Hardware Assisted Virtualization on my Vaio? - Off-topic

Hello,
I have a Sony Vaio VGN-CR240E laptop, and recently learned that my chipset does actually support Hardware assisted virtualization (Intel Centrino Duo T7250). I run a lot of virtual machines, so having this enabled would be great.
However, the problem seems to be that Sony, for some reason, removed that option from the BIOS and officially claims that "it isn't supported" when it in fact is, just not enabled. It's definitely supported, there's just no way to enable it by default. I have come upon a solution online, however, it involves modifying the BIOS itself, which if done incorrectly can ruin any computer, which I cannot afford to do.
Now here's where you come in. If you have performed this patch to this model of laptop, or any Vaio, can you give me any info or advice? I know it's a long shot that anybody here has done this, but I'm kind of desperate and I figure if this place doesn't have advice, then nobody does. This laptop has the latest Sony-made Phoenix BIOS update from my model's web page.
Thank you all in advance,
Dave

Related

UPGRADE Utility not working in VISTA?

I have actually windows XP and Windows VISTA installed in my PC. I never had problems upgrading Roms using windows xp. However, today, the upgrade utility failled in windows VISTA. When the upg utlity goes for upgrading (after checking and sowed the rom instaled in the device), WIN VISTA close the app. So that, the wizard is left in BL mode and nothin more happens.
Does anyone get successfully upgrade the wizard using VISTA?
Thank you
No, its not working.
Confirmed, not working.
Flashing ROM's + Vista = NOPE!
Hi folks,
I can also confirm that flashing ROM's with Windows Vista does not work.
I tried different compatability settings but no chance.
I am working with the final version of Windows© Vista Ultimate RTM...had the same problems with the Vista betas.
dual boot or vm w/ xp
yes not supported yet by htc
i remember emailing htc about this issue and they said they currently have no plans to make the rom utillities compatible in running windows vista!
So, If they have no plans to make upg utilities Vista compatibles. I would say HTC needs a upgrade. for now any similar company are working hard to make their softs vista compatible.
Yeah, this really sucks for me since I have been running Vista exclusively since the RTM came out.
d'oh...that sucks...I just upgraded to Vista last week.
I think the reason that htc is not supporting vista rom upgrade compatablity is because crossbow will conduct upgrades from the platform/unit itself. I think i've read it somewhere.
hiimcliff said:
I think the reason that htc is not supporting vista rom upgrade compatablity is because crossbow will conduct upgrades from the platform/unit itself. I think i've read it somewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can see if you can find that article. I am curious on how that is going to work.
that's funny because they promised that for the original release of WM5 also.
Microsoft... they make me giggle with their blown deadlines and empty promises.
-Mc
its the photon version he is talking about bink article
Scratch VMWARE
Downloaded and installed VMWARE v6 build 36983 on my windows Vista machine. Running Vista Ultimate build 6.0.6000 (MS Technet Direct download).
Installed Windows XP SP2 into VMWARE and got all updates, patches, etc...
Installed ActiveSync 4.2 on the virtual XP 'puter...
Attached HTC Wizard (Cingular 8125) via USB and activesync picked up device. Wow! this is gonna work (so I thought)
Went to flash rom and it started out well enough... Phone went to load the rom screen, and then I get the "VMWARE workstation unrecoverable error" message... Rom didn't even start to load (thankfully) and I just pulled battery and turned phone back on... No prob...
Haven't had time to look at the dump yet to see what went wrong, but as of now, VMWARE doesn't appear to be an option either....
Anyone else tried VMWARE??
Come on ppl, someone out there smarter than me has had to try the VMWARE thing besides me and gotten it to work
Maybe once Vista is finally "released" to the masses, not just us "technet" or "MSDN" subscribers, support will magically appear...
As an aside, (for those thinking about getting Vista and Office 2K7) you can get Technet Direct Plus for about $290-$300 if you shop around... Sure, you have to download and make your own media, but you save about $100-$150 bucks for your trouble...
You get Vista and Office 2K7 Ultimate and can activate on up to 10 different machines... Also get XP, XP MCE, Office 2003, Exchange, etc....
In a german forum they are talking about flashing and that it is possible.
They did simunlock and flash WM& with vista.
http://www.ppc-welt.info/community/showthread.php?t=109541&highlight=vista
vista ruu works...
did you guys follow these steps? ultimate works fine for me;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=291723
here's a wiki;
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Trinity_WindowsVista
dcoelho said:
