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No Windows 7 XP Mode For Sony Vaio Z Owners
Voyager529 writes "While virtually every Core 2 Duo processor supports the hardware virtualization technology that powers the Windows 7 XP Mode, The Register UK reports that the Core 2 Duo processors in the Sony Vaio Z series laptops had the virtualization features intentionally crippled in the BIOS. Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more resilient against malicious code. He also stated that while they are considering enabling VT in some laptop models due to the backlash, the Z series are not among those being retrofitted."
Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more resilient against malicious code.
If they don't like Windows XP they can say so. Calling it malicious code will piss off Microsoft no end.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Hey, it's Sony. What kind of customer support did you expect.
It's not like they've got a long history depicting a care for their customers, rootkits being only 1 example.
They probably want to protect their customers from Rootkits that some manufacturers put on their CDs: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/31/2016223
If only there was some way to replace the BIOS, with some sort of flashing... I'm sure at some point they'll be a alternative firmware for those people silly enough to think that Sony would embrace anything that wasn't one of their proprietary formats.
::Sony BIOS SCREEN::
Virtualization: Disabled
Complimentary Rootkits: Enabled
In other news, Sony has decided to disable the second core in many of its dual-core models. Senior douchebag Joe Schmo defended the decision, saying "Often the second core just allows people to run malware in the background without noticing it."
Um, no thanks, Sony. How about you let your customers decide whether they want to turn off processor features?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
...because we already know Sony is evil as hell and we don't buy their laptops.
And anybody who went and forgot that lesson deserves whatever abuse Sony heaps on 'em.
The virtual technology extensions of my Lenovo Thinkpass T400 has also been intentionally crippled. Sony isn't the only company making bad decisions with higher-end laptops.
Can the bios be re-flashed with something more useful?
Since DOS died the BIOS has been little more than a glorified POST. So why can't the OS just enable any features that the BIOS doesn't? Its not like any modern OS uses the BIOS once its up and running anyway - just some information the BIOS may have provided which the OS can double check for itself anyway.
IIRC the BIOS sets the CPU VT flag on powerup (ie, disabled) - once flag is set, it can't be cleared until next cold boot. However, I have an SZ series, there are tools out there to modify the bios settings to not set the flag (it works), I've successfully got linux KVM running :D (following http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228)
"Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more profitable by creating an artificial differentiation we can use to charge more money for basically the same thing."
www.eFax.com are spammers
It matters because the way the VT tech works is that its disabled by default in the CPU, and is (usually) enabled by the BIOS. The reason you cant (usually) turn it on after the OS has booted is because the register used to turn it on (the MSR) has a lock-bit, which once set prevents any changes to the VT status until power is removed from the CPU.
BIOS's that simply ignore the VT enable stuff are less of a problem, because its possible to set the VT tech on, and lock it on (by writing 5 to register 3A) within the OS using /dev/msr (linux) or cpuinfo (windows). The Mac Pro (early 2008) behaves like this. This is obviously bad for security, as the malware can simply enable it!
BIOS's that deliberately disable VT will set the register to 1 (vt off, lock on), turning off, and locking off the VT stuff. There is no way I know of to defeat this situation (short of disassembling the BIOS and 'fixing' it).
Some BIOS's even have the code to turn it on, but it is only triggered if a CMOS register is set to a certain value and there is no UI on these BIOS's to set that CMOS register. I believe some Sony BIOSs are like this, but am unsure.
The best ones of course allow you to turn it on in the BIOS - which is why Sony are talking BS when they say its for security. They only need to ship it turned off, and allow the users to turn it on at their own risk.
I understand that it IS a genuine risk (bluepill?) in that a hypervisor can install itself UNDER the OS layer, and then filter what the OS sees, invisible to the user (otherwise the virtualization is broken).
Thats why.
ps. apple ignored a bug report I made about the way the Mac Pro works... i guess its kinda understandable because it seems all MacOS virtualization products just turn it on using the MSR as needed.
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This is exactly why I don't buy Sony products, whether it's a computer, camera, music, etc. Consumers have been burned by them enough times with their retarded proprietary formats, lawsuits, rootkits, and just an overall blatent disrespect for consumers that I'm surprised anyone buys their crap anymore.
Most likely, they are using VT support as a price discrimination tool. Disable it to make a model "Low end" enable it to make the model premium.
In particular, with recent intel setups, intel's "Vpro" remote management widgetry depends on VT(and a bunch of other intel sauce). Disabling that is an excellent way to produce a line of systems that will appeal to individuals and smaller businesses, that you can sell cheaply to capture that cost sensitive demographic, that enterprise IT won't touch with a 10 foot pole, leaving them to buy your more expensive line.
Just an fyi, the LinuxBIOS project was renamed Coreboot.
Yeah I was going to say, this sounds like a job for a hex editor, 10 minutes, and a guy who understands basic x86 assembly code.
moox. for a new generation.
Only 6 out of 11 of the 45nm Core2 duo chips support VT according to info on intel.com. That's not "virtually every".
Not nitpicking for the sake of it, just don't want people to assume that the Core2 they're intending to buy supports VT. Best to check.
Back in 2000, when Win2K was out and happy but the proles were stuck with Win98/ME, I decided I wanted a laptop.
