Toshiba Satellite C55-A5104 (and possibly other C55 and C55t models) with a graphical INSYDE UEFI BIOS are missing the “Boot Mode” option under Advanced->System Configuration that allows switching from UEFI to CSM boot. There is an entire Toshiba forum thread full of disgruntled people talking about it.
The solution is simple: BIOS version 1.10 doesn’t have the option, but updating the BIOS to 1.30 adds it. Here’s a direct link.
Leave thanks in the comments. 🙂
Here’s some code which will allow you to mount Windows registry hive files as filesystems: https://github.com/jbruchon/winregfs
The README file says:
                      THE WINDOWS REGISTRY FUSE FILESYSTEM                       ====================================     If you have any questions, comments, or patches, send me an email:                               jody@jodybruchon.com One of the most difficult things to deal with in years of writing Linux utilities to work with and repair Windows PCs is the Windows registry. While many excellent tools exist to work with NTFS filesystems and to change and remove passwords from user accounts, the ability to work with the registry has always been severely lacking. Included in the excellent chntpw package is a primitive registry editor "reged" which has largely been quite helpful and I have been grateful for its existence, but it suffers from a very limited interface and a complete lack of scriptability that presents a major hurdle for anyone wanting to do more with the registry than wipe out a password or change the "Start" flag of a system service. Because of the serious limitations of "reged," the only practical way to do anything registry-oriented with a shell script was to export an ENTIRE HIVE to a .reg file, crudely parse the file for what you want, create a .reg file from the script to import the changes, and import them. Needless to say, the process is slow, complicated, and frustrating. I even wrote a tool called "read_inf_section" to help my scripts parse INF/INI/REG files faster because of this need (but also for an unrelated need to read .inf files from driver packages.) This complexity became too excessive, so I came up with a much better way to tweak the registry from shell scripts and programs. Thus, the Windows Registry FUSE Filesystem "winregfs" was born. chntpw ( http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/ ) has an excellent library for working with Windows NT registry hive files, distributed under the LGPL. winregfs is essentially a glue layer between ntreg.c and FUSE, translating Windows registry keys and values into ordinary directories and files. winregfs features case-insensitivity and forward-slash escaping. A few keys and value names in the Windows registry such as MIME types contain forward slash characters; winregfs substitutes "_SLASH_" where a forward slash appears in names. To use winregfs, make a directory to mount on and point it to the registry hive of interest: --- $ mkdir reg $ mount.winregfs /mnt/sdc2/Windows/System32/config/software reg --- Now, you can see everything in that hive under "reg": --- $ ls reg 7-Zip/                 Google/             Policies/ AVAST Software/        InstalledOptions/   Program Groups/ Adobe/                 Intel/              RegisteredApplications/ Analog Devices/        LibreOffice/        S3/ C07ft5Y/               Macromedia/         Schlumberger/ Classes/               Microsoft/          Secure/ Clients/               Mozilla/            Sigmatel/ Diskeeper Corporation/ MozillaPlugins/     The Document Foundation/ GNU/                   NVIDIA Corporation/ Windows 3.1 Migration Status/ Gabest/                ODBC/               mozilla.org/ Gemplus/               Piriform/ --- Let's say you want to see some things that automatically run during startup. --- $ ls -l reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run total 0 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 118 Dec 31 1969 Adobe ARM.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 124 Dec 31 1969 DiskeeperSystray.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 60 Dec 31 1969 HotKeysCmds.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 66 Dec 31 1969 IgfxTray.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 70 Dec 31 1969 KernelFaultCheck.esz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 66 Dec 31 1969 Persistence.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 100 Dec 31 1969 SoundMAXPnP.sz -r--r--r-- 1 root root 118 Dec 31 1969 avast.sz --- You want to see what these values contain. --- $ for X in reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/* > do echo -en "$X\n  "; cat "$X"; echo; done reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/Adobe ARM.sz   "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\AdobeARM.exe" reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/DiskeeperSystray.sz   "C:\Program Files\Diskeeper Corporation\Diskeeper\DkIcon.exe" reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/HotKeysCmds.sz   C:\WINDOWS\system32\hkcmd.exe reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/IgfxTray.sz   C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxtray.exe reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/KernelFaultCheck.esz   %systemroot%\system32\dumprep 0 -k reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/Persistence.sz   C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxpers.exe reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/SoundMAXPnP.sz   C:\Program Files\Analog Devices\Core\smax4pnp.exe reg/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/avast.sz   "C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\avastUI.exe" /nogui --- Has anything hijacked the Windows "shell" value that runs explorer.exe? --- $ cat reg/Microsoft/Windows\ NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon/Shell.sz Explorer.exe --- How about the userinit.exe value? --- $ cat reg/Microsoft/Windows\ NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon/Userinit.sz C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe, --- Perhaps check if some system policies are set (note that REG_DWORD will probably change in a future release to text files instead of raw data): --- $ hexdump -C \ > reg/Policies/Microsoft/Windows/System/Allow-LogonScript-NetbiosDisabled.dw 00000000 01 00 00 00                                      |....| 00000004 --- You can probably figure out what to do with it from here. ;-)
I found Raph Levien’s GTK+ Hello World page, typed in the code, and attempted to compile it. Unfortunately, while the code itself is functional, the suggested Makefile is definitely not. These days, we use the pkg-config program to generate flags for libraries like GTK+ to the compiler and linker, rather than hard-coding them. Also, some of the directory-finding stuff for libraries and headers is unnecessary today.