So, If they have no plans to make upg utilities Vista compatibles. I would say HTC needs a upgrade. for now any similar company are working hard to make their softs vista compatible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No plans for vista from my company either. Ever. Not until MS fixes their anti-competitive problems like driver signing, and stops imposing DRM crap on system functions. Just because a company releases some new platform does not mean it will have software support. If you want a functional platform look into Linux or XP. Both of witch have massive software support.
Most of the Apps I write run on OS X & Linux which have strong cross platform compatibility. XP is just a side OS, and buggy at that, with no cross platform compatibility. Vista more so. I would never recoup costs by developing for Vista so there is no point in it. It would be a tax write off and a waste of time and resources. Until Microsoft releases a platform that does what it is supposed to, and that is function as a platform, and not an advertising bus load of crap, then it will gain more support by independent software companies.
The purpose of a platform is to run software. If it cannot do that, then it is worthless. The function of a computer is to increase productivity, and make life easier. If Vista cannot do that, then ditch it, and get a platform that works. Stop expecting the world to evolve around a single company. If M$ was bombed with nukes tomorrow, the world would have to learn how to use a computer instead of playing with one. I would laugh, then run down the street naked shouting rejoice.
[/RANT]
OryHara said:
No plans for vista from my company either. Ever. Not until MS fixes their anti-competitive problems like driver signing, and stops imposing DRM crap on system functions. Just because a company releases some new platform does not mean it will have software support. If you want a functional platform look into Linux or XP. Both of witch have massive software support.
Most of the Apps I write run on OS X & Linux which have strong cross platform compatibility. XP is just a side OS, and buggy at that, with no cross platform compatibility. Vista more so. I would never recoup costs by developing for Vista so there is no point in it. It would be a tax write off and a waste of time and resources. Until Microsoft releases a platform that does what it is supposed to, and that is function as a platform, and not an advertising bus load of crap, then it will gain more support by independent software companies.
The purpose of a platform is to run software. If it cannot do that, then it is worthless. The function of a computer is to increase productivity, and make life easier. If Vista cannot do that, then ditch it, and get a platform that works. Stop expecting the world to evolve around a single company. If M$ was bombed with nukes tomorrow, the world would have to learn how to use a computer instead of playing with one. I would laugh, then run down the street naked shouting rejoice.
[/RANT]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, cause I'm certain that syncing our phones and flashing the roms works much better in Linux or OS X than it does in Vista or XP.
I can say that I have been running Vista since before it was released, XP likewise. I have had very little trouble with either of them not running software. The ROM update program for our phones is one of the few pieces of software (outside of security and some utility type apps) that I've seen be a problem with Vista. Most of the problems that do arise are from the new security features preventing software from running in ways that it probably shouldn't have been programmed to in the first place (like trying to run as session 0 or mucking with the kernel).
Avatar28 said:
Yes, cause I'm certain that syncing our phones and flashing the roms works much better in Linux or OS X than it does in Vista or XP.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Under Linux, yes, it would be much easier, and the research would be easier as well. My staff flashes close to 20 routers a day with Linux boxen. Very easy to do.
Avatar28 said:
I can say that I have been running Vista since before it was released, XP likewise. I have had very little trouble with either of them not running software. The ROM update program for our phones is one of the few pieces of software (outside of security and some utility type apps) that I've seen be a problem with Vista. Most of the problems that do arise are from the new security features preventing software from running in ways that it probably shouldn't have been programmed to in the first place (like trying to run as session 0 or mucking with the kernel).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From your reply it seems like you are a end user, and not a developer, and probably have no idea what driver signing is, what it involves, and how DRM crippled Vista really is, especially if you are using < Ultimate edition.
When it comes to flashing phones, this is why the carriers are NOT going to support Vista for a while, if not ever. You could quite easily brick a phone because of some subvertive driver function that M$ has no public documentation on. Thats why my company doesn't support vista with our routers.

