt detecting the SATA drive.
I dont know how it was managing to boot into its original Vista installation as it couldnt find the hard drive that the OS was on and I still dont know how it could do it 
Looking at the settings in the BIOS it didnt even list the SATA drive in the list of drives at first, then it appeared somehow after I clicked on something but cant remember what I clicked on, but it still wouldnt find it when installing an OS, until I altered it from being AHCI to IDE.

Once we had changed that setting in the BIOS it installed without any further problems, apart from getting the drivers to install.

How did you altered it from being AHCI to IDE? and how did you solve the problem with getting the drivers to install after?

[Simon]

Hi Peter, and

I'm sure Sandra or Tony will be along to help you soon. 

[Sandra]

Hi Peter,
You have two options in how to install XP on your Medion.

The correct way, I found out after we had done Tonys 
Is to press F6 when asked if you need to install extra drivers for SATA or SCSI drives and tell it where you have the SATA drivers. Usually at that point you would have the SATA drivers on a floppy, unfortunately your pc doesnt have a floppy drive so you could use an external floppy or possibly a USB flash drive. I think the drivers should be on the XP CD, probably in system 32 folder but I have never had to do it, possibly they may be available on the medion manufacturers site or even on the Recover partition on your hard drive, look for the Tools folder.

The way we did it on Tonys was to enter the BIOS and alter the AHCI setting to IDE in the part of the bios that I think was for onboard peripherals but may have been a different screen. Maybe Tony can have a look at his bios and tell you which screen it was in.
Once that was changed and Save Changes and Exit was selected it booted off the XP CD and installed as normal.

Someone said that once its been installed that way then you cant use the HDD2Go drive in the recessed bay or anther external SATA drive as its set to run as IDE.
You can however change the setting from IDE back to AHCI once XP has been installed and you should be able to boot from either system as normal and use the bay and external SATA drives.

Normally for dual booting you would install the older OS first then the newer one so it should be XP then Vista, so if you still have problems installing XP after following either of the 2 methods described then you will have to back up your Recover partition to a DVD or external drive then format the drive and install XP and create your partitions when installing it.
Then you can install Vista as the second OS.

Let me know if you need any clarification on anything 

[Sandra]

Courtesy of CarpetBurn on the Aldi/Medion forum @  http://www.medionsupport.com/phpbb2/index.php
I think you need to register to view posts.


1 Enter the bios as sandra did and change AHCI to IDE (this technically is the wrong way as it means if the HDD was external it wont work... Doesnt really matter when installing to a internal drive, will work 100% fine and you can alter the bios back after installing XP and placing all the machines drivers etc on there....... but still technically its the wrong way so to speak )

2 When windows xp starts to boot from the CD press and hold down F6, this will bring up a screen which allows you to install the needed SATA drivers which come on the CD in the (Intel floppy disk folder) This technically is the right way to do things, however with this machine you cant do it unless you have a usb flash drive to put those files on as there is no floppy drive (obviously)

3 What i did and what is the best thing to do incase you need to re-install in the future....

Download a wonderful app called NLITE (google is your friend) for those that dont know its an app that basically allows you to make a copy of your XP disk only you can integrate service packs and additional drivers you may need. Basically you take that app, copy youru XP cd onto your HDD, point NLITE to the sata floppy drives and it will integrate them into a nice shiney new XP cd which will run with no bios fiddling and no floppy/F6 key messing about 

You can also do the opposite and rip stuff out of windows with it (as example remove Internet Explorer) to streamline your windows xp install 

There is also a vista version of the app named VLITE which does the same (IE integrates drivers and service packs or allows you to shrink the size of of your op system etc etc) only difference is its for vista. Both apps are very handy to have about, VLITE especially as SP2 is supposed to be on the way soon, so thats a nice shiney vista dvd with SP2 integrated you can all soon make.