There was a cheap Sony laptop with Win98/ME on it that looked good to me and was on sale. I checked, there was a version of the same laptop with Win2K available, but it was a few hundred dollars more if you could FIND it, and the UC CS dept had a site liscence/arrangement for Win2K.
So I figured, why not? Buy it at fry's, reinstall with a remotely tolerable Windows OS, be happy.
Get the laptop, blow away the Win98/ME crap, put on Win2K, only to find out that Sony locks all the drivers with BIOS strings and the like so the drivers from the Win2K version won't install on any other notebook, even when the chipsets and everything are identical!
Fortunately, Fry's had a good return policy. So rather than going hunting for manufacturer sites for drivers, I said, screw it, popped in the reimage disk, and restored it and returned it.
A few weeks later, I bought an IBM notebook off a friend with PowerBook envy, much prefering the IBM site wher you put in the model # on the bottom and you get every driver for every OS variant, including Linux, in a nice neat grid...
But even nearly a decade ago, Sony was gimping their laptops badly. Glad to see they are keeping THAT tradition alive...
Test your net with Netalyzr
The first line of this summary is quite wrong. Intel has LOTS of Core2Duo's that do not support Intel VT. A quick look through their processor matrix will confirm this. Still, it's common practise for laptop manufacturers to disable things like VT on their consumer models. My Toshiba satellite has it disabled (not changeable in BIOS), but the pro version of it (same mainboard and cpu) has the option. I'm sure there is some way to get it working via a hex editor or something, but then we're into voiding warranties (if the bios gets fubared).
Virtual Box will still run without VT, it just won't be optimal. I've got an old Athlon 64 that doesn't support VT or its AMD equivalent, but I can still run a Windows XP Virtual Box instance on it ;)
Lots of cheap Intel processors don't even have Intel VT, while most of the AMD processors in the same price range have it enabled. While I like the fact that some of the new Pentium processors run really cool, I would never consider buying a new processor without virtualization support. Yet most of the current cheap machines (laptops and boxen) that come with Intel use processors without virtualization. Kinda limits your choices. But then again I always liked AMD better.
I've never seen BIOS features password-protected from the factory. I have seen it FREQUENTLY done with corporate laptops (for example, the T42s I have for network testing have WLAN cards in them, but have been disabled in password-protected BIOS sections.)
Until Windows 7, 90%+ of consumers had no reason to use VT extensions, and for those, VT was only a potential security hole. Hence disabling by default made sense until very recently.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Virtual machines are a security feature. A VM establishes a security barrier around the OS> If you're infected, you just roll back the VM to the last snapshot and you're clean.
Security is like sex, once you're penetrated you're ****ed. Blocking useful security tools because they make it very slightly easier to hide after a successful penetration is asinine. And complaining about the cleanup cost? I normally reformat and reinstall after a virus is detected... and I've had to do that ONCE on any computer I've owned since 1986.
If people took some responsibility for their computers instead of depending on hacks like AV software to detect and clean up after they screw up, there wouldn't BE a virus problem.
As for your last line, "There is no real use of VT anyway since cores are now dual."... I have no idea what you mean by that, so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head.
Perhaps there is already some hypervisor running that we don't know about?
As a Z owner who is planning on upgrading to Windows 7, this pisses me off. That machine was nearly as expensive as my mac... my mac!
It's worth noting that, scarily enough, it *was* still cheaper than my MBP, and the MBP has all sorts of issues running Windows. Sadly, the one ideal computer to run all OS's is actually three and a roll of duct tape.
Here's some more evidence that the "Apple Tax" is just a higher price for quality goods:
http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/08/07/macs-beat-pcs-intel-vt/
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If Sony is disabling features to make their laptops more resiliant against malware attacks, can we expect them to offer support and resolution to malware attacks that occur because of their hardware/BIOS?
I bet not. So why not leave alone that which you are not willing to fully support anyways?
On another note, Intel (amd probably AMD) mess with the VT features, scattering them all over the processor product lines. You need a frakking CPA to work through the permutations and find the processor(s) that have all the features and performance you want or will pay for. !Simple. !Friendly. Evil.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
yep - Virtualbox uses QEMU if Vt-x or AMD-V isn't present. I've got a year old Quad-Core 8400 that doesn't support Vt-x because Intel doesn't include it in consumer grade chips (I made sure my laptop had it, though). I think this is going to bite Intel's ass just like the Intel GMA graphics thing did when they used a software timer and Vista Aero required a hardware timer.
Trying to characterize the modern Sony in any meaningfully consistent way is an exercise in futility. Sony, like any major Japanese company, has always existed in a number of fairly distinct units or "silos," but in their present incarnation, they are spread across such a wide variety of markets that it's almost a coincidence they bear the same brand name.
Sony BMG, obviously, is the most consumer-unfriendly, as well as the least market-savvy. The rootkit debacle of four years ago has stayed with the tech community and poisoned its perception of the entire brand, but it's not really fair to conflate that with anything the VAIO division does -- VAIO is off in its own world from Sony BMG.
VAIO, as evidenced by this story, obviously has its own struggles, as does Sony Computer Entertainment, as does each Sony business unit in its own way. But they do not move as one.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear