HP Disables VT On Some Intel Laptops 258
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.
But will they charge $4.99? (Score:5, Funny)
But will HP have to charge $4.99 for the VT compatible firmware in order to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act [slashdot.org]?
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It'll be fixed... (Score:3, Funny)
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Apparently, Xavier's joke flew completely over your head. You might want to reread his post and look more closely for it.
VT? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Vaginal Trauma (Score:5, Funny)
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You men are so insecure (& size does not matte (Score:2)
It doesn't really hurt -- just a little prick.
Re:VT? (Score:5, Informative)
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(BTW, Virtualization Technology, for those whose browsers are incapable of leaving the slashdot domain.)
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Oh and well done on getting modded troll... WTF's with that?! Any mod wanna cancel that out, it's a perfectly reasonable comment.
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That post uses the words, but does not "spell it out" as a definition, only the relative rarity of words beginning with V might lead one to guess that. You obviously already knew that and were looking for it, but the uninitiated wouldn't.
(BTW, Virtualization Technology, for those whose browsers are incapable of leaving the slashd
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Actually, no, I've never heard of Virtualization Technology before this article was posted, and was as curious as the next person. But it didn't take me long to figure it out from context. No longer than it took to scan the posts for words beginning with the letter v, followed by words beginning with the letter t.
*shrug* maybe my pattern-matching skills are better than the average bear, but honestly, I hadn't the foggies
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You did say it was "spelled out". Not something one had to deduce.
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Re:VT? (Score:4, Funny)
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It's the V-Twin [wikipedia.org] engine used in Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Sale of Goods Act? (Score:2)
However, the simple answer is to take the laptop back to the store and demand your money back. Simple.
If laws in the USA are similar to New Zealand, then inside the "Trades Description Act" or the "Sale of Goods Act" (or equivalent) there will be a paragraph which states "The goods must be of such a nature as to permit their intended us
Re:VT? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure they know what Wikipedia is, they were merely pointing out an obvious problem with the story.
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Of course, we wouldn't ask that question because everyone knows what HP is already. Why's that? Because this is a tech orientated site, of course. It's the same reason why we can talk of DDR RAM [slashdot.org] without spelling all 6 words out.
Acronyms are a way in which like minded people can quickly and efficiently communicate; countless businesses
Overuse of abbreviations makes things harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that in this case "VT" is not part of an established and understood vocabulary.
Of course, we wouldn't ask that question because everyone knows what HP is already. Why's that? Because this is a tech orientated site, of course.
This isn't really a good comparison. Even people without a technology background know what "HP" stands for.
I've been involved with and around computers and electronics since the late 1970s, and today is the first day in a long time that I've encountered the abbreviation "VT". It means "Video Terminal", right? Or is it "Video Tape"?
It's AEP (accepted editorial practice, but you knew that already, right?) to put the meaning of an abbreviation in parentheses next to its first use in a journalism piece, so you're sure the reader understands what you're talking about - unless you're writing an abbreviation knowledge test.
Re:VT? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's fun to say RTFM when you're frustrated at poeople who chose not to read, but in this case a @two letter acronym would really be helped by a definition or a link.
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But only 1 (one) of the possible meanings included the word "Intel". As the article headline includes the same word, I thought it would be a big hint.
Have a look at a reply I just posted above - my intention here was not to say a big RTFM, it was to highlight the possible
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Well, if it's bothering you to such a high degree, I should tell you--you don't have to browse Slashdot everyday. You could go to a similar site with stricter content requirements. Or, you could supply Slashdot with higher quality content yourself. Or, make a couple bucks starting your own Slashdot competitor, but advertise it as being "Better than Slashdot, because we have English majors on staff who throw o
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dave
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So does Lenovo... (Score:4, Informative)
...on some of their newer Thinkpads [thinkwiki.org]. You'd think that when you're spending $2000 on a "business-class" laptop, you'd get it without any artificial limitations...
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Great.
Until now, I only had to find a laptop without Windows preinstalled.
Now I have to check I'm not buying crippleware, too.
Oh, joy.
Re:So does Lenovo... (Score:5, Informative)
After having taken a closer look at the page I linked (because it's been changed since I read it last), I've discovered that my particular model (X60t) at least has a new BIOS out that fixes the problem. : )
This leads me to believe that, at least for Lenovo, it's just that they were presumably in a hurry to get the model released, not that it was intentional crippleware.
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Either Phoenix (or whoever) disables VT by default (unlikely - more features sells) or the MB/Chipset people disable it.
