Dear BIOS-Mods.com community,

BIOS-Mods.com for years has been and continues to be an open, collaborative space to help users around the world make the most of their motherboards, hardware platforms, and computers as a whole. Over the years we have had many talented developers come and go who have all left tremendous impacts on our ability to modify BIOS images and provide the know how for people who like “Do it Yourself” projects.

We would like to start an open-knowledge initiative to help recruit and train new moderators at BIOS-Mods.com With the wealth of information there is to be shared, we are looking for several interested enthusiasts who want to learn more about the process behind BIOS modifications and who are willing to learn with the rest of us. BIOS modifications are an evolving process, and as UEFI continues to gain market share the techniques must also evolve to make the most of the new emerging technologies.

Starting in May, we would like to refresh our tutorials section by making available many of our BIOS modification methods that we use regularly on the site but have not been publicly documented. We hope by sharing new information with the community we can encourage users to become more involved in the process so that we can meet the rising demand of BIOS modification requests.

We will begin updating our tutorial sections for Phoenix and Insyde BIOS platforms which has grown very popular over the past several years. If you already have existing BIOS Modification experience, we welcome you to join us in updating our public knowledge base and database come May.

If you are interested in learning how to become a BIOS “modder” on the site and would like to become an active moderator on our forums, please click below. You will be taken to our contact forum where you can leave a message with your interest. An administrator will get back to you shortly.

Best regards,

BIOS-Mods.com

I am ready to get started

This article documents the exciting work being done by some of our top contributers in our forum. The modifications performed on systems like the Dell 15z reflect the most advanced examples of BIOS modifications done within our  community.  For more information, please visit the thread.
Phoenix SecureCore Tiano, used by Dell, is a tough nut to crack – we came to what we have today by taking little steps on a road that wasn’t smooth to begin with. Phoenix nor Dell have provided any information regarding SCT 2.0 and to this day the BIOS on these machines has not been upgraded to 2.3.1 which allows for ME v8 (brings IVB CPU support) and SecureBoot capabilities.

The number one utility in all of our research is without a doubt AndyP’s Tool, which can be found here. Huge props to him – without his tool our work wouldn’t be possible. Please note, that for some reason later versions of this tool such as 2.11 don’t seem to unpack the BIOS.wph’s capsule properly, so use versions prior to that if you are going to attempt doing some *magic* on your own. There have been a new Phoenix Tool release v2.12 but I have yet to try it, I personally still use 2.02 and it has been producing stable and working output.

The BIOS chip structure is the following:

Platform: Intel(R) HM67 Express Chipset

— Flash Devices —

W25Q32BV    ID:0xEF4016

Size: 4096KB (32768Kb)

00000000h – 00000FFFh: Flash Descriptor Region

00001000h – 00037FFFh: Common ME Header

00038000h – 0017FFFFh: ME Region

00180000h – 003FFFFFh: BIOS Region

+

00400000h – 00420FFFh: EC Region (flashed to a secondary SPI chip W25X40VSIG, as of BIOS A13 my EC firmware is V02-14 For PHOENIX EC Version P1A38)

 1.  Unlocking Advanced Menus and Modifying Option ROMs

First came the nVidia VBIOS modding for XPS 15 and XPS 17 laptops. This was a pretty straight-forward discovery because nVidia bios modding was documented all over the place with a software package called NiBiTor that was coded a few years back which allows a user to adjust a range of options inside the video bios of the card. The guys with nVidia cards onboard have been playing with undervolting and overvolting successfully which allows for room for overclocking or gaining overall stability if you are experiencing hang/freeze/overheating issues with stock configuration. There are values for voltage already predefined in the VBIOS but they can be easliy altered as the voltage table for nVidia is well-documented. There’s also a way of swapping VBIOSes for nVidia cards, like having a 525M utilize 540M VBIOS or vice versa, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing to do.

For people with AMD Switchable Graphics things are still not looking good since only Vostro 3450 of the laptop range with SCT UEFI uses this technology. The ROMs for AMD are not really easy to come by, even though they are documented pretty well. It’s just that Dell’s implementation on SG is kind of lousy anyway, so attempting any modifications on the ROM is pointless, really.

Then based on information from dgsga here and aldo androdev here we were able to overcome a huge problem for OS X users – Phoenix has locked write access to MSR register 0xE2 which stores C-State data. The register has only read access and therefore Apple’s Power Management implementation was unable to write necessary values to it resulting in kernel panics. SCT 2.0 from Phoenix has this restriction hardcoded inside the PowerManagement2.efi module (GIUD F7731B4C-58A2-4DF4-8980-5645D39ECE58) .. patching out the sequence specified in the reference topics seems to solve the issue.