[Proxima]

Download a wonderful app called NLITE (google is your friend) for those that dont know its an app that basically allows you to make a copy of your XP disk only you can integrate service packs and additional drivers you may need. Basically you take that app, copy youru XP cd onto your HDD, point NLITE to the sata floppy drives and it will integrate them into a nice shiney new XP cd which will run with no bios fiddling and no floppy/F6 key messing about

Ok thanks a lot guys.. so far I just installed n-lite and integrated service pack 3, after that i added as many hotfixes/updates as i could find on the microsoft update page as shown on the screen :





Next is the drivers page, i uploaded latest nvidia drivers for it, but i'm not sure what to add more.. chipset drivers? and sata drivers? .. where can i find these and how do i make sure it's the right ones i add.. maybe you could pass some links or for a download maybe?

*Edit*

and what settings do i make here - default is automatic :

[Sandra]

If you go to this page :

http://www.medion.co.uk/ then click on Service and Support then More on Product Drivers and Updates you get to a page where you can enter your serial number and that will take you to a page where all the available drivers and updates are available to download.

The top two look like the ones you will need to download and add to that program to make your new CD from.

 Chipset Driver Intel
Win 2000/Win 2003/Win Vista x64/Win Vista x86/Win XP/Win XP Media Center
01.08.2008      -     Version: 8.4.0.1016
 
 
   
 Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager
Win Vista x64/Win Vista x86/Win XP/Win XP Media Center/Win XP x64
01.08.2008      -     Version: 7.8.0.1012
 
The storage manager is the SATA/RAID drivers but the info says you need to install the Chipset drivers before the ycan be used.

Due to the way Medion do their downloads it will probably be a self extracting file that will install to or if the folder isnt there it will make a new folder on C for drivers. So you need to see where its extracting them to so you can find them to add to that program.

Hope thats all it needs, as I havent done it myself I am assuming a lot from what I have read and posted here already or the information from the medion drivers update page 

[Tony]

Oh bugger I just did a reply, but before I posted it, I hit the notify button. Page refreshed, and I lost the post, sod it it's past my bedtime. In any case I'm like you Proxima, know a bit, but not enough. I also need a step by step instruction to get it right, regards this Medion issue, I was an IDE man until I bought that Medion. I've no doubt Sandra would sort it if she had a Medion machine but she ain't, that is why she's a bit in the dark as to what to do. But she is setting you on the right path by the looks.

Anyway if you want me to look in my Bios I will, but obviously its past my bedtime right now. Just let me know tomorrow and I'll have a look.

PS: I'm still running my Medion how Sandra set it up, not a problem accessing external Sata drives, as the internal 1000GB is overkill for me.

Catch you later, Oh and welcome to the board.

[Proxima]

np and thanks Tony, but what i understand from Sandra is that was one option to do it, changing AHCI to IDE in bios, but the way i choosed to do it is slipstreaming a new XP cd (n-lite) with all nessary drivers for sata, chipset etc, so that i don't need to change anything in bios at all, but thanks for your support anyway

@Sandra.. I downloaded both drivers for Intel and Storage manager from the medion site, but what i get is 2 executable files which cant be extracted to a folder with winzip or winrar as i did with all the hotfixes/updates from microsoft.. and N-Lite needs .inf files to add drivers to it, so how do i extract and locate these inf files from the excutables shown on the screens below?

[Sandra]

I think that you just run the files in your windows OS and it will create a folder on C, if a folder doesnt already exist, probably one called drivers or maybe in the system 32 folder. It should say when you double left click on it where its installing to, for each file. Then you can go to that location and add the .inf and anything else that N Lite asks for 

[Proxima]

Ok I found a program called "Universal Extractor" that could extract any exe files, it did the trick so far, and i managed to extract both contents of the drivers, it found the inf file from Intel chipset and i slipstreamed that one with no problems, but then i tried the same to the matrix storage content, but n-lite couldnt recognize any inf files from the content on the screen below, closest thing to a inf file is a inx - but are you sure i need to slipstream matrix storage, and its is the right one for sata drivers?