<troll>
Most likely some overzealous marketing freak decided "hey! we can sell this!" and the MB/Chipset people disabled it as ordered by PHBs. Later, after someone figured out the aforementioned marketing freak is a douche-bag, the orde
Re: Nothing new... (Score:3, Informative)
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I don't know. I buy AMD.
And I build my own, which I cannot do with laptops.
Re:So does Lenovo... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So does Lenovo... (Score:4, Informative)
According to the page, it's the Z and X series that are affected, not the T series.
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Thankfully my T60 appears to be unaffected. It shipped with VT off, but I toggled it on in the BIOS without issue.
Re:So does Lenovo... (Score:5, Informative)
MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE (Score:2)
If that's true, it would certainly go a long way towards explaining why so many computers have it disabled (the article was about HP, I mentioned Lenovo, and somebody else in this thread claimed Sony was disabling it too).
Not surprised... (Score:5, Insightful)
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[Insert obligatory Intel/Microsoft conspiracy theory here]
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> for most of HP's customers.
But please be strict and state that this is risk for running certain operating systems.
(...)
> You probably should be able to turn it on,
If you buy a car with AC (FIY not all cars are equiped with AC in Eurtope - just FYI) do you expect that you can turn it on?
(...)
> there are probably only a few hundred people that would run Xen on their
> laptop, so why have the "bug" available on the other few hundred thousa
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Why would I buy a car with Anonymous Coward?
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and the total number of laptops on campus would be----?
VT provides no perf advantage. (Score:4, Informative)
I was pretty disappointed to find that there is no perf. difference with VT enabled or disabled.
Re:VT provides no perf advantage. (Score:5, Informative)
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He's implying that without VT, windows does not perform on Xen.
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I came across some people that didn't know this and deduced that hyperthreading was ineffective. Reinstalling the OS can double certain CPU-intensive tasks.
Re:VT provides no perf advantage. (Score:5, Informative)
2. From the Xen mailing list re why disk IO (for one thing) *will* be slower in a HVM domain than in a paravirtualised domain:
The reason the emulated IDE controller is quite slow is a consequence of
the emulation. The way it works is that the driver in the HVM domain
writes to the same IO ports that the real device would use. These writes
are intercepted by the hardware support in the processor and a VMEXIT is
issued to "exit the virtual machine" back into the hypervisor. The HV
looks at the "exit reason", and sees that it's an IO WRITE operation.
This operation is then encoded into a small packet and sent to QEMU.
QEMU processes this packet and responds back to HV to say "OK, done
that, you may continue". HV then does a VMRUN (or VMRESUME in the Intel
case) to continue the guest execution, which is probably another IO
instruction to write to the IDE controller. There's a total of 5-6 bytes
written to the IDE controller per transaction, and whilst it's possible
to combine some of these writes into a single write, it's not always
done that way. Once all writes for one transaction are completed, the
QEMU ide emulation code will perform the requested operation (such as
reading or writing a sector). When that is complete, a virtual interrupt
is issued to the guest, and the guest will see this as a "disk done"
interrupt, just like real hardware.
All these steps of IO intercepts takes several thousand cycles, which is
a bit longer than a regular IO write operation would take on the real
hardware, and the system will still need to issue the real IO operations
to perform the REAL hardware read/write corresponding to the virtual
disk (such as reading a file, LVM or physical partition) at some point,
so this is IN ADDITION to the time used by the hypervisor.
Unfortunately, the only possible improvement on this scenario is the
type "virtual-aware" driver that is described below.
[Using a slightly more efficient model than IDE may also help, but
that's going to be marginal compared to the benefits of using a
virtual-aware driver].
(Credit goes to Mats Petersson).
Better then other companies (Score:5, Insightful)
At least they didn't just delete the post. *cough* apple [slashdot.org] *cough*
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Could another ass'y program set it back? (Score:2)
Seems like once the BIOS has done its job and gotten out of the way at boot, that you ought to be able to go in, provided that you're care
One Simple Solution (Score:4, Informative)
Bad Experiences with HP Laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
My HP Pavilion laptop had the USB controller on IRQ 11, but, according to 2 out of 3 BIOS tables, it was on IRQ 9. This caused USB not to work under Linux. HP and the BIOS vendor apparently weren't interested in fixing the issue, so, eventually, it was worked around with a patch to Linux. According to what I've heard, the USB controller worked under Windows, but would reset every 5 minutes.
Around the time the warranty expired (I don't recall if it was just before or just after), the cooling fan started to get stuck. This would result in it making an awful lot of noise, followed soon enough by the system shutting down, because of overheating. After several requests to various addresses and phone numbers at HP, they offered that I could send the laptop in for repair, and they'll put in a new fan and send it back to me. Unfortunately, the operation would have cost more money than it was worth to me.
