Re: Re: [Qemu-devel] Windows Laptop Idea

[jeebs]

Ben;

> The rescue disks aren't an OEM copy of WinXP Home, they
> are a set of 6 CD's containing a very fixed version of
> Partition Quest's partition restorer.  I went down into

Ahh...

Yeah, you got screwed.

I thought those kinds of practices went out with Win98.

But yeah, I guess some manufacturers aren't honest.

At least be glad you got the cd's.  They could have put it on a protected 
hidden partition on your drive.  (The IDE drive specs allow for password 
protected hidden drive sections.)  So if your hard drive failed, so would your 
copy of XP....



> the bat files that manipulate this thing, and there is
> a bios checker to make sure that the bios of the laptop

I'm pretty sure the 'bios checker' is probably checking for the digital 
signature in the BIOS.

With XP, Microsoft went pretty strong with digital signatures, putting them 
into about every file.

They probably made OEM's do the same with the bios.

That way if you patched it or used some warez bios with some extra feature of 
some sort, the digital signature wouldn't be correct, and the activation would 
fail.

I have heard of several cases of people upgrading the bios (in some cases to an 
official one, and in others to a hacked one) and the product activation failing.

So I doubt it's a simple check.  Not like looking for "HP OEM" string or some 
such.  Something that simple would pretty much defeat the whole point of 
product activation.  You'd see warez sites with lots of patched bios's with the 
OEM signature checks in, allowing everybody to run a Dell or other OEM version 
of XP without any activation.

Microsoft wouldn't tolerate that. They are too greedy.  It'd almost have to be 
a full cryptographic digital signature.  Something that couldn't be easily 
forged by the warez crowd.

That's why I said you'd have to emulate the hardware too.  So you could use the 
original bios.

>> I'm a firm believer that a person has a right to the original unmodified 
>> files (without unneeded OEM specific junk), so if it was me, I'd make an 
>> effort to get the md5's of the regular OEM version of XP (whatever version) 
>> and see what is truely different.
> 
> This would be pretty impossible.

Maybe not....

I remember with Win98 that even many customized rescue cd's, you could often 
manage to extract the correct files and create an install disk.

With XP it would probably be more difficult.  More trouble than it'd be worth.  
You could probably uninstall a lot of stuff, and comparing files to a regular 
XP, and so on, and almost get a clean copy.  But probably not all the way.  And 
it'd be a lot of trouble.

I've never investigated going from an installed copy and trying to make a cd 
from it.

As Hetz said... You might want to look around for a warez copy of xp.  Maybe 
borrow a copy from a friend, that way you'd know it'd be legit.  (Be careful 
about warez programs... they aren't all trustworthy, if you know what I mean!)

As long as you are just testing qemu by trying to install it, I don't think 
anybody would really care.

 
>> I'm definetly not a fan of Microsoft's policies and practices.  I do use 
>> Windows, but I don't like the company.
> 
> Agreed.  Having a windows license on my laptop should not
> preclude me from running the configuration only *their*
> way.

In this case, it's HP that's screwing you.  With Microsoft's blessing.


There is still one chance, though...  You might be able to complain enough to 
HP to get the xp install cd.  I have heard of a few cases (with unknown oem's) 
where either people didn't get a cd at all, or something or other, and they 
complained long enough to their seller and they gave them the oem version of xp.

Can't say that'd actually work though...

Or, you could always check ebay!  You might be able to pick up a Dell xp cd 
pretty cheap.  (Or other oem cd.)  The Dell versions I've seen are pretty close 
to a plain OEM cd.  So you might be able to clean up that cd, copy the few OEM 
specific files from your HP and make a new cd.  If you do it right, it'd still 
be pre-activated for your system.  You'd just be free of the HP extra stuff.


Anyway, for you, to test qemu with xp.... you are pretty much out of luck.

Sorry.