Re: what laptop to buy - suggestion for Debian project developers
On Sat, 2010-02-13 at 22:12 -0500, Celejar wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:05:33 -0500
> Giff Hammar <ghammar@sv-phoenix.com> wrote:
>
> [please trim replies]
>
> > There is an extended recovery console for Windoze that does completely
> > hijack the boot process. I had installed it on my IBM notebook and it
> > prevented me from booting to anything other than the HDD. It was so bad
> > that it showed the alternate boot menu, allowed you to select the
> > alternate boot device and then booted from the HDD anyway. Five months
> > ago, I bought a Presario CQ60 (from Newegg.com) and I have installed
> > Debian and Ubuntu on it several times w/o problems. It sounds like the
> > reseller has added some M$ extensions to be "helpful."
>
> I can't argue with your empirical experience, but I don't see how this
> could be. The BIOS boot controls should be active before any part of
> Windows gets loaded. Are the companies actually "Windowizing" the BIOS
> to prevent booting from anything but the HDD?!
You're right. It shouldn't be possible to mess with the boot sequence,
but the purpose of the recovery console is to control the boot process
to a much finer degree so that you can make changes to the installed OS
without needing an alternate boot device. It was a really frustrating
experience. Anyway, it's just one of the reasons that I'm using Linux
instead of Windoze.
Giff
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