Thus, while you can use his “helloworld.c” program, you’ll probably want to use my Makefile instead, which follows.
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -O2 -pipe
CFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0)
CFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0)
CXXFLAGS = $(CFLAGS)
LIBS = $(shell pkg-config --libs gtk+-2.0)
LIBS += $(shell pkg-config --libs glib-2.0)
LDFLAGS = $(LIBS)
#LDFLAGS = $(LIBS) -lgtk -lgdk -lglib -lX11 -lXext -lm
OBJS = gtk_helloworld.o
helloworld: $(OBJS)
$(CC) $(OBJS) -o gtk_helloworld $(LDFLAGS)
clean:
rm -f *.o *~ gtk_helloworld
UPDATE (2014-09-22): I finally hit thermal throttling on the Vivobook for the first time since I applied the thermal fix. The combination of working on a varnished pine wood table (original fix testing was on composite vinyl tiles), syncing two AES encrypted USB 3.0 drives, and compiling a Linux kernel all at once caused the processor to hit 88 degrees C and throttle briefly a few times. Performance was not noticeably affected. The fix is working well, but the soft wood and sustained full load for over half an hour seem to have explored its limits.
I recently had the chance to work with an Asus Vivobook X202E ultrabook (the S200E and Q200E are very similar models with only slight feature differences). I’d like to state upfront that these tiny laptops seem like pretty awesome machines. They can be had for less than $500, are quite thin and fairly light, constructed with plenty of metal instead of cheap easy-to-damage plastic, and pack a pretty scary amount of power under the hood. The Core i3-3217U CPU it uses is faster than most Athlon II X3 desktop processors, yet is designed for low-power applications where a standard laptop CPU can’t go. If this was a review, I’d go into more detail, but for now I would like to talk about one single aspect of these laptops.
The Asus Vivobook CPU constantly overheats and goes into thermal throttling at full load.
What is thermal throttling? When a modern CPU reaches a certain temperature near the maximum operating temperature it’s designed to handle, the CPU will slow down the clock that keeps everything inside working at the same speed. For example, a 1200 MHz chip might throw its clock down to 400 MHz, reducing the heat it produces to a little over 1/3 what it was at 1200 MHz. This is both good and bad; the CPU is keeping itself from crashing by overheating, but performance drops severely until the temperature drops low enough. When it happens, you usually notice “stuttering” in the video or sound due to the sudden drop in performance, and nothing is more annoying than watching a TV show that jerks and has choppy audio for no apparent reason.
For many owners of the Vivobook 200 series, this doesn’t matter. It’s rare that streaming Netflix or watching a 720p video on YouTube (the LCD is effectively a 720p screen) will spike both cores–or all four threads if you prefer–to their maximum load. Even if it did trigger thermal throttling, the Vivobook doesn’t do it unless the 100% CPU usage is sustained for a minute or more based on my experiments, and most tasks that spike the CPU don’t do it for more than a few seconds.
Unfortunately, this thermal throttling also means that the Vivobook 200 series can’t run the CPU at full blast without random performance losses. I’d like to share with you how I fixed an Asus Vivobook’s overheating/thermal throttling problem completely.
Disclaimer: This is done entirely at your own risk, but you know that already, don’t you?
You will need:
Remove the entire bottom from the laptop. With the motherboard facing up and the back facing you, look for the black square with the yellow warranty label stuck to the right-hand side.
This square is what you need to cool off. Note that you will only be working with the square area to the right of where it “ramps” away to a small square indentation and the cooling fan assembly.
Cover the square (including the part that covers the RAM and also some of the “ramping” part) with thermal pads or a cut-to-fit thermal sheet.
Cut (and remove any pointy bits remaining after cutting) a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil that is exactly the size of the area you covered with thermal padding doubled horizontally so it can be folded over itself.
Lay half of the foil sheet over the thermal pads. Apply the exact same pattern of thermal padding on top of the existing padding and foil.
Fold the foil over into a “sandwich” over those pads.
Apply one last layer of thermal pads except where the vents on the bottom will be. This will be the top 1/3 of the square you’re trying to cool; you can look through the vents at the thermal pads you’ve placed to see if you need to remove or relocate them.
