Dell Bios-Encryption/Decryption Driver Compatibility

NTDEV
1

Hi All,

We have a 16 bit driver which is triggered by INT13 for decrypting on the
fly when the OS boots. It works for most of the systems but for the Dell
Bios Revision A03 it does not boot saying

“Windows NT has only 455K of LowMemory Available. 512K of Low Memory is
required to run Windows NT.”. The 16 bit driver is loaded in lowmemory and
it decrypts all the information on the fly. This problem occurs only with
Dell Bios. However if i decrease the size of 16 bit driver without any
functionalities and make it less than 30K it boots the Dell system fine. Is
there any other thing with respect to Dell thats to be taken care of…

Thanks in Advance
Regards
Shal

2

Since the PC vendors have their own boot-level softwares loaded !!, not sure
how you can guage what is left in real mode memory. So my best suggestion
would be to comeup with somekind of overlay and use as minimum as memory as
possible. At that stage no paging, no protected mode …

-pro

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Shalini
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 7:55 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Dell Bios-Encryption/Decryption Driver Compatibility

Hi All,

We have a 16 bit driver which is triggered by INT13 for decrypting on the
fly when the OS boots. It works for most of the systems but for the Dell
Bios Revision A03 it does not boot saying

“Windows NT has only 455K of LowMemory Available. 512K of Low Memory is
required to run Windows NT.”. The 16 bit driver is loaded in lowmemory and
it decrypts all the information on the fly. This problem occurs only with
Dell Bios. However if i decrease the size of 16 bit driver without any
functionalities and make it less than 30K it boots the Dell system fine. Is
there any other thing with respect to Dell thats to be taken care of…

Thanks in Advance
Regards
Shal

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

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