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Old October 25th 17, 11:08 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Asus X550J laptop

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Best practice, is for the encrypting party to have
| a "password floppy" or equivalent. You can make a
| kind of recovery media, that allows decrypting the
| partition in question.
|

I don't have any reason to think it's encrypted. But
up until now I've managed to preety much avoid NTFS
and newer boot systems. If I hook up a FAT32 disk
to any computer I can read it. This disk is not showing up.
So I'm wondering what system/software I might use
just to check for valid partitions and test the drive.
It has to be on a system, since the DVD drive boot is
not working. What would the tech people who retrieved
personal files used?

| The manual shows it has Secure Boot. You would think the
| choices would be "Yes" or "No", but AptIO apparently
| supports "Custom".

I didn't notice such a field. I guess I need to get
up to date on these newer complications.

| If you set Secure Boot Control to [Disabled], as seen on page 81
| of 0409.pdf, then maybe you can get your OS media to boot. For
| whatever thing you have in mind. If it's a UEFI BIOS, then
| perhaps you'd want to try OS media which is Hybrid and supports
| both Legacy and UEFI. On your Win7 disc, you might want to try an
| SP1 flavor of disk, as it might stand a better chance of working.
| I don't know the status of Windows 7 when it comes to booting
| on stuff like this.
|

I have a Win7 disk. But I'm not clear how that might be
useful. Boot it in the DVD drive and then...?

I *don't* have a Win8 disk and so far the owner hasn't
found an activation key, so I'm not sure I could reinstall
that way, even if I get the DVD boot working. (I thought
the "genuine license" sticker was always on these things,
but this laptop doesn't have it.)

What about the phenomenon of gettting bumped? The
boot typically goes through checking for disk errors,
fixing errors, etc. but then either goes blank or goes to
BIOS. At that point the hard disk has, at least sometimes,
disappeared from the BIOS. Is it possible that's actually
a boot or software issue and not a faulty SATA connection?


About the only reason for booting the faulty computer with
an installer DVD, would be to get to Command Prompt so you
can run CHKDSK. At the moment, there's no reason to
be running offline DISM or offline SFC scannow. You can
also use BCDEDIT, and do repairs to the BCD table if
it is damaged. So far, none of your symptoms suggest
booting to a Command Prompt is going to help.

It almost sounds like it's hitting a bad spot, and
going crazy (or freezing). You can pull the drive
and put it in your technician machine - the machine
with the clean power and working interfaces. Then you
can test there, to see if the symptoms are machine-related.

A disk drive can go "insane" if the power requirements are
not met. On a 3.5" drive, if the 12V rail hits 11V, the drive
will spin down and spin up again. A bit of droop is enough
to cause the processor to stop responding on the disk
controller card.

If the drive attempts to update the Service Area (=SA or
Track -1), and is unable to write, then it might try a
few "seek to zero" style head resets (clicking/ticking
sound), then give up and stop responding.

*******

On a Windows 8 laptop, the key is stored in the BIOS.
Each BIOS chip has a unique key (which is unlike the
scheme used on previous generations). The key is stored
in the ACPI table "MSDM" (you can fetch this in Linux).
There's really no particular reason to extract it, as
a Win8 retail disk, if you install it, it will
automatically activate, using the MSDM key. No other
version of OS, will activate using that key (directly).
The "free upgrade" to Windows 10 would have worked.
But that's not a normal promotion.

Win8/Win10 use MSDM. Since the key is stored in the BIOS
chip, there is no reason to print a COA sticker for the
outside of the machine.

For Win7 or older, the SLIC table in the BIOS, contains
information to support activation of "royalty OEM" OSes.
The SLIC table says "I'm an Asus", and if the OS
is an Asus OEM OS, it can be activated. The SLIC table
would activate WinXP/Vista/Win7, so if Asus had three
OSes for download, you could multi-boot with them. On
SLIC machines, the license key used by the OS is "generic".
A COA sticker with an emergency license key on it,
allows the owner to install a retail OS later, if the
hard drive fails. So SLIC is not a key, but it aids
activation, and the SLIC needs a COA to complete
the package.

Paul

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