M$ alteration of MY hardware

[Brian Densmore]

Well it is possible that Microsoft could make the modem unusable by any
other OS. All they would have to do is flash the modem ROM, which they
have the code to do. Then in the new ROM all it would take is to scan a
certain address at the base of the memory stack for a certain string,
let's say "Microsoft". They did this same exact thing in Windows386 in
beta; they left the code in place in the release version, but disabled
it. What it did was pop up a big red screen warning the user that the
DOS they were running wasn't Microsoft DOS and might cause the computer
to lock up.  

Am I that paranoid, no. But they certainly have the low morals to do it,
and the ability to.
More than likely it is flipping memory spaces, BIOS settings, and IRQs.
You should pull down a pci scan utility and run it. If you can't detect
it in a pci scan then something is very wrong. You may have to give the
actual pci slot to scan to find it. Also you may not have the module for
it loaded, if it has one.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: KRFinch at dstsystems.com [mailto:KRFinch at dstsystems.com]
> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 9:33 AM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: Re: M$ alteration of MY hardware
> 
> 
> 
> Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me for a couple of reasons.
> 
> The first is anecdotal.  For some reason, when I'm running Win2k on my
> ThinkPad and change the working screen from the built-in one to the
> external port, Windows actually goes and changes the BIOS 
> settings for this
> rather than using the auto-detect functionality built into the video
> controller.  This is especially maddening when I hibernate 
> the unit in the
> docking station (with an external monitor attached) and then 
> try to wake it
> up outside of the docking station.  The BIOS says to skip the 
> autodetect,
> and I will actually end up with the machine powered up with 
> nothing on the
> screen and no way to get an image either.  The only way to 
> get it to work
> when that happens is to pop the battery, reboot, and manually 
> change the
> bios.
> 
> The second reason it wouldn't surprise me is the way that 
> Win2k handles IRQ
> steering and reassignment.  With Win9x, you could manually 
> set the IRQ's
> and DMA's on some hardware, and the O/S would (sometimes) 
> figure out what
> you were doing and assign the remaining hardware with the remaining
> resources.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if Win2k just took 
> this all a
> step further and simply dynamically reset the hardware to use 
> the resources
> it wanted.
> 
> I doubt it will cause any PERMANENT damage, but it might make 
> setting up a
> dual-boot far more difficult.  The best way to get around 
> this, I would
> imagine, is to use something really old that has jumpers to set the
> configurations.  If it's hard-wired, I doubt Win2k can do 
> much about it.
> 
> Best of luck!
> 
> Kevin Finch
> Network Administrator
> DST Systems, Inc.
> 816/435-6039
> krfinch at dstsystems.com
> 
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