After about 9 month of waiting with the help of Mikhail based on information found on Phoenix’s wiki page jkbuha was able to reverse the EFI_IFR_SUPPRESS_IF operator inside the PlatformSetupAdvancedDxe module which resulted in unlocked BIOS menus. Same patter was then found inside SystemSetuplSecurityDxe module, but the result wasn’t that exciting as with Advanced setup. The only thing unlocked in Security tab of the BIOS was the option to specify the length of the password.

Some of the menus that unlock has brought us and some of the main option highlights:

* Boot Configuration

- Lets you enable classic BIOS post screen with diagnostics summary

- Enable/disable UEFI and Legacy boot modes. Classic Legacy mode allows booting from MBR-formatted drives only (which in hand limits you to 4 partitions on your HDD), UEFI mode support GPT and virtually any amount of partitions. UEFI-capable Windows boot manager (Windows installed in UEFI mode) or a third party UEFI bootloader such as Clover is required to boot from GPT volumes)

- Enable QuickBoot – skips EFI Dxe driver loading which are already loaded, essentially speeds up your reboot. Doesn’t affect first boot.

* ACPI Configuration

- Allows to enable\disable Dell’s proprietary temperature and voltage monitoring device PTID, which essentially drops one of the SSDT tables called PtidDevc from the BIOS if you set to disable this feature.

* Processor Configuration

No, this won’t bring you OC features as this is one of the options that has to be supported by Intel’s Management Engine firmware.

- Intel’s Hyper Threading technology – well, this speaks for itself. this options controls whether virtual core thread is in use or not

- Flex Ratio is essentially the Plimit of your CPU, this is the highest multiplier your CPU can utilize. Please note it’s not the maximum multiplier used for TB.

- Execute Disable Bit (XD) – Intel’s hardware-based security implementation to protect your system against worm/rootkit exploits.

- CPU fast strings – Brings better CPU  better performance.

- Processor Power Management submenu lets you manipulate the Turbo Boost setup  a swell as your idle power C-state switching.

* Peripheral Configuration

- Nothing interesting to see here for the end-user

* HDD Configuration

- This menus basically lets you alter you SATA port configuration, setting it as Hot-Pluggable, External or Internal etc. Just make sure to never enable the ports that are disabled from the factory, otherwise you may run into some issues.

* Memory Frequency

If you bought some flashy 1600Mhz modules, well.. too bad you can’t really see your 800Mhz effective clock because chipset is locked to 1333Mhz.

- Memory Frequency will let you set the memfrq to as  hight as 1867Mhz (including 1600Mhz in between). This has been confirmed as working for XPS machines and is yet to be confirmed by Vostro 3450/3750 owners. The only catch here is that mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs are limited to support 1333Mhz only, so one has yet to see what is the result of setting the clock higher than theoretically supported.

* System Agent (SA) Configuration

- DMI Settings submenu

- Graphics Configuration and PEG Configuration submenus will let you allocate the amount of shared  memory to IDG (integrated graphics) and change all sorts of options associated with it. There’s still no way to set nVidia or AMD cards (PEG) as primary GFX accelerator on OPTIMUS and Switchable-Grapchics machines.

* South Bridge Configuration (which is HM67 chipset for this generation of machines we are looking at)

- Adjustments to HPET (Hight Precision Event Timer) which is is one of the interrupt timers used in computers for ages.

- PCI Express Port Configuration submenu is there to control your mPCI-E port behavior (such as Wi-Fi and WIMAX). Same deal as with SATA – don’t enable ports that were disabled from the factory. Even though my computer doesn’t physically has a WIMAX port soldered to the deaugtherboard the port is enabled in the setup nevertheless.

- USB Config is your USB port configuration. And again .. don’t play detective here, enabling disabled things won’t do you any good.

- Azalia Configuration lets you disable onboard audio codec and HDMI audio.

- SB Serial IRQ Config is there for managing the allocation of computer interrupts (IRQs) ..

* Network Configuration

* LPC Configuration

* SMBIOS Event Log

- These 3 above again are submenus completely useless for the end-user

* ME Configuration

Here you can see the version of the Intel Management Engine firmware Dell has coded into your SPI chip. Dell still hasn’t updated to the latest v7 ME firmware to this day and the version currently supplied with newer BIOS releases is 7.0.4.1197 whils the newest one out there is 7.1.52.1176. I personally wouldn’t advise installing ME from different platforms just because platform features of the firmware tend to differ. If you still think it’s feasible for some reason, kasar has put together an upgrade package which will bump your ME firmware to the latest v7 version.