I search a Software...

Hi, sorry for my bad English but I'm a German student. I search a software for Hacking WLAN's by my HTC. I'm working often with PC's and WLAN's also I will explain the others how easy it is to hack a WLAN with a "simple" mobile Phone, is there any Software??
Thanks or your Help
P.S.:
I use the software not for illegal activity!!
Marcusg562 said:
I search a software for Hacking WLAN's by my HTC. I will explain the others how easy it is to hack a WLAN with a "simple" mobile Phone, is there any Software??
P.S.:
I use the software not for illegal activity!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, because hacking LAN's and telling people how easy it is to hack them isn't illegal.
Yes, but in a German Forum you get often told that you only want to do illegal when you search for this kind of software.
Well, I don't think they exist. For cracking WEP you'll need quite some wlan packets to unveil the 128bit key, not to mention you'll need some RAM and a fast processor. But if you got this key on many wlans you need to spoof another MAC adress and I don't know any solution for MAC spoofing with a pda. Yeah, they are yet quite powerful (500 MHz, 256 MB RAM etc...) but as for closed-source drivers, different architectures etc. I doubt it's as simple as for normal PCs, especially linux-based OSes.
And there is no avoiding the fact that today's WPA and WPA2 encryption algorithms in conjunction with a secure and long enough alphanumeric password are mostly secure, therefore you can consider this is impossible to hack even with the fastest notebooks available in a reasonable period of time. (WEP could be hacked in a few moments, yep)
I don't know if any solution exists, never heard from anything else than active wlan sniffers. I think it's too complicated for any developer to create a piece of software with direct access to wlan hardware registers as there are other architectures as for PCs and notebooks. Even a passive sniffer would be a hard thing to do.
And I doubt that if any solution exists that it works on more than one or two wlan chipsets - as for the most powerful wlan sniffing tool for ppc available. (forgot the name since it doesn't run for me anyhow)
Yeah, you can sniff, log etc, but for hacking... maybe s/o else knows more on this topic.
And just fyi - it's not illegal to OWN this kind of software (just like radar warner or some outlandish telephones) but it's mostly illegal to USE it/them in certain circumstances. Not to mention §§202a, ff; 303 f. StGB. - For demonstration purposes with the permission of the owner it's surely LEGAL... but i am not a lawyer...
...just my five cents...
hth
Marcusg562 said:
Hi, sorry for my bad English but I'm a German student. I search a software for Hacking WLAN's by my HTC. I'm working often with PC's and WLAN's also I will explain the others how easy it is to hack a WLAN with a "simple" mobile Phone, is there any Software??
Thanks or your Help
P.S.:
I use the software not for illegal activity!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you proclaim to be such a guru of the WLAN hacking and cracking, why cant you figure it out on your own.
its like saying i am a pro at stealing beer but i need someone to do it for me.
KD8DNS said:
if you proclaim to be such a guru of the WLAN hacking and cracking, why cant you figure it out on your own.
its like saying i am a pro at stealing beer but i need someone to do it for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly!
Maybe its to "launder" the person doing it so It can't be traced back to him.

Tilt usb modem drivers do not work on vista business.

Hello,
I have searched thoroughly on this site and I cannot find any help. I used to have vista ultimate and I down loaded the usb modem drivers and it worked like a charm. I had to re image my pc and now I have vista business. However now when I try to load the drivers they do now show up on the device list and it does not successfully install the modem. Am I missing something? is there an updated driver? Can anyone please help or point me to where I can get some help. I really need to get back on line. Thanks XDA
I have a suggestion which might work.
Look at your device manager and see if there is anything on there thats coming up as unidentified... if there is, and with the phone connected to activesync so the PC knows the phone is there (assuming activesync is working), delete those entries one by one and when you delete one you need to click *scan for hardware changes under the *actions menu.
If you didnt start from scratch with the PC - IE format the hard drive and rebuild the system - that may mean there is a corrupt version of the driver still floating about and causing problems. This is why in the places I have worked we always backed machines up - did a full format - and then either imaged or rebuilt the box manually.
Another option is to go online to the manufacturers support site for updated drivers and install them from a location you have saved them too to your hard drive..
From my experience dealing with recalcitrant USB devices I would think that the first issue is more likely.
However there is another possibility that may be the root of the problem. I know that different versions of Vista support different connectivity options and setups - aka Vista Basic doesnt do Active Directory or Domains (im dredging this up from memory so its a little hazy). There is the remote possibility that the Business version doesnt support phones as USB modems, although I would be very surprised if that was the case.
It does strike me as a little odd that you have gone from one version of the same OS to a different version of the same OS and have had this sort of problem... but then Microsoft are known for compatibility gremlins - two words - Windows ME
Hope that helped.
I know, it is very surprising to me that now it does not work on Vista Business. You would think that it is basically the same OS but with less features. It is the 32 bit version. Its driving me crazy because I depend on it to do my work from my laptop and it just does not populate the device name when browsing and selecting the drivers. It sees the device it just does not pupulate. When I try to do the right click and install it does install it but it still does not show up under modems. If any one else has more suggestions I will greatly appreciate it.
No need to panic fello xda members and friends. It is all good now...i am typing thins theteering from my laptop through my tilt. Thanks xda you are the best. The speed trough my tilt is faster than my 2wire at home....ftw.:d

[Q] Any Galaxy S Mac users?

