Any issues with Dual boot on dv9500t?

Hi,

My dv9500t (with 2X100GB 7200RPM) is on the way. I was reading some articles which say HP has placed an SATA lock in BIOS on dv9500t. Could this prevent dual booting with other OSes (linux, solaris). Would these OSes see the drives ? The primary reason for me to go for the 2 hard drive combo is to dual boot.

Has anyone successfully configured dual boot on Dv9500t? Could this be a problem?


BGeo

 

BGeo - this has been pretty well covered in other posts - but, the bottom line is it will be tricky. I'm not sure that the term "SATA lock" is accurate - H-P just removed a BIOS option on the newer dvX000's which was available on the older system BIOS's. But, I would have to agree with several other posters, H-P probably did that at Microsoft's request in order to force more people to use Vista. You will have to either slip-stream the SATA drivers onto a XP install CD or use a floppy to install the drivers early in the XP install sequence. The floppy install has not worked for me but numerous other posters have had good luck with it. If you do a search you can find some pretty detailed instructions including the exact model number of your chipset.

 

Thanks for your response.
So, the SATA lock on the dv9500t BIOS is confirmed? Why would they want to do that? If there is no work around, I am going to send it right back to HP.

BGeo

 

I haven't confirmed the BIOS change personally, but I have seen it in a number of posts so I'd say its 99.99% certain. The only reason I can imagine (since a BIOS change would cost $$ to code, test and distribute) is pressure from MSoft. I had a dv9000t (sold two weeks ago) and it was a very nice system - looking back at it I made a mistake in selling it. But, I do agree with you, I would not buy a dv9500 given the change they have made to the BIOS.

 

Ok well I know you can use a floppy disk with the drivers to install XP because I have been through that process BUT I don't know about linux. I would like to know if anyone has gotten Ubuntu to work on the dv9500t and I'm going to try to see if anyone on the Ubuntu forums has gotten it to work.

Also can you go back to an older BIOS simply for the SATA legacy mode? Because from what I understand older BIOSs have included this feature so can I just placed that on to my notebook?

I'm currently awaiting my dv9500t which is slated to arrive by Monday so I'll try to get Ubuntu on there and I'll do a review. But the SATA issue seems like fun because it will give me something to work on.. Hopefully I don't get too frustrated..lol.

Also I think they HP did this so there will be less customer support because even though you are not suppose to do it, there has to be many people who call in and stuff. Also Microsoft is pushing Vista on all OEMs and they even wont allow some OEMs to include XP on newer machines and thats why some machines don't offer XP as an option.

~Eric

 

going to older bioses depends on if those bioses had the option, being a new product there is probably 1-3 of them only

i think there is an option that converts a usb flash drive to act as a floppy but i have only heard about i have never tried it nor do i know if it will work on a non-windows install or even on the xp install.

 

Thanks for all the responses.

I like and have been using Microsoft OSes from Windows 3.11 onwards. But I also would like to have the liberty to use other OSes as well on machine I buy. Now Microsoft is forcing HP and others to lock SATA at BIOS level to prevent the use of XP which causes causes other OSes not to work.

If the objective of Microsoft is just to prevent XP from being used, they should have devised a way to make the lock effective to XP only and not other OSes. They did it the easy way, right?

I will try the floppy and slipstream options for XP. But as mentioned in the posts above, I do not know how to overcome this issue on Linux (CentOS) or Solaris. There should be someway. Let's see how it goes.

BGeo

 

Yes, we can try using USB flash drive option for XP. I too, am not sure if that will work for UNIX. Perhaps, it can be done installing from network.

Any similar issues with Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo?

 

Please stop the madness!!! HP is NOT "locking systems" so you can't use older OSes!!!! And they certainly did not do anything at Microsoft's request!!

What they have done is removed the SATA legacy option from the BIOS, which is something that may not even be supported by the Santa Rosa chipset. "Legacy" is exactly what it sounds, an old technology used for backwards compatibility. Many systems have had this backwards compatibility for years, and now it's getting old and it's time for it to be removed.