- Intel AT is your Intel Anti-Theft feature which is huge on modern day Ultrabooks… and according to Intel isn’t really supported on the range of machines we are discussing here. Nevertheless I believe you can purchase your activation code (supplied as a pre-paid card with a scratch-off code) to subscribe to this service. This allows you to track your machine, remotely lock it (so that the thief won’t be able to enter BIOS setup) and even remotely wipe your machine. Basically an analog of Apple’s Find My Mac (or iPhone if you like) service from iCloud. Intel doesn’t support this range of machines officially due to Dell’s Computrace being hardcoded into the BIOS with essentially same capabilities as AT.

* Thermal Configuration

- CPU Thermal Configuration submenu allows you to disable Intel’s original thermal monitoring, enable the T-States (throttling states), also there’s an option to disable DTS (Digital Thermal Sensor) which uses optical fiber to report data from Thermal Zones and works in conjunction with PTID device (I have mentioned it earlier in the article) which reads data passed from Thermal Zones as well.

- Platform Thermal Configuration

1. Trip point temperatures for fan kicking in at HIGH and LOW RPMs.. the use is pretty obvious.

2. Passive TC1, TC2 and TSP values are used in a formula defined in ACPI Specification (see ACPI Spec 5.0, 11.1.5.1 Processor Clock Throttling, pp.525)

3. PCH Thermal Device which is a HM67 chipset sensor that is disabled by Dell because there are already 3 ways of monitoring temperature implemented and there was no need for SMBUS temperature reporting according to Dell.

You can enable the PCH Sensor nevertheless, but please note – most of the settings on this menu won’t do anything .. they don’t override anything because temperature values for tripping are most likely hardcoded into EC (ITE IT8158E Enchanted Controller found on this series of machines) firmware.

After this HUGE progreess came a tiny exporation – a way of updating the CPU microcode, which Dell is not really doing a gread job of themselves.. my A13 comes swith microcode v23, while the latest one supplied by Intel for CPUID 0x000206A7h is v28. You can read about the procedure in detail here, as described by jkbuha. The only thing I should mention is that it’s not required to enable of the Control Options as said in the linked post. It’s enough to enable ‘No SLIC’ and ‘Allow users to modify other modules’.

Later we discovered that Dell is lazy to update their Intel IGD VBIOS as well and as seen from XPS L502x changelog they are actually downgrading the versions because their ePSA Diagnostics Utility is getting confused by changes in the VBIOS. We are not blaming Dell here, but it sure is nice to at least update your machines that haven’t gone through their support lifespan yet… then to roll something back because you are too lazy to update your propriatory diagnostics utility. So we went ahead and took a VBIOS v2130.0  (it seems that Itel’s VBIOS always goes by GUID of 29206FC2-9EAB-9EAB-4612-ACA1-1E3D098FB1B3) from an Inspiron 17R Special Edition laptop which also has SCT, but of version 2.3.1 already (still not documented by Phoenix on their wiki). We discovered that connector table as well as hardware ID table do differ across machines due to the nature of different port setup as well as available CPU support. jkbuha has found out that for Intel’s Mobile VBIOS the connector table always starts at offset 0xC20 and ends and 0xD1F, you have to use a connector table from your original VIDEO bios to support all the video-out ports. If the ID of your onboard graphics card is not found in the donor Video BIOS you have to carry over the ID table as well which is 0×44 to 0×80.

Right now we have settled on a Lenovo (product code H0ET70WW) mobile VBIOS v2137.0 which seems most stable and glitch-free (like broken brightness controls for eg.). It’s not advisable to use desktop board VBIOSes even though the version is higher the scructure is totally different, also turned out they are missing the text mode 80×25.

The wake issue has been plaguing OSX users on Dell laptops based on SCT2.0 with later BIOS version. As a temporary measure I have troubleshooted what was causing the issue – the module PlatformSmm.efi of known to work BIOS version has to be backported into later versions to fix the issue. The module is responsible for loading DSDT and locating and loading SSDT tables based on RSTD/XSDT data.

Now that I know the module, I dug deeper and it turns out that changes to memory allocation across BIOS versions have caused the issue. Theoretically this can be solved purely by altering DSDT – in other words.. here are the changes for my Vostro going from A04 (wake works) to A07 (wake doesn’t work):

130c130

< OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0xBAF42E18, 0x01B0) A04

—

> OperationRegion (GNVS, SystemMemory, 0xBAF41E18, 0x01B0) A07

655c656

< OperationRegion (PNVS, SystemMemory, 0xBAE0D018, 0x100E) A04

—

> OperationRegion (PNVS, SystemMemory, 0xBAE0C018, 0x100E) A07

I have a proof of this concept over at InsanelyMac forums but I have yet to try this myself. What’s needed is you take the regions from a later version of the BIOS (A07 in this case) and swap the regions in DSDT of an older version of the BIOS (A04). This slight shift in memory has caused the machine to fail at locating ACPI tables upon wake. This is for people who prefer to keep older DSDTs even with new BIOS versions.. I’m such a person myself, but when I saw Brabbelbla was using the DSDT from latest BIOS while actually running the latest BIOS – this got me thinking what’s causing this. jkbuha once said that he has’t experienced the wake from sleep issue ever on his 15z. After checking DSDT of this machine going from one BIOS version to another version it appeared that memory regions haven’t changed .. to this has lead me to the conclusion above.

