Does BIOS "Load default" reset Media Direct button to safety?

[2912pwil]

Dear all -

Think I may have found an optional solution to the "Media Direct" nuking danger.. see

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=13909

which at time of typing says..
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Greetings from bonnie Scotland and to all at Dell forums..



I have an Inspiron 1525 (very nice thanks) ordered with Vista which I then put Ubuntu 8.04 on. (Pretty much everything worked out-of-the-box).



Read about Media Direct & how you could nuke your system if not careful so.. I figured I'd be cautious, ordered up another 250Gb SATA and started playing with that ... no end of problems, could'nt get to what I wanted (VISTA on one button, UBUNTU on MD.. kept nuking it, although I'd read posts about rmbr.exe etc etc... ).



(I'd been nervous of pressing MD by mistake on original drive and nuking it..)



Then I wondered what loading BIOS defaults would do... so power on, F2 => Maintenance => Load Default... ....



... cut a long story short, I now seem to have a machine that after re-install of VISTA & UBUNTU now goes straight to GRUB option at boot when either power on MD button is pressed.



.. so, do I conclude that resetting the BIOS to default neutralises the "interesting", nuking possible, effects of the MD button?? If so that seems a safer option for a dual VISTA/LINUX beast that fiddling around with rmbr.exe etc...



I'd be very grateful for an answer before I put the original-but also with UBUNTU added 250Gb drive back in and see what happens then when I press MD...(also if you Dell guys aren't allowed to tell us as opposed to don't know I'd value that indicated, please).





Yours aye



Phillip

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anyone here got a view??

Yours aye

Phillip

[sTpny]

Very interesting,.. I have 2 of those machines here on my workbench that I am just about to install OS's on. One needs a dual boot, the other, the owner is not sure yet. I have heard about that media-direct button, but I really don't what it is, or even, what button it is, but I already installed ubuntu on one of these machines and the hd balked two days later. I suspect that media direct button is to blame.

Did you use the ubuntu-dell-reinstall iso or just a regular ubuntu iso? Do you know if the ubuntu-dell-reinstall will do dual boot? I'll be looking into these things further, and if I have time, I'll try resetting the bios to defaults, like you say, and then try pressing that media direct button again, once I figure out what button it is.

I'll post what I discover later. ttfn.