The latest geek myth is that Phoenix's BIOS is somehow locking you (the system owner) into Vista. Feeding the conspiracy theory is the blog entry here. Digging a little deeper, you find the report here, which cites, as evidence, a note on a laptop vendor's web page which says:
"This BIOS is ONLY for use with Windows Vista. Please do not install this BIOS for use with Windows XP, or other Windows versions."
Then the author follows it up with a problem with the system password and a citation of a really old press release by Phoenix concerning our co-development relationship with Microsoft on some security stuff.
What's going on here? Pretty simple: the laptop vendor only validated their BIOS with Vista. What happens if you use another OS with the BIOS? Answer: the vendor didn't know or didn't guarantee the behavior. Validation for each OS requires $$$. It also means keeping up with the right drivers for that OS. How to make a cheaper laptop? One way is to only test with one OS. The way the warning is worded, maybe they knew that there were bad drivers out there or that the experience was sub-optimal.
What about the password stuff the blog mentions? If you reflash your BIOS without clearing battery-backed SRAM (CMOS) (pop the battery or use the clear-CMOS option in the flash utilithy), the locations used for certain settings (including whether password is set) get shifted around. Technically, the checksum is still valid in these cases, but the meaning of the bits has changed. All sorts of weird behavior can result.
Phoenix doesn't lock system owners into a particular OS with our BIOS. We regularly validate our BIOS (including the UEFI versions) with different Linux variants.
Conspiracy? No. Just someone jumping to conclusions.
Tim
Hi,
Since you seem to know about this Phoenix BIOS issue, can you please tell me how to avoid the PCI issue while using Linux?
I see this message
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 7 of bridge 0000:00:04.0
and a few more during boot. Turns out, this in some way affects the VGA Enable line of my laptop. When I use linux on my laptop (when powered using battery), I cannot see anything on my screen.
If this is intended by the BIOS, I might have to approach ACER to replace the laptop or provide a non Phoenix BIOS firmware. I cannot use this laptop on the field for my project.( and 400 GBP is a lot for a student).
Regards,
Anup
Posted by: Anup Jayapal Rao | February 02, 2008 at 12:37 PM
You should leave a comment on both of those sites to clear the matter out...
And while we're at it, shouldn't you guys hide email addresses from comments in this blog? Everyone can see my email now... Just a tip :)
Posted by: Will anyone read? | April 26, 2007 at 12:46 PM