N.B.

A good person that goes by the name CodeRush has created an automated cross-platform utility that is able to do the patching for Apple’s PM and uncloks advanced menus at the same time, the software is constantly updated and the source code can be found here. A compiled version 0.5.5 for Windows can be found here. You can even pass the .exe straight from Dell’s support page to apply the patch.

2. UEFI Shell access on Dell-Phoenix SCT 2.0:

Sadly, there’s still no way to unlock internal EFI Shell, but fortunately an external binary of SHELL 2.0 (best compatibility with UEFI 2.0 based SCT) can be used on a usb stick to initiate the UEFI SHELL. The stock shell used by Dell is very limited, so there’s no point in using the one supplied in the firmware.

Technically it is possible to add shell.efi in the same manner Windows adds itself to bcfg (Boot Configuration or your Boot Order that you see when you fir F12 on boot) or even assign a hotkey to it, but you need to have your HDD formatted with GPT partition table.

Load up the shell from external media. To do this you get a third-party SHELL binary from Intel’s EDK II  and put it on a FAT32 formatted USB stick in a catalog hierarchy of /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi

Reboot your machine, enable UEFI Boot in Boot Configuration. Insert the USB flash drive and reboot your machine, it will boot up straight to SHELL.

At this point you would have two possible mount points for fs, one would be MBR (your usb) and another on would be GPT (your HDD partition).

Map your media by doing: map fs*

I assume you have 3 or more fs partitions now, fs0: is MBR (the USB drive) and the rest are GPT (EFI, primary part .. etc)

Do the following:

fs1:

fs0:

cp fs0:\EFI\BOOT\bootx64.efi fs1:\efi\shell64.efi

It will copy bootx64.efi (which is your third-party shell efi application) from USB /EFI/BOOT to your EFI partition /efi/shell64.efi

* Just to add SHELL as a Boot Order Entry do the following:

fs1:

cd efi\

bcfg boot add 10 shell64.efi “Shell 2.0″

bcfg boot dump

* If you want SHELL to be accessible from a hotkey as well (like F12 or F2):

fs1:

cd efi\

shell64.efi (this will initiate the SHELL binary we just copied to the EFI partition)

dh (this will produce a long list of loaded and initialized efi modules, the SHELL we just loaded will appear toward the end, make note of the directory and the handle number of it, it can be 1AE for example)

bcfg boot addh 10 handle_number_here “Shell 2.0″ -opt 0×40000000 0×0015 (this will add Shell Boot Option with a hotkey of F11 – 0×0015)

 3.  Crisis Recovery

With all the modifications to the system BIOS there was a much needed way of doing Crisis Recovery, which again wasn’t documented anywhere for SCT 2.0. We have been looking and looking around for a way to initiate it with no apparent success. There was an inside document leaked from Packard Bell (division of Acer) which described the use of PFlash.efi (withci is an EFI SHELL Flasher that you see when you update the BIOS from an OEM updater) and some form of startup.nsh which is the script that is being executed when you start the EFI Shell (if it’s placed in the same folder where shell.efi is located). We have been able to find the latest releases of the mentioned utility on some ftp server, but to no avail . This wasn’t really useful because this applicaion can only run when machines is booted in the firmware update boot mode (there are multiple boot modes possible with SCT 2.0 UEFI BIOS).

Like on some older Dell machines recovery is initiated in a pretty known manner. You basically prepare an external media with a recovery capsule (Torito CD or FAT32 flash drive), unplug the power cord from the laptop, press and hold the End key on the keyboard (it’s Right Arrow key on XPS 15z due to the lack of dedicated End key), plug the power back in as let go of the End key the moment you insert the power jack. The machine starts in a crisis boot mode and expects a valid recovery capsule. This was a piece of cake part of the recovery process .. the hardest part was the structure of the capsule that we need to be using. Phoenix wiki has some documentation regarding the structure but the information provided there wasn’t enough. After many misleading analogies from other machines and BIOS makers it was finally figured out.

To my surprise I was able to find the way of making the capsule. First I used a software called Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit 2.0 which essentially dumped the BIOS region of my W25Q32BVSIG SPI chip (2.5Mb in size) and I have renamed it as BIOS.cap (because this was the name I had originally found referenced inside the modules related to CD and USB booting in crisis boot mode) and following the method of initiating the recovery I was able to boot the machine. There came another surprise – the BIOS from the USB is not flashed directly to the SPI chip, but loaded into memory rather.. which allows the machine to boot while having the on-chip BIOS still corrupted.

Following superb feature which later allowed us to test BIOS modifications without actually flashing the BIOS we still had to figure out how to make the capsule by hand to include all the modifications. The answer was pretty obvious. Take the BIOS1.WPH supplied by Dell, extract it with Phoenix Tool and you will end up with a 4.12 Mb F33… RAW BIOS capsule and the actual EFI SHELL flasher which is 1.06 Mb in size and is of version v1.5.02 (while the latest version of Phoenix EFI SHELL Flasher is actually v1.5.66.. way to go Dell) that is used to flash the capsule to the chip. The capsule is of the exact size of the flashrom SPI chip and EC chip combined – 4329471 bytes or 4.12 Mb.. and If you followed the article carefully you’ve seen that BIOS region is 0×180000 to 0x3FFFFF – this is the part that has to be cut of the F33 RAW capsule (using a HEX editor of personal preference) and named as BIOS.cap to be used as a crisis recovery capsule.

Sadly as of the latest BIOS version (for my Vostro 3450 at least), Dell has decided to revoke Boot Manager and exclude the USB boot feature while machine was in crisis boot mode. The latest known BIOS version for my particular machine that supported this feature was A04. It is possible to obtain the feature back by backporting the appropriate modules to newer BIOS versions, but I just prefer to have a custom A04 crisis recovery capsule to avoid the need for backporting.

Our fellow comrade kasar or in other circles knows as capitankasar has put together a Windows PE (Bart PE) bootable image for BIOS crisis recovery via a Torito CD. You have to burn it to a bank CD/DVD.

When you boot the CD up go to CMD and write repair, it wil start the flasher .. follow the onscreen instructions and you should be all set in a matter of couple of minutes.

XPS L502x: http://www.mediafire.com/?z4lt1n56catjme6

XPS L702x: point me to one ?

XPS L511z: http://www.mediafire.com/?36xadbbn4a8udxd

Vostro 3450: http://www.mediafire.com/?c3cc3mqofabh5m3

Another positive thing about initiating crisis recovery is that CMOS gets reset while doing so. This won’t wipe your NVRAM if you screwed something up by using SHELL, but sure can save you from going through a hassle of dismantling the unit to reach for a coin-cell batetry to reset the CMOS.

Pending projects are the following:

 1. Flash Descriptor and ME Region unlocking, potentially leads to overclocking capabilities.

This requires a hardware solution, currently there is no way for Dell Phoenix SCT machines to do this via software. This is required to enable write access to these regions and potentially exploit ME region to enable Overclocking platform feature. A sequence of 00 00 FF FF 00 00 FF FF 18 01 08 08 FF has to be flashed by a hardware flasher to the offset 0×60 (part of the Flash Descriptor) to remove the master lock protection:

Master Region Access:

CPU/BIOS – ID: 0×0000, Read: 0x0B, Write: 0x0A

ME       – ID: 0×0000, Read: 0x0D, Write: 0x0C

GbE      – ID: 0×0118, Read: 0×08, Write: 0×08

Basically we overwrite the lock keys for FD and ME regions that appear as 00 00 0B 0A 00 00 0D 0C 18 01 08 08 FF at the noted offset, there is no GbE region on the SPI chip, so it’s pointless to remove the master lock on it.

This has been partially done by kasar at a cost of a dead motherboard on his XPS L502x machine, which was a result of an unsuccessful ME flash in attempt to unlock overclocking features. We are currently raising funds towards his motherboard replacement, please take a look if you want to help a good fella!

 2. Permanent DSDT modification

There are ACPI tables out there in the open inside the firmware’s capsule. We are able to decompile and recompile them using the AML iASL decompiler from Intel but there’s no known way of integrating them back inside the firmware and actually having the machine to boot. Replacing the module directly results in a black screen during boot. Using respective functionality from Phoenix Tool has the same result..

Credits for all the things related to SCT 2.0 unlocking/hacking/tweaking go to: Mikhail, Andy (of PhoenixTool fame!) djjonastybe, jkbuha, kasar, Ahmed and you humble servant TimeWalker.

Dear Community,

It has been quite a while since I have updated our members and visitors on the site’s status and discussed where we are looking to continue improving upon BIOS-Mods’ reputation as the number one BIOS/hardware modification community on the internet.

The amount of data we have collected on the BIOS modification process is tremendous. Over the past several years, we have successfully unlocked hundreds of motherboards and have created a readily available repository of modified BIOS images. As BIOS-Mods continues to gain user requests and interest in unlocking new motherboards with the latest technologies, we have continued to provide modified images for many mainstream consumer platforms thanks to the dedication, time, and effort of many talented community members.