When the unit is closed, these pads will make contact with a foil layer that is part of the bottom panel. Close the unit carefully, checking the “give” of the back panel against where the CPU sits! I cannot stress this enough, because thermal padding often varies in thickness and you might have to remove a layer of padding and foil to safely reassemble everything. If you have doubts, take the computer to a professional that knows what they’re doing!
After doing this modification, a burn-in test on the Vivobook maxed out at 85 degrees C with no thermal throttling, where previously it would float at 89-91 degrees C and repeatedly throttle itself.
The only minor disadvantage is that the Vivobook’s bottom gets warmer in the back because the CPU is now making thermal contact with it, but this shouldn’t be a problem and the improvement in performance under load and overall reliability should be worth it.
Please leave any questions in the comments and I will try to answer them quickly.
I don’t have much to say on this subject (there isn’t much to it in the first place) but this is a trend I’ve noticed for some time now and I wanted to bring it up in a post. I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take any of this as legal advice. Comments would be nice!
Law enforcement and investigative agencies seem to be increasingly using corporations to get around Constitutional protections against search and seizure. The logic most frequently used is that if a corporation takes something or collects something from you, a search warrant can be served on the corporation and your rights relating to those somethings don’t exist anymore, because the warrant was served on the corporation and it is that corporation’s rights which are engaged. It doesn’t matter how they end up with it or that it should be seen as yours; once a business takes something from you, it’s fair game for authorities and you have no recourse.
I have a major problem with this.
On one end, you could take the example of an employer noticing your bag of marijuana, taking it from you, and calling the police. On the other (less tangible) end, you could discuss law enforcement asking Google, Yahoo, or even a torrent tracker for a list of your searches. Either way, the company takes something from you and gives it to law enforcement, bypassing your rights against unlawful search and seizure and depriving you of most legal processes to fight the evidence after the fact. If a cop illegally searches your car and finds weed, you can challenge the search on fourth amendment grounds, but if a co-worker or manager does the same thing and then hands it off to the cops, there is almost nothing you can do about the search. The Google search hand-off is practically the same thing in virtual space.
I would (at a minimum) like to see the law changed to explicitly extend fourth amendment protections to cover situations where a third party is used as a proxy in the seizure. I have no idea how this would work out in practice, but I’m hoping someone who happens upon this will show up with some insightful comments.
We purchased a brand new $100 motherboard (socket LGA 1155) from Newegg for an Intel Core i5 desktop system, intended to replace the fully functional $50 motherboard we previously bought from them because the customer needed more PCIe x1 slots. We replaced a known good, burn-in tested, never-overclocked computer system’s motherboard with a better motherboard. Immediately upon powering up the brand new motherboard in the case with the Core i5 CPU properly installed (we’re not newbies to the PC building game), a voltage regulator on the motherboard fried. It was visibly charred and clearly the reason for the board not functioning; this component also killed the known-good power supply that was connected to it, requiring us to give the customer a free power supply. We immediately repackaged the board identically to how it shipped to us originally and performed an RMA of the board, and I just received this email about the RMA status:
Dear Customer,
My name is Carl and I am contacting you in regards to RMA [rma_number]. The RMA was placed on hold by our inspections department due to reported physical damage on the MB ASROCK|P67 PRO3 SE P67 LGA1155 R.
Normally when an item is received damaged or missing the retail box and/or accessories, it voids our return policy and the item becomes ineligible to be accepted by Newegg. When a motherboard, and other items, are returned back to Newegg, they are inspected under a magnifier and are supervised. We look to see if the board was ever installed and look for signs of end user damage, aside from testing the unit to check its functionality. Signs of installation include bent pins, missing CPU cover or thermal paste.
Our records reflect that when the motherboard was received under RMA# [rma_number] at the Newegg warehouse, an inspection was conducted based on the notes entered in the RMA as to the reason for the return. At that time, the inspection revealed that the motherboard had sustained physical damage to the CPU socket wherein bent pins were detected.
While the RMA does not fall within our return policy guidelines, Newegg has authorized an exception be made in this case and we agree to accept the item as is and process the RMA for a replacement.
At this time, the RMA will be processed, as originally requested and as soon as possible.
We want you to know we appreciate your relationship with us and if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me directly Carl.S.Pittman@newegg.com and it will be my pleasure to assist you.
Thank you and have an EGGcellent day!
Best Regards,
Carl
CPU/Motherboard RMA Team
T. 800.390.1119
F. 626.271.9524
www.newegg.com – Once You Know, You Newegg!
