Windows 12 ! Already....

Scannerman · Jul 14, 2023

spapakons said:
Have you tried to install the Intel chipset driver for Windows 7 in Windows 11? This should enable lost features. Any Vista or newer Intel chipset driver can also be installed in Windows 11. Only Intel graphics drivers for Windows 7 are locked and cannot be installed in Windows 8 and later without hacking. Any other Vista or newer driver works from Intel and other manufacturers.

I think I may have read something about this before. Perhaps it was in a different post of yours. (My memory is not what it used to be.) There was a gentleman who is remarkably talented with drivers and the manipulation of driver installations in one of our forums. He was very patient with me and we tried a number of things before we ran out of options. I don't see his very unique name here but he definitely struck me as someone who knew his stuff regarding drivers. I'm guessing that perhaps for this to work I would likely have to reinstall the operating system as I had followed instruction as per Microsoft, making certain registry edits in order to install Windows 11 on an older TPM platform, likely rendering my PC to be unresponsive to these older style drivers. Summer is a busy time of year for me so I'll put it on my winter list of things to do. :)

Scannerman · Jul 14, 2023

johnlgalt said:
But, HP is ... HP. Lol. So I would not be surprised if they engineered their mobos / BIOS that way.

Could it have been a business-focused device, so as to prevent data theft from a device that had been locked down with a boot password?

I know of one tech who refers to HP as an acronym for "horrible parts".

It is possible that there is some truth to this idea that HP engineered their mobos that way as these mass produced prebuilts are often designed to fit the designated build budget of the manufacturer down to the penny. The same deal goes with Dell and the rest of these huge conglomerates: They get mass produced parts cheap and are known to cut corners. To be fair, I've had some of these proprietary boards last longer than others. Only now I have a Dell X58 platform with leaking/dead caps (and still running for the most part) that was purchased back in 2009. I'm waiting for it to crater, but for a prebuilt PC it's pretty stubborn. It boots to all 5 operating systems just fine. (Fortunately, I have a replacement board waiting on the shelf.)

I'm not sure that a dead CMOS battery would provide any real protection when the way to reset a BIOS password requires the removal of the said battery. (Part of the reason I gave up on adding BIOS passwords.)

spapakons · Jul 15, 2023

To bust the myth, yes a have seen a couple of systems that would not boot without a BIOS battery or with a dead BIOS battery, but these are the exception. Almost any other system does boot and gives a warning that BIOS settings are lost, press F1 to ignore and continue or F2 to enter Setup. If you ignore the settings and continue to Windows date and time are synchronized online. You lose any RAM or other configuration, so performance is reduced, but other than that the system works.

johnlgalt · Jul 15, 2023

Scannerman said:
I'm not sure that a dead CMOS battery would provide any real protection when the way to reset a BIOS password requires the removal of the said battery. (Part of the reason I gave up on adding BIOS passwords.)

That was my understanding as well. And on some devices like my Dell Latitude It is a real chore to get that battery replaced. On others, though, it is trivial - which makes you wonder why a BIOS password (even a power on password) is even included as a feature.

However, with more than just a couple of BIOS companies out there a couple of decades ago, it was possible something proprietary could have been done such that even removal of the battery could not bypass it, the only way to bypass it was to enter it. Far fetched, to be sure, but I wouldn't put it past some of these manufacturers to at least try lol.

Scannerman · Jul 15, 2023

When someone has physical possession of your PC they have your data. Plain and simple.
Admittedly, you could have copies of that data elsewhere. Backups and archives are beautiful things.
Whether someone can access your data when it is in their possession is another matter.
Encryption can be another beautiful thing. Encryption can also be a disaster if corruption sets in.
Tell me if this is a thing or not: Enabling Bit Locker also enables the possibility of Ransomware happening on your PC.
Is this why Bit Locker doesn't seem to be a thing anymore?

I once repaired a laptop for someone who was hit with it. Perhaps it was fake ransomware because it was easy to access their data from a separate OS, save their personal files onto a separate drive, and give them a new drive with a fresh OS and a folder of their personal files on their desktop. It was worth a moose roast and the cost of a new hard drive. (I live in Canada.)

Some BIOS come equipt with a tamper alarm one can set in the event of a breach of containment. I can see a company making the system fail to boot until the battery is replaced in situations like this but wouldn't the alarm just be powered from the PSU in such cases? I guess that wouldn't be the case in a laptop. The idea of watching someone try to lug my 82 lb Thermal Take up two flights of stairs to steal it makes me laugh. Laptops are so much easier to steal.

spapakons · Jul 16, 2023

If anyone steals your laptop he doesn't need it to access your data, unless the disk is encrypted. Just connect the disk in any other computer and copy everything. If the disk is BitLocker protected, then it is harder to access your data. But if you forget the password even you cannot access your data with the only option is to do a disk wipe in order to use it again.

johnlgalt · Jul 16, 2023

Scannerman said:
Encryption can be another beautiful thing. Encryption can also be a disaster if corruption sets in.
Tell me if this is a thing or not: Enabling Bit Locker also enables the possibility of Ransomware happening on your PC.
Is this why Bit Locker doesn't seem to be a thing anymore?

Yeah, which is why backups are also important lol. As for BitLocker being a thing, or not, I cannot say, I've not asked around much about it - but I know I haven't bee na aprt of any enterprise in the last 5 years that is using it, so....

Scannerman · Jul 16, 2023

I wasn't a big fan of air gapping but I am now. Making backups isn't enough because backups can be corrupted. Air gapping and cold storage are also valuable considerations where making backups are concerned. Many people are using NAS (network attached storage) these days and the best protection can be disconnection from the net when it is not needed. There is something to be said for options. Double copies of data is a way to make double sure that your data is secure. Most people here already know this but in the event that some browsing this site are not backing up data and taking active measures to secure their data these are only a couple of options that have proven themselves effective.