As all of us at BIOS-Mods have busy lives and busy schedules, it requires many individuals to come forward to help others modify their BIOS images and add to the repository to assist both new and veteran users. While many of our normal moderators and I have had a very busy few months, this process has been somewhat reliant on the enthusiastic folks in our forums as of recent. Many users have also requested that more information become publically available on our website for learning how to modify various BIOS images. While some of this information is available, there is a fair amount of work to be done in order to update our public knowledge repository with the latest techniques and methods.

Starting soon, BIOS-Mods.com will be working to update our knowledge databases with new modifications and new information. As there is a lot of information to be made available, and a lot of daily requests to take care of, we are asking for your participation. If you are interested in learning the BIOS modification process, contributing to our knowledge base, or helping our members in the community find what they are looking for, I encourage you to contact the site via the contact form for more information on how you can get involved. As we model our site off of the Wiki philosophy, user contribution and community involvement is always strongly encouraged.

As we continue to help the internet do everything from running manufacturer BIOS updates to modifying the BIOSes that put PCs to the extreme, we are excited about continuing to find new ways to help out folks with all different levels of experience with BIOSes and computing as a whole.

I am pleased to report our community has grown past 40,000 registered members, and the support for the community is continuing to grow as well. I look forward to bringing on new moderators and interested community members in making our repository updates a success.

Best Regards,

Chris a.k.a. “TheWiz”
BIOS-Mods.com Administrator

The Eken 7″ Android MID M009F tablet is powered by an InfoTMIC 800MHz CPU, 186 MB Ram, 2 0r 4 GB of storage space (Upgradeable to 16GB via an SD memory card), a 7″ 800×480 resistive screen, WiFi (802.11 a/b/g/n)

Beware of this and other copycat tablets like it. If you are in the market for a tablet, do your homework first. These tablets do run Android, and the one I tested was quite compatible with most Android apps. However, these tablets do not perform anything like an iPAD. It has a “resistive” touch screen that requires a stylus, or fingernail, to operate. Using the tip of your finger just will not work, which makes this tablet hard to use. You need to look for a “capacitive” touch screen, which you can use your fingertips for navigating. It’s InfoTMIC 800MHz CPU is very slow in handling the software. It also says it has 186 MB of ram, but in reality, you end up with at most 25 MB of ram to run your programs with.

The tablet I tested included Ethernet, WIFI and 3G for networking. Ethernet worked flawlessly using the supplied dongle, but that is where the fun ended. Wifi signals were very weak, and dropped in and out unless you are right next to the router. There are modifications on the internet that remedy this problem however, and 3G was non-existent.

Other problems with this tablet include the built-in stereo speakers. The speakers in the tablet I tested were barely audible with the volume turned all the way up. It also included a set of “ear-bud” headphones that did not help any as they were barely audible also. Another issue I had was the screen cover was very cheap, and within one week of moderate use, the screen had very visible scratches on it from the stylus.

This tablet is cheap (about 50-80 USD), but is not worth the trouble. It is too slow and with the weak Wifi, almost useless. So be careful about what tablet to buy. Get a quality tablet, it may cost more, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Driver Agent, one of esupport.com’s flagship products, makes it easy for the average user to scan a computer for out of date drivers and software. In addition to the Driver Agent software, BIOS Agent helps customers locate the best BIOS stock BIOS image for their computer. For users who are tentative about upgrading their computers to the latest version of drivers and software, Driver Agent shows you out of date drivers with an effective online web scan.

BIOS-Mods.com had the opportunity to review the software to assess whether or not it is truly a viable solution for the average consumer to keep their PC up-to-date. From our first impressions, we were satisfied overall with the ease of use in running the software and finding what was out of date. After testing on several different workstations, Driver Agent was mostly accurate at finding the best drivers for hardware installed on the machine. In some cases, OEM drivers for pre-built machines did not always select the right driver, but rather a similar driver was selected that wasn’t quite the best match. However, in these cases the downloaded driver reports that it is not compatible with the system, preventing the wrong driver from being installed in most cases.

For consumers using somewhat dated and legacy computers, Driver Agent is extremely useful in installing drivers that are no longer available on the manufacturer’s website. We were particularly impressed with the repository of legacy drivers it had for some of our older machines that we tested the product on.

Recently, Driver Agent has recently introduced a software panel which checks common applications installed on the computer to see if they too are up to date. While there are many products on the web that already do this, we found it convenient that it was one click away after checking the status of the machine drivers.

In addition to being able to scan and update both drivers and software from the website control panel, the user is able to review previous scans from other computers that the scanner has analyzed. This is quite useful for reviewing history across several machines and ensuring that all the computers you own stay up to date.