Anyone reporting that the system has a locked BIOS does not have an understanding of how these things work. You are using an old OS that does not have SATA drivers. Just like you needed a disk to load SCSI drivers during the Windows install, you now need SATA drivers for older systems. Yeah, it's a pain, but you have to cut out the backwards compatibility eventually.

You can easily load older versions of Windows, all you need is the driver floppy, or you can slipstream the driver into the CD using nLite.

 

orev is right, there is no mythical 'SATA lock'. There's no such thing as hardware that prevents you from dual booting. Dual-booting is a function of the bootloader you use. I use GRUB, for example. The boot loader lives in the Master Boot Record (MBR), typically the first 512 byte sector of your default block device. The boot loader's job is to read the partition tables of all available block devices, and then using an optional menu, allow you to point to the partition of your choice. At that point, control is turned over to the Boot Sector of that partition, where the resident code will load the OS kernel, and initiate the boot process for your operating system.

The hardware has nothing to do with it, nothing at all. Only crufty old legacy operating systems even use the BIOS any more. That's why BIOS is going away in favor of intel EFI (currently used on intel mac's). I'm just amazed how many people who consider themselves "computer experts" are so utterly clueless when it comes to the boot process of a pc.

 

yeah well i didnt see the link between dual booting and SATA. the bootloader does this but only if u have added that particular OS

if for example you wanted to load the OS on a separate partition/drive and wat to select them via a BIOS option instead of the OS's bootloader, then the BIOS options play a part.

 

Sure, but that's the wrong way to go about it. Why make things harder than they need to be?

Again, BIOS is obsolete. In newer machines, there are less and less options for you to play with in the BIOS. It's a trend that's been going on for years - all hardware settings are become software-driven. But I guess you're the kind of guy who prefers to change jumpers on the circuit board to set your IRQ's.

Soon, the BIOS will be gone altogether and intel EFI will be its replacement. BIOS is going the way of the DB25 parallel port, DIN5 keyboard port, and CRT monitors. If you've ever used UNIX hardware, you'd understand just how antiquated and silly the pc BIOS really is.

 

Thanks for all your responses.

Sorry for including the term "dual booting" in this thread. I should have worded it as "Linux/Solaris/Centos install issues on dv9500t" under the Linux thread. Appologize if that caused any confusion.

The question was whether non-Windows based OSes can be installed without much hassle (Linux, Solaris) on dv9500t. On my ordered dv9500t it has two drives. so obviously I would want to use the dual boot option, that's all for dual boot. "SATA lock" is not my invention. I read it in a few other threads. I honestly do not know if it's in place or not. I just want to find out if there is any truth in it. dv9500t that I ordered will only be delivered early next week. I can check it out only after getting the machine.

It is my understanding dv9500t still uses BIOS, even though Santa Rosa was intially announced to have been using EFI.

I was seeking advice from members who have successfully installed LInux/Solaris/CentOS on dv9500t (this particular model only, not dv9000t or dv8000t).
Also, please note that I have done multi-boot on other machines without much problem - so I am not new to multi-boot. My question is specific to dv9500t.

Anyway, thank you very much for all your postings.

BGeo

 

well u know lupin signature mentions a dv9500t running gentoo so yeah it apparently can be done.

as for the BIOS well yeah i mean i first heard about newer approaches over 4 years ago and the easier way to do things is cool but ya know sometimes separating your operating systems is better than tying them up onto one of their bootloaders. but to have the option to do the same via the BIOS is not such a bad thing especially if for example your primary OS dies out and ur bootloader doesnt load, rather than being forced to diagnose from the beginning, u have the option to use your other OS via a BIOS switch. yeah sure ya dont need it all the time but sometimes it aint such a bad feature and well ive had enuff issues with windows to know why my idea is a plus

 

Yes,you are right. lupin signature mentions a dv9500t running gentoo. I didn't notice it until now. So, it can be done.