TechnoMage2021 · Jul 18, 2023

It certainly WILL be interesting to see what MS comes up with for Windows 12, if indeed they actually call it that.
XP, ME, and Vista were previous exceptions to the consecutive numbering rule.
MS even made a huge jump from 95 to 98. Windows 96 and 97 must have been real Loosers! Like Windows 8.0!

Windows 8.1 was totally misnamed. Should have been Windows 9.0.
I'm not worried about Windows 12 being incompatible with my old hardware. If it is, someone will fix it!

TM

spapakons · Jul 18, 2023

So far all older drivers and applications work in Windows 10 and 11. I hope they are not going to change this backwards compatibility now.

Scannerman · Jul 18, 2023

TechnoMage2021 said:
It certainly WILL be interesting to see what MS comes up with for Windows 12, if indeed they actually call it that.
XP, ME, and Vista were previous exceptions to the consecutive numbering rule.
MS even made a huge jump from 95 to 98. Windows 96 and 97 must have been real Loosers! Like Windows 8.0!
Windows 8.1 was totally misnamed. Should have been Windows 9.0.
I'm not worried about Windows 12 being incompatible with my old hardware. If it is, someone will fix it!

TM

It has been frequently stated that the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 was greater than the difference between Windows Vista and Windows 7 and I believe it. At the end of the day it's what's under the hood (shell) that counts. I agree that they should have named 8.1 Windows 9 because it really was an entirely different OS and it behaved differently too.

spapakons said:
So far all older drivers and applications work in Windows 10 and 11. I hope they are not going to change this backwards compatibility now.

Nope. Not all older drivers work in Windows 11. I can attest to that. The Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology driver will not work in Windows 11 on my PC and I've tried even older ones as well. I appreciate why Optane isn't supported in Windows 11, although it's a shame that it isn't. There are some work arounds for this since Intel handed Optane issues over to another company. Alas, Intel currently provides no TBT option for my i7 6900K that works with Windows 11 to my knowledge. The triangle sits in device manager as it has since the day I first installed Win 11 on my work station as a reminder of what can happen when Win 11 is installed on an unsupported platform.

spapakons · Jul 19, 2023

If I have a device I cannot find drivers for I use Snappy Driver Installer as a last resort. It will check the hardware IDs in its database and offer a suitable driver. To avoid affecting other devices, install only the missing drivers (green text), avoid updating working drivers (blue text). The lite version downloads only the drivers for your devices and the full version is the whole database (over 20GB). https://sdi-tool.org/download/

Scannerman · Jul 19, 2023

Just to humour you I tried it again. I also d-loaded the 63 driver packs that comes with it and tried that too. Snappy Driver says it was a successful install. Windows 11 says otherwise. Perhaps you have forgotten but we've been here before?

New Computer, Can't Get Past "Add your Microsoft account."

New HP Envy desktop, built 3 yrs. ago. Don't yet know the Windows 11 version. I have a Windows 10 computer (up and running) with a Microsoft account with a password, security code, and recovery code. Windows 11 requires a Microsoft account, but I can't enter that account without a security...

www.elevenforum.com

Here is where we are after restart and reattempt:

Scannerman · Jul 19, 2023

So. Either the Device Manager is not accurate and in error, or Snappy Driver Installer is in error. I'm thinking Snappy is at fault here. I could be wrong. Perhaps Windows is lying. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with my Intel Turbo Boost Technology (Actually there isn't. It works just fine in Windows 7.) other than the fact that it is NOT supported in Windows 11.

spapakons · Jul 19, 2023

The driver is installed fine but cannot start properly for some reason. What the error is if you open the device properties?

Fabler2 · Jul 19, 2023

spapakons said:
The driver is installed fine but cannot start properly for some reason. What the error is if you open the device properties?

It looks as if a bios update is required for it to work with Windows 11. As the PC is unsupported it seems unlikely it will get the update.
See last post here,

Redirecting

WAI · Jul 19, 2023

I find snappy to be faults on some drivers. Google "3Dp" it's what I use

spapakons · Jul 19, 2023

Fabler2 said:
It looks as if a bios update is required for it to work with Windows 11. As the PC is unsupported it seems unlikely it will get the update.
See last post here,

Redirecting

Doesn't matter what a newer BIOS is for, I would download and install it just in case. If you already have the latest, check for Beta versions. Sometimes a newer Beta version BIOS can improve compatibility that last release cannot. Most not-that-old systems have an easy Windows flash tool. Older systems required running a DOS tool from floppy disk. It can be done with either a standard internal floppy disk drive or a USB floppy disk drive, but I am not sure if it is worth the trouble.

TechnoMage2021 · Jul 19, 2023

I have to chuckle, when I hear the words "Bios Updates", because my own motherboard is so old there are NO Bios updates available. But that's OK, because my OLD Gigabyte mobo and AMD cpu are running Windows 11/Pro/64, 22H2, just fine. The only drivers that I've had to manually install were for my Epson printer.

So, y'all keep on chasing drivers, I find it entertaining!

Cheers Mates!
TM

spapakons · Jul 19, 2023

Most motherboards have the original BIOS they came with because the owner never updated it. Downloading the latest BIOS, no matter how old, and installing it fixes bugs and improves stability and compatibility. So it is not pointless to update the BIOS on an old motherboard, unless it is over 15 years old and it won't make any difference in compatibility and performance. That kind of old BIOS should require the floppy disk method in DOS environment and it is a bit of a hassle to update. Not worth the effort if your system works properly. Newer systems with Windows flash tools are much easier to update and it doesn't harm to do it.