As a whole, the Driver Agent software is user friendly and easy to setup. While we didn’t always get 100% accuracy when comparing the files in the database to the one’s we expected to see, it wasn’t very difficult to retrieve the correct file after the fact. In the event this should happen to a user and the driver does not install, customer support is readily available to help find the right driver for your system and send it to you directly.

For more information on Driver Agent, please visit http://driveragent.com/. While this may not be for advanced users who are meticulous about manually updating their machines, it is an easy solution for the average user who may not have enough background experience to assess what drivers they should install to keep their system up to date.

After using Windows 8 Consumer Preview since the release date there are certain issues that should be addressed. Not only does Windows 8 have a new “Metro” interface that many people are still adapting to, but there are several changes to how software will behave while running Windows 8 CP.

The first and possibly the most important one is Windows 8 does NOT support the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package. This means that if your software requires this package, you will have to buy new software that has a later version of the package or one that does not use it at all.

Another issue with Windows 8 is browsing the web with Firefox on a computer with an NVIDIA GPU. Firefox seems to have a hard time keeping its graphics straight. A lot of anomalies on the screen as you move through tabs and pages, but other than that it works fine.

Sometimes Metro apps do not start on first click (or touch). Every once in a while, they will start as usual and then go straight back to the Start Screen. On the second click they will start normally. I am sure that this will be fixed by the time RTM comes out.

These are only some of the issues found in Windows 8 thus far. Windows 8 seems quite stable and once you get used to how things work, and seems easy to use. A lot of people have voiced their concern about the Start Button being removed. With a software package called ViStart by Lee-Soft which will put a start button on the taskbar.

As I am still testing Windows 8, that is all I have for now. Check back often to get more of the inside scoop on Windows 8.

Correction: If you are using Windows 8 and Firefox as your browser, then Firefox has an option to turn off “Hardware Acceleration” This will fix your problem.

Go to tools-options-click on the advanced tab- and un-check “use hardware acceleration when available”, and your golden…

With the advent of UEFI and Windows 8 comes some security and usability issues. When Windows 8 is released, UEFI’s “Secure Boot” will be required to be turned on by default and it will be left to the OEM’s on how to implement it. What does this mean to you? Maybe nothing.

Windows is still the most popular PC Operating System in the world. As such, it is highly likely that the computer you are reading this article on is running some version of Microsoft Windows. If you are running Windows 7 and up, your OS is compliant to UEFI specifications. But what if you want to run a different OS, like Linux, older versions of Windows? You could be out of luck.

What is Secure Boot?

Secure Boot is a UEFI 2.3.1 specification that during the boot process verifies certificates (or keys) held in the firmware, and compares them to other Option Roms and OS boot loaders. If the correct key is not in the firmware, or is in the “Blacklist”, Secure Boot will prevent the OS from loading or could prevent you from upgrading to certain manufacturers option cards. Since it will be up to the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to implement the Secure Boot feature, it is also up to them whether or not to add an option in the set-up to disable it, or to be able to update the “Allowed” OS list. So, if you were to buy a Windows 8 PC and want to install a new version of Linux, and there is no option to disable Secure Boot, and the key for the version of Linux you are installing is not found in the firmware, the OS will fail to load. This feature is intended to prevent malware such as “rootkits” and “bootkits” to install themselves and run when booting your OS. According to Microsoft, the Windows 8 implementation of Secure Boot, programs will not be able to change Secure Boot security settings to prevent malware from gaining access through reprogramming the firmware.

Are you losing control?

Because it’s the OEM’s decision to make a choice whether to include a disable feature for Secure Boot, or a way to update keys, PC’s can effectively be “locked” to one certain OS without the option to install a different OS. This would not affect usability for most people, but for “techies” and “geeks” (such as myself) this poses a very real problem. Canonical and Red Hat wrote a white paper addressing these issues. Microsoft wrote an article in their blog that clarifies Microsoft’s requirements regarding Secure Boot. Microsoft insures that an option to turn off Secure Boot in x86 PC’s setup must be present to be Windows 8 certified. However, that option will not be present in ARM processors (as of this writing). Meaning that, if the specifications are not changed, equipment that use ARM processors, i.e. Netbooks, will be “locked” to using Windows 8 if it was installed at the time of purchase.

This could be a very real threat for those who choose to run an alternate OS, and could be difficult for those who are not technically inclined.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ever since the computer was born, there needed to be a program to tell the CPU where things are and how to use them. In 1981 the IBM 5150 introduced the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) to the IBM-PC market. The IBM 5150 had an 8088 16bit (16bit internal bus, 8bit external bus) processor, so the BIOS chip was limited to 16 bits and 1MB of memory space. Years went by and the CPU became more powerful, with a wider bus and more memory access. However, the BIOS remained the same, and retained it’s 16bit bus and 1MB memory limit, depending on the PC-AT hardware platform.