Also, the socket where the power adapter connects to the laptop broke. I eventually figured out how to open the laptop, get everything out of the way to get to the socket, and put everything back together. However, I never really succeeded in fixing the socket. I tried everything from soldering to chewing gum, but it kept breaking again. Just before I decided to fix the adapter plug to the socket (thus hopefully keeping the two connected and in place), the hard disk finally got so many bad sectors that it couldn't be used anymore. I gave the laptop away to a friend who said he'd fix and sell it, but a week later I found it on the sidewalk, thrown out of the window.
All in all, I think I got about a year and a half out of the laptop. After that, I bought an iBook, which I just sold last summer, apparently still working perfectly after two years of heavy use (more than the HP was ever subjected to). Pleased with Apple, but not wanting to make the switch to the Macbook just yet, I got another iBook before they ran out. It will take quite some convincing to get me to buy HP again, and I have a lasting aversion of moving parts in computers.
*Good* Experiences with HP Laptops (Score:2)
I guess I shouldn't extrapolate too much based on two data points, but for now HP and Staples have my business.
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Wild guess: Pavilion ZV5000?
They're known for it.
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paid upgrades (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.vistahelpforum.com/ [vistahelpforum.com]
WTF is VT? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I really don't think it assumes too much. This entire site is geared toward a demographic that has been following VT for some time.
Therefore, instead of complaining, you can...
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found it, on the "ascii" man page (Score:5, Funny)
Octal: 013
Decimal: 11
Hex: 0x0B
C escape: \v
It's the Control-K character.
When sent to the console, it seems to go down a line or two.
I can't see much use for VT.
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That's:
IFOWO illiterate, OAO, HI overlords.
Not just HP, Dell does this as well. (Score:2)
To be honest though, it's one of those features you'd never notice is gone unless you were looking for it.
(Full disclosure for ethics: I work for Dell as a Gold Tech Support Agent. In my 5 months here at Dell, I've had only one call about Intel VT, which was -- in an odd quirk of fate -- just yesterday.)
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Well, Color me surprised! Guess it's time to ask a few senior techs for clarification -- I know at this time we're not "supporting" it, but I can find no rhyme nor reason to which ones have it in the BIOS and which ones don't.
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Problem solved (Score:2)
Solution (Score:2)
Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
what most of you don t get about VT security issue (Score:5, Informative)
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).
What is VT? (Score:2)
Toshiba as well (Score:2)
I'm moving then (Score:2)
A solution exists (Score:3, Informative)
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.
better analogy (Score:2)
isn't it more like buying a computer with turbo [everything2.com] and finding out that the turbo 'feature' was disabled?
AHCI (Score:2)
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-0 12304.htm [intel.com]
However, there is no option to make this change in the BIOS, like people have reported with similar systems. So in Linux, I'm stuck with the PIIX driver instead of the AHCI driver. I'm not completely sure if there wo
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Disabled!? It's like buying a car with turbo and finding out after buying it that this turbo 'feature' was disabled.
What's not clear about that? It's accurate, too, since VT is listed as a feature of the chip they were buying and was specifically disabled by HP. If you read the linked forum thread, you will see that the people who got screwed over by this did their research and knew what they wanted. Calling these complaints "whining" really trivializes HP's screw-up.
mandelbr0t
I know just how you feel (Score:5, Funny)
If you ever have spare time and a strong stomach (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually not uncommon. If you feel cheated, there are drugs you can take to enable this feature. Some models autoenable this feature for no reason.
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Re:I know just how you feel (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, I get it now. VT = Vestigial Teat, right?
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There, I'll take the big stack of money now...
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There, your statement has been corrected for the new "V"-less world, and it is quite readable in fact. Oh look, not a single "V" in these sentences, unless I quote it directly!
Re:More of a problem to our Microsoft overlords (Score:2)
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I could even imagine a virtualized AV program to be more effective because it is independent from the host OS and therefore cannot be disabled by a virus from within the OS.
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Viruses with virtualization are much better than those without -- even with AVVT, there's some chance that the virus ends up being th
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So how come this isn't a problem on other architectures, which have presumably supported this kind of virtualization for ages?
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Microsoft is actually admitting how bad their security model is?
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Like it or not, you bought it for X and Y, and if it just happens to have Z but not the way you like it, and you didn't even KNOW that Z was there until this morning, you can't complain about having to pay for Z to work right. What's the difference between having to buy hardware or pay for an unlock? If they never even told you the feature was there would you care? Could you care? would it make a difference? Them not tell