Coming from Nexus one where it was no issues with installing ROMs. However life is not as easy with my SGS.
I'm using VMWare on my mac to use programs that are only for PC. My issue is getting the SGS to even show up in VMW. Anyone with some mac experience (I'm a couple of month old mac user after 15 years on PC) Who has made this working So I can start ODIN and get back to 2.2.
Kind regards
Frewys
MAC = fancy closed source Linux
anyways in VMware you have the option to ADD a USB device to your VMware machine, once you do that you can MAP the USB on the VM machine to the phsyical USB port where the SGS is connected to
Fancy, nice looking. I was curious and bored of PC.
This sounds interesting. I get the popup asking me to which machine to connect it to. But then absolutly nothing.. No missing drivers or anything in Device manager.
Do you have a link where to read more? looking around on VMWares sight is of course an option.. unless you can point me in the direction.
Kind regards
Fredrik
EDIT. Looking over VMWares sight didn't really give some help. So I'm still where I started. I even tried to disable the USB 2.0 since there where apparently some instances where it didn't work but in the end still no go.
Eh. Have you installed sgs drivers in virtual machine yet? Easiest is to install kies
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
Apple being notoriously strict on following the USB standard to the T might be an issue, I don't even think VMware gets around this but I could easily be wrong since it is software that is detecting hardware but I know people that have problems with the SGS that haven't been cleared up with VMware. I think they do this so customers are more likely to buy Apple branded products and they get their mega premium due to a lack of competition that their comps will support.
So, what happens that is applicable to you here, is that the device doesn't get recognized to begin with and Samsung (assuming they test on Macs at all) sees this at some point and says F it, it's not worth our time...possibly even under the belief that all mac users would want iPhone anyways.
PS, I don't consider this, nor am I trying to spread, FUD. That's just what I've seen from other Mac/PC device intermingling in other areas and part of the reason why many users can't charge their iPads on their computers.
I setup a small Windows XP install on Boot Camp. I already had it so I can play Starcraft 2 since it runs like ass in Mac but worked out perfectly for my phone too.
You could try installing the Android SDK.
I have installed Eclipse and the Android SDKs on my Macbook and use ADB to control my phone (debug mode turned on in the phone). That's the way I have developed and debug my Android apps.
I also have Parallels installed to use the Bootcamp partition from Mac OS X. I found I could only get Kies to work (USB debugging turned off again) when re-booting into Bootcamp, not via Parallels, so I guess Samsung is doing something funny at a low level USB driver level, which neither Parallels or VMWare support.
Thanks for all the reply guys!
@ickyboo, alovell83 Yes. Installed Kies. Installed separate drivers. No effect. It is not even in device manager list.
@decepticon The problem for me with bootcamp is to my knowledge (like I said new to Mac) they don't allow bootcamp on a partition HDD. Maybe I'm just "PC" and don't really need to make extra partitions to save time in case of need to reinstall (saving all music. images, movies etc on "D" partition). Enlighten me. Come to think of it. I could remove the extra partition install the bootcamp and THEN remake the partition?
(of topic. How much better FPS do u get on bootcamp compared to native mac? I ran it on my 2010 MacBook Pro 17" and have to lover the the settings pretty much to lowest settings to get playable frame rate)
@shawnfr that is interesting!! So I can use the bootcamp partion as a source in virtual machine!? Sounds sweet! Know if it is only possible in parallels? yea looks like there is something going on With the USB thing on the Samsung.. shame..
So After getting rid of all my PCs I had to use my fathers to finally flash the ROM. A LOT easier!!
frewys said:
@decepticon The problem for me with bootcamp is to my knowledge (like I said new to Mac) they don't allow bootcamp on a partition HDD. Maybe I'm just "PC" and don't really need to make extra partitions to save time in case of need to reinstall (saving all music. images, movies etc on "D" partition). Enlighten me. Come to think of it. I could remove the extra partition install the bootcamp and THEN remake the partition?
(of topic. How much better FPS do u get on bootcamp compared to native mac? I ran it on my 2010 MacBook Pro 17" and have to lover the the settings pretty much to lowest settings to get playable frame rate)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you already have a spare partition then you can use it. Just run through the Boot Camp setup and it will walk you through it. You can read your Mac partition in Windows but it's read only to protect it from any Windows virus.
I haven't checked FPS because it runs so bad on my 2007 Macbook Pro but in Windows I get a noticeable improvement due to the newest nVidia drivers in Windows. Sadly Apple won't allow hardware providers to release drivers directly for Mac.
That is just it. I get this cryptic error that i googled and to my understanding it cannot install on a partitioned disk. Right now I'm copying my entire drive to an external so that I can remove the partition and copy it back after hopefully getting the bootcamp up and running.
No I know about that whole driver fiasco for Mac. They are waaaaay behind windows on the graphdrivers... But thankfully steam seems to put some sense in Jobes.
Coming from Windows I think that the virus thing is exaggerated.. I had ONE virus of negligence during 15 years of PC. But don't trust common sense to all other million PC users
frewys said:
That is just it. I get this cryptic error that i googled and to my understanding it cannot install on a partitioned disk. Right now I'm copying my entire drive to an external so that I can remove the partition and copy it back after hopefully getting the bootcamp up and running.
No I know about that whole driver fiasco for Mac. They are waaaaay behind windows on the graphdrivers... But thankfully steam seems to put some sense in Jobes.
Coming from Windows I think that the virus thing is exaggerated.. I had ONE virus of negligence during 15 years of PC. But don't trust common sense to all other million PC users
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if it's relevant for newer MBPs but I did get a video update that says it solves issues with SC2.
I had some issues with Boot Camp and partition tables at first but I removed them all and did it all through Boot Camp and it worked fine. The virus things is exaggerated but common sense takes a back seat to "see me live on my web cam click here" lol
Been working on this annoying thing for a couple of hours.. Bootcamp is NOT very flexible.. But I found a way to "cheat" it.. I had to remove the second partition. Then make "system" partition the entire drive. THEN I make the Bootcamp partition. And after windows is installed I can repartiton the System and make my second "data" partition!! Messy. But hope it works. Installing windows soon.
The SC2 update didn't do anything for me. But I'm happy to see it.. At least that is a start.. I read it had some effect for some older MacBooks...
Nope.. No luck at all. Giving up for now on BootCamp. I guess I will stick to PCs for my SGS in the future. I dont really have time for gaming anyway so the issue with lack of partitioning is not really worth it
I have not yet had any luck getting my SGS to show up in a Windows 7 VM running on VMWare Fusion.
USB virtualization is a tricky animal. A device has to be enumerated twice - first on the host, then on the guest. I imagine the SGS is having a hard time with the low-level second set config request. This seems fairly typical with high-bandwidth USB devices like PDAs.
When I get to work tomorrow I'm going to try it out against VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation. I might even try Hyper-V just for giggles. Workstation has the ability to disable the set config command. So maybe it will have more luck (doesn't help Mac users though!)
ok. Interesting. Good luck with that
I just realized Mac has VirtualBox to! Anyone tried it? Maybe there is a small difference for the better in this case...

[Q] MTK6589 devices and Windows

Is there a possibility to wipe out the Android and install Windows on a MTK6589 device? Thanks
Read the FAQ.
NO!
Impossible. Windows Phone 8 doesn't have the drivers to run on other devices, unless you're willing to program them yourself. Furthermore, I believe it's hardware locked because of Secure Boot. All devices have secure boot (unlike Windows 8, where only some computers have secure boot) and it is (I believe) a requirement, hence the inability to boot Windows Phone 8 on an Android device. Unless you're willing to emulate secure boot somewhat as well, then go for your life.
Want Windows Phone 8 on an Android device? Buy a Nokia Lumia and sticky tape it on top of your current Android device. Voila! Results are instant.
Honestly, if you want a certain OS on your phone, buy the phone that has the OS. It's like buying a tomato and then saying "fudge, wish this tasted like a cucumber".
The idea comes straight from the world of PCs : there you can if you want to wipe the system clean and install almost anything you like. From MS-DOS to Windows 2, Windows NT, OS/2, dozens brands and copies of Linux, Unix mutations the list is almost endless.
The onboard ROM on a "PC" will happily run whatever's on the disk or CD or DVD or other boot device. This is a 1970'as design which has not changed.
If you are missing device drivers for a certain device on PC then it (a) defaults to basic functionality (b) this device does not work at all but it is not always a stopping block.
I did not know what the obstacles are on smartphones. I was hoping to find and understand more details.
The MTK65XX chip set is an Arm CPU for which Windows have a new system. Some Chinese tablets now sell with Android or Windows.
Thanks for the explanations.
Yeah, you might have saved yourself some time if you'd done even a little research. Not only do ARM devices require a Board Support Package (firmware image, basically) that generally won't be available for an arbitrary device/OS combination (it's not just a matter of having basic drivers like on x86), but there isn't actually any installer (at least, not publicly available) for Windows Phone. There's only full device images available, which are specific to their intended devices. Custom ROMs, even for variants of the same OS that the device shipped with, are hacked together and often don't have full hardware support, especially when switching between OSes. You would need to build one nearly from scratch for a device like yours, given that the manufacturer of it doesn't (so far as I know) sell *any* Windows Phone devices so you couldn't even crib drivers from another phone. Additionally, nearly all ARM devices ship with locked bootloaders that will not boot a different operating system, or even allow the OS to be tampered with (although these days, consumer Android device bootloaders can usually be unlocked).
Zilliman said:
The idea comes straight from the world of PCs : there you can if you want to wipe the system clean and install almost anything you like. From MS-DOS to Windows 2, Windows NT, OS/2, dozens brands and copies of Linux, Unix mutations the list is almost endless.
The onboard ROM on a "PC" will happily run whatever's on the disk or CD or DVD or other boot device. This is a 1970'as design which has not changed.
If you are missing device drivers for a certain device on PC then it (a) defaults to basic functionality (b) this device does not work at all but it is not always a stopping block.
I did not know what the obstacles are on smartphones. I was hoping to find and understand more details.
The MTK65XX chip set is an Arm CPU for which Windows have a new system. Some Chinese tablets now sell with Android or Windows.
Thanks for the explanations.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well then think of it this way, Install XP on a computer. Take the hard drive out and try to boot on another one. It won't work unless you have all the drivers or extremely similar hardware.
I don't have a complete understanding of ARM, but I assume these Qualcomm SoCs have the TPM built in. Its almost the bottleneck with using WP8, but we'll have to wait for HTC to release a potential dual boot Android Windows Phone. Things will align sometime.
Sent from my Lumia 928 (RM-860) using Tapatalk
thals1992 said:
Well then think of it this way, Install XP on a computer. Take the hard drive out and try to boot on another one. It won't work unless you have all the drivers or extremely similar hardware.
I don't have a complete understanding of ARM, but I assume these Qualcomm SoCs have the TPM built in. Its almost the bottleneck with using WP8, but we'll have to wait for HTC to release a potential dual boot Android Windows Phone. Things will align sometime.
Sent from my Lumia 928 (RM-860) using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK Here is how PC/Windows works:
When Windows boots it uses a thing called "HAL" (hardware abstraction layer) - and whilst booting it tries its best to cope with a number of chipsets, disc drive controllers, and other core hardware components. This is done on the fly because there are only so many chipsets out there and the drivers aren't that large. If you boot Windows in debug mode you will see it loading one million drivers for hardware which you definitely not have - and when you actually install it it does the same - it does not ask you " what CPU / north bridge / south bridge / other DMA/ chipset / and everything else you have?". It just tries it all and loads what fits. The only things left out are whatever you can load later, eg specific sound card drivers, wifi, video card etc.
So this is a marriage between the PC's BIOS ROMs and the OS - so that with one single CD you can install pretty much anywhere. And this idea and technology has been around since the 70s.
For Linux/Unix/OS/2 and anything else on the PC the idea is pretty much the same: the BIOS has " started " the machine for you, and you simply run your "application" which in most cases is a complete OS!
For example I once wrote a memory tester that booted straight off the drive, without any other OS being present, it is that simple once you have the BIOS in place.
In my complete ignorance of how smartphones are made, I assumed that the hardware manufacturer of each phone provides a BIOS which can provide basic services like on the PC. Is that what we call the "bootloader" ? Looking at the "scatter files" it appears there is a whole lot of binary images before the "android" image.
Are these images the "hardware layer / BIOS" then? And can we consider the "android" image to be the actual OS?
Zilliman said:
OK Here is how PC/Windows works:
When Windows boots it uses a thing called "HAL" (hardware abstraction layer) - and whilst booting it tries its best to cope with a number of chipsets, disc drive controllers, and other core hardware components. This is done on the fly because there are only so many chipsets out there and the drivers aren't that large. If you boot Windows in debug mode you will see it loading one million drivers for hardware which you definitely not have - and when you actually install it it does the same - it does not ask you " what CPU / north bridge / south bridge / other DMA/ chipset / and everything else you have?". It just tries it all and loads what fits. The only things left out are whatever you can load later, eg specific sound card drivers, wifi, video card etc.
So this is a marriage between the PC's BIOS ROMs and the OS - so that with one single CD you can install pretty much anywhere. And this idea and technology has been around since the 70s.
For Linux/Unix/OS/2 and anything else on the PC the idea is pretty much the same: the BIOS has " started " the machine for you, and you simply run your "application" which in most cases is a complete OS!
For example I once wrote a memory tester that booted straight off the drive, without any other OS being present, it is that simple once you have the BIOS in place.
In my complete ignorance of how smartphones are made, I assumed that the hardware manufacturer of each phone provides a BIOS which can provide basic services like on the PC. Is that what we call the "bootloader" ? Looking at the "scatter files" it appears there is a whole lot of binary images before the "android" image.
Are these images the "hardware layer / BIOS" then? And can we consider the "android" image to be the actual OS?
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You don't understand the basic problem.
Windows (desktop) is an entirely different OS which has very powerful hardware at its disposal and it is supposed to run on various hardware configurations. It was designed to be this way from the ground up.
Windows Phone is just not like that. It is designed to work with one configuration, and one configuration alone. You can;t even flash the WP8 image from one device model to another without risking brick.
If you try to flash the lumia 1520 ROM on a lumia 820, chances are the lumia 820 will brick.
In other words, WP8 does not load "millions" of drivers in hope of matching the single one the system matches. There are various technical and marketing reasons why this does not happen.
And it is like this for android as well. Getting past the bootloader is easy (for android devices). Getting to actually boot something is an entirely different story.
Just a FYI, I did have a old mtk device once that has dual boot Android 2.x and Windows 6.1... I know that is old. But that was cool.

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