Enter EFI/UEFI (Extensible Firmware Interface/Unified Extensible Firmware Interface respectively). EFI was introduced in the mid-1990′s with the Intel-HP Itanium processor systems as the older BIOS was considered too limited for large server systems. In 2005 Intel dropped the EFI platform and handed it over to the Unified EFI Forum, which then became the UEFI.

There are several advantages to UEFI over the BIOS. UEFI boots faster, has the ability to boot from very large hard disks over 2TB, drops the MBR (master boot record) for the GUID Partition table, architecture and drivers are CPU-independent, an extensive GUI with mouse and network capabilities are possible, and ACPI and SMBIOS are also included as these are not dependent on the 16bit limitations of the older BIOS.

UEFI requires the Operating System and the Firmware to be matched. Therefore, 64bit UEFI can only run a 64bit Operating System. Microsoft Windows started support for UEFI beginning with 64bit Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 64bit versions support UEFI, as does Linux and Intel Mac’s OSX.

UEFI does not boot the same as a BIOS does. It requires a special partition table that points to a partition that has a special file that UEFI can load rather than just relying on the boot sector. Since the UEFI boot loader is a kind of UEFI application, it can be used to add extra functionality, such as choosing which Operating System to boot from. It can also auto-detect the boot loader so that it can be used to boot from removable media.

Several Virtualization platforms have implemented  UEFI. Virtualbox 3.1+, VMware Fusion 3+,  and QEMU can be used with UEFI. Virtualbox with UEFI will only work with Linux/Unix Operating Systems, so Windows will not work on Virtualbox using UEFI.

Overclocking your CPU can be risky business, however if done properly and with the proper amount of care, it can improve system performance anywhere from 5% to 50% depending on the CPU and how it is overclocked. In this article, I am going to discuss the various methods, benefits and downfalls of overclocking. Remember, ALL forms of overclocking beyond the manufacturers specifications voids the warranty and has the potential of “bricking” your CPU, Motherboard, or both. Therefore I take no responsibility what happens to your CPU/Motherboard if you attempt an overclock. If you are not technically inclined, or feel uncomfortable changing these settings, please give it to someone who is or just don’t try it.

Overclocking creates  extra heat, so it is a good idea to buy a good heat sink to dissipate the extra heat.

The safest and perhaps the easiest way to overclock your CPU is if you have that option in your BIOS’s setup. There are often times the BIOS will contain options to change the FSB (Front Side Bus) frequency or CPU clock multiplier. However, as this article is about overclocking without this feature, I will skip this step.

If your motherboard’s BIOS does not have an overclocking feature, do not worry, there are other options. The first option you have is to overclock using overclocking software. overclocking via software basically changes your FSB frequency or the clock multiplier in your CPU. In order for this method to work, you must have one of two things:

1. A PLL clock chip that can be adjusted via software, or
2. An “unlocked” CPU (AMD is called a Black Edition CPU)

There are several freeware programs out there that work quite well. Some of which are “SetFSB” or “CPUCool” . These programs set the clock rate of a variety of PLL clock chips. You will have to know what kind of chip your motherboard has on board. There are tutorials around the web that show how to find what kind of chip you have. Some PLL’s have the ability to be changed and some do not. The SetFSB website has a list of PLL’s that SetFSB supports, and are adding new ones frequently.

This method is quite easy to do. All you have to do is download the application, install it, select your PLL chip in the Clock Generator drop down menu, and change the settings. I highly recommend that you raise the clock by 100 or 200 MHZ at a time. If you raise the clock speed too much at once, you run the risk of burning out your CPU or other chips on the board. Also, setting the FSB raises other clocks on the motherboard such as PCI clock and memory clock. Some PCI cards handle overclocking better than others, so that is a factor on how fast you can go. If your computer starts to lock-up, back off the speed about 200MHZ, or until lock-ups cease then that would be your maximum overclock.

If you have a PLL chip that is not adjustable, and your CPU is a Core2Duo or greater, there is still hope for you. There is a mod called a “BSEL mod” which requires shorting certain pins on your CPU that modifies the connection between your CPU and motherboard. You can find a tutorial (here). It fools the motherboard into thinking the CPU has a faster bus. However, this mod is for experienced persons only. If you have never done anything electronic, I would recommend to not attempt this mod as a mistake could be disastrous.

I understand there are some BIOSes that check the CPUID and configure speed from that. In that case a BSEL mod would not work and you would have to buy a new CPU to get any faster.

Lastly, Some CPUs overclock much better than others, and Motherboards vary in performance also, so the amount of overclocking you can do depends entirely on what you are working with.

APM is a set of programs that control the Advanced Power Management system found in most modern laptop computers