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HP Disables VT On Some Intel Laptops
snoukka writes "I just bought a new HP nx9420 laptop in order to use it with Linux, XEN, and windows on XEN. I was very disappointed when I noticed that the processor had this feature but VT is disabled in BIOS by HP and cannot be enabled! Disabled!? It's like buying a car with turbo and finding out after buying it that this turbo 'feature' was disabled." The forum thread goes back to last August and is still live. The latest post from an HP rep indicates that new firmware for the nx9420 should be available later this week in which the ability to switch on VT is enabled. It's not clear whether other HP products, in which VT was also disabled, will also get new firmware.
Virtualization Technology
Man, you really need that seminar!
...on some of their newer Thinkpads. You'd think that when you're spending $2000 on a "business-class" laptop, you'd get it without any artificial limitations...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Wikipedia is pretty bad, but with a bit of common sense, you can work out things you didn't know before:
VT!
(BTW, Virtualization Technology, for those whose browsers are incapable of leaving the slashdot domain.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I tried to compare the perf difference with VT enabled & disabled using Virtual PC 2007 RC2 & Vmware Latest Beta.
I was pretty disappointed to find that there is no perf. difference with VT enabled or disabled.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Perhaps not quite ready for prime time, but http://freebios.sourceforge.net/ is a nice way to solve this problem. Then if VT doesn't work, you can fix it yourself.
serious risk? you are probably referring to the "Blue Pill", the Blue is way overblown, wikipedia has a short summary, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(malware)
A little over a year ago I bought an HP laptop (I've forgotten the model) as a gift for my mother. First thing I did after getting it out of the box was wipe it clean of the pre-installed xp home edition and tons of advertising. With a new OS installed, I discovered that the processor, optical drive, and something else (I forget the 3rd item) were scaled down to barely functional speeds. After investigation, I discovered that those bits would not operate without specialized drivers that were not available for download. Further investigation suggests that the drivers may have existed for xp home only, even excluding pro.
Needless to say, the laptop was returned and I called alienware the next day.
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
I work as an HP repair tech (currently.) We've had HUNDREDS of laptops sent in for repair for this reason.
It's really sad how HP features things, but disables them. I had to repair a DV9000 with the webcam built-in, because the webcam wasn't seen.
The spot for the webcam to hook up wasn't even tere. HP had installed a de-featured board instead of a fully-featured board.
This is everyday at HP. Nothing to see here, move along.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
As a long time Xen user and one of the very first non Xen developer to run hardware virtualized OS under Xen on Intel hardware, I can say something that most here are missing: if you install Xen as the hypervisor and then launch an unmodified OS, like Windows, using hardware virtualization (you ain't launching an unmodified OS under Xen without hardware virtualization anyway), the unmodified OS will *not* see a VT-capable system. Which means that if you install Xen in the first place, as a knowledgeable Xen/Linux user, it's gonna be *very* hard for a Windows virus to be able to attack Xen/Linux. You can run Xen under Xen (that's an indisputable fact, I've done it) but you fscking can NOT run an hardware virtualized system under another hardware virtualized system (that is another undisputable fact). Now conceptually there may be an workable exploit one day, but being able to attack the hypervisor from an OS seeing a non-VT system would be one heck of a hack (a bit like being able to crash a computer configured as a completely passive sniffer behind a one-way ethernet cable or a shomiti tap). In other words, it is very unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Moreover saying that an hypotetical "hypervisor exploit" would be undetectable is complete rubbish bullshit: it's not any more difficult to detect than to detect a root exploit. Anyone who consider that scanning a machine from itself is a safe way of detecting malware is a fool anyway. You take the system offline, hook it's hard disk to a known good system (or boot it using a live CD) and voila... Gameover rootkit, game over hypervisor "undetectable" malware.
(and if you want to play the "my servers can't be taken down" I'll fire back with a "what punk, you're telling me you've got a SPOF?").
What Xen buys you if you want, though, is free (from Linux) scanning / SHA1-summing / etc. of Windows systems without the Windows systems even *knowing* it is happening. Game over Windows "rootkits". Plain and simple.
I hope that by now you realize that if you run Xen/Linux then Windows under Xen using VT, it is *impossible* for a virus to act as the hypervisor and then to present you with a 'fake' Xen/Linux hypervisor that would allow you to run Windows. That's how VT in this day and Intel age works. It may change, but as of now: move along, nothing to see here.
(OK, OK, a *really* incredible virus could make you think you're running Windows using HVM though Windows would actually be running under QEMU... But that would be one heck of a hack and you'd notice QEMU's extreme slowness in emulation mode... No accelerated QEMU under Xen).
Hypervisor rootkits can't counter timing-attacks based detection either.
Windows running under Xen is way more secure than running on the bare metal. Dot.
So please, stop all the uninformed "oh my god VT is teh insecure tech!".
To me running Windows under Xen is the most secure thing that happened to Windows in ages (and, no, I wasn't that much of a VMWare fan).
It's nice to know that they're working on it, though, and they do have a preliminary solution for those of us who REALLY need it.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
That's nothing. HP sold the ZV6000 laptops as "fully featured" amd64 laptops, but the BIOS disabled Dual Channel memory, and limited it to DDR333 unless you only used 1GB stick of DDR400. They also NEVER provided any x64 drivers for the machine. They also underclocked the Video card, and made the laptop downclock the memory by 5MHz when it was pluged into the outlet(why I will never understand). They also sold x4 DVD burners as x6 and their lightscribe drives had issues with writing CD's at advertised speed.
After that I will never buy another HP.