Thanks,

BGeo

 

Ups, sorry; wrong thread.

 

Wow, its funny how all this nonsense about "locking" the BIOS or whatever was started by one person who did not know what he was doing and didn't bother to ask. I was confused because my current BIOS on my desktop does NOT support legacy mode and even so I was able to dual boot with Ubuntu with ZERO issues. I had some problems with installing a clean version of Media Center 2005, but after I downloaded and installed the drivers at time of installing MC 05, there were no more issues.

It would be a good feature to determine which OS you want to start from the BIOS because sometimes when my Media Center 05 has its issues the bootloader does not come up and messes up my Ubuntu config.

Thanks for everyone who clarified on this issue because it seem ilogical for HP to "lock" its systems and even if they did there would have been a massive customer backlash and a PR nightmare. Thanks again guys =D.

-Eric

 

Well said, I am particularly thankful that HP and Intel did not decide to include DB25 parallel ports on the Santa Rosa line.

I am going to have to check out GRUB...dual booting is in my immediate future - and no I don't anticipate any mischief from the evil SATA Locker Gnomes!

 

Originally posted by bradturner32 ... "and no I don't anticipate any mischief from the evil SATA Locker Gnomes!" Those SATA Locker Gnomes are out there, I tell you. They arrived at Roswell in '47 - along with fiber optics, circuit boards, night vision goggles, etc. And, they are now working in conjunction with M$ to prevent us from using XP!!

 

errr sorry JellyGeo but that news of yours is soooo old and disproved. The truth is that Megatron, leader of the decepticons landed on earth years ago and all the technology we know today is derived from him. Soon Prime and the autobots will come and defeat him, however he will rise again (cuz well the idiots forgot to put ME in the movie! how rude!) and will destroy the micro and soft people

 

Well, my guide is
here
if you wanna get an idea of what to expect.

I didn't have much luck with Ubuntu and gave up. I'm sure I could figure it out if I spent the time, but for some reason I didn't want too.

Some people report having problems installing the sound driver on the DV9500T with XP. Scroll to the bottom so see the e-mail I received.

From what I know, you are limited to 4 partitions. XP and Vista each take up a NTFS partition, then there's a FAT32 shared partition for data, then an Extended partition with swap space which is used for Ubuntu or whatever else you want to install.

While your waiting for your DV9500T to arrive, go ahead and make your slipstreamed version of XP along with the bootable versions of Killdisk, and Gparted. You can also download all the drivers for XP and put them in a folder. Then when your DV9500T arrives, make the recovery DVDs, burn off your \SWSETUP folder using Nero, and then you can reformat and start over.

 

I'm not planning on installing XP on my dv9500t because I paid for Vista and I plan on using it but if its as bad as some people are saying it is I always have my Media Center 2005 to fall back on and Ubuntu. I'm going to put Ubuntu on mine and hopefully it has support for the wireless card on the dv9500t and I'll inform you on what happens =D.

-Eric

 

There are alternatives to dual-booting if you have the RAM. As a consultant I used to run XP on my 3 year old laptop, Vista 32 bit at home but have transitioned to running Vista 64 bit on the new dv9500t. I do still encounter programs and VPN solutions that require IE6 (not available on Vista) or that don't allow Vista. Luckily there are some options:

• IE6 Application Compatibility XP VPC - Microsoft has provided a free VPC image with a pre-activated copy of XP SP2 with IE6 loaded (currently set to expire 08/17/2007)
• Vista Business/Ultimate Licenses Entitle you to XP - by owning a copy of Vista Business or Ultimate editions you are legally able to load XP until you're ready to run Vista

Despite the issues some people are having there are some compelling arguments for going ahead with Vista and either loading XP for the interim or running XP specific apps in a VPC ( Virtual PC is also free).

So far I have had zero/0/nada application issues on Vista 64 bit. It did help that Windows Live OneCare just released a 2.0 beta supporting Vista 64; however.