Although Newegg did the right thing in this instance (replacing a DOA motherboard that fried due to a catastrophic voltage regulator short) a cursory search reveals that most people who have problems with LGA 1155/1156 motherboards are rarely granted the right to a replacement under warranty, and the reason is always the same:
The LGA 1155 and 1156 sockets for the Core i3/i5/i7 and (Celeron/Pentium equivalents) represent a terrible and unnecessary engineering decision by Intel that effectively neuters any warranty you may have while risking that somewhere down the line a very minor mishap could easily destroy the socket on an expensive motherboard, rendering it worthless.
Despite having written articles about how AMD beats Intel if performance-per-dollar ratios are considered, I have built many Intel-based systems for customers, often due to factors such as availability of parts and motherboard features such as onboard video (or simply at the request of the customer.) I don’t have a problem with Intel processors, and I haven’t exactly been unhappy with them in computers I have previously owned such as my (sold) Core i7-2630QM laptop. After having the LGA 11xx socket pin issue personally bite me in the backside, though, I am beyond bitter on Intel processors, and I would strongly encourage anyone who is building a new computer system or rebuilding an existing one with a new motherboard and CPU to boycott Intel processors and matching motherboards until they return to a sane pin-on-chip CPU design and dump the spring-loaded fragile pin-in-socket design they currently use.
There is no valid excuse for this, Intel. You make excellent chips with crap socket physics, and in the end, your Haswell processors are garbage if the boards are so fragile that they break at every opportunity imaginable.
Vote with your dollars. Buy AMD. In all honesty, my AMD Phenom II X6 1035T has been the best desktop processor I’ve ever had; on software compilation tasks, it blows my Phenom II X4 965 out of the water, plus my AMD A8-4500M laptop can play Portal 2 in 2xMSAA graphics without a hiccup. Given my personal experiences, I have to say that I don’t know why anyone would continue to purchase Intel hardware, especially now that all Intel motherboard RMAs can be denied by bending up a few pins in the CPU socket and calling it “user error.”
If you take a look at the page for the Tritech Service System distribution of Linux, you’ll notice a few new things. The most obvious is that I’m redoing the c02ware site design; there’s now a basic logo, proper site navigation, a mobile-friendly layout, and a cleaner-looking color scheme. Consistency across pages has been greatly improved, and lots of unnecessary old junk and confusing content has been completely tossed out.
This change is being driven by my push to release the Tritech Service System with all of our proprietary bits included as a commercial product, with regular updates, bug fixes, and support. I will continue to release TSS without any proprietary bits as a public and completely free system, but for anyone in the PC repair business, the paid-for stuff can easily pay for itself in workflow acceleration and productivity boosts within a month, and we want to be able to bring that advantage to other PC service shops and I.T. departments. If you are interested in being notified when the Tritech Service System becomes available for purchase, send me an email and I will keep you in the loop.
A major goal in TSS is keeping the system as small as possible without cutting out basic features. In the effort to move towards this goal, I have released MiniTSS 2.9.0! The download is a paltry eight megabytes in size, and includes includes the following software packages:
MiniTSS is not just a live CD/USB system. You can download the “source” archive, unpack it on your Linux system, add or remove packages to initramfs as you see fit, and rebuild your own custom version with whatever software you actually need. The system only provides basic tools and a command line interface, and therefore is aimed at intermediate-level Linux users.
I often find myself in a position where I must locate software to perform a niche task of some sort, and that inevitably means running lots of searches to discover available programs and research the merits of each. Unfortunately, I find that about 70% of my total “software hunting” time is spent constructing elaborate searches to try to weed out deceptive, bait-and-switch, scammy sounding website sentences that attempt to lure people seeking a free software program into installing a program that is not free at all and therefore isn’t within the criteria that the user is looking for.
Let’s say we need to extract email from an Outlook OST file (basically a PST-like file format used only for Exchange servers, and not readable as a PST file). The user wants to get email from the OST file, but Outlook only allows opening PST files, so naturally we look for something like “OST to PST free” online. Lo and behold, we have this program pop up from Softpedia:
Recover Data for OST to PST Free Download – Softpedia
Is this what we’re looking for? It says “free” in the title, and it says it recovers OST files to PST format. Sounds perfect! Well, perfect except for the line underneath it in the search results which tips us off on the truth behind the “free download” scam:
Rating: 4 – ‎12 votes – ‎$99.00 – ‎Windows – ‎Utilities/Tools
Oh.
So it’s a “free” program that costs nearly $100 to purchase. Apparently we have different definitions of what constitutes “free.”
But wait! It’s not a “free program,” it’s a “FREE DOWNLOAD.” As in, you pay nothing for the ability to download it…because it’s so obvious that anyone looking for the word “free” is worried about whether or not they have to pay to download it, right?
Look, you scummy marketing douche rockets, we see what you’re doing there, and we really don’t like it. The real purpose of the phrase “FREE DOWNLOAD” is not to emphasize the fact that the download itself doesn’t cost anything. The goons that use this phrase are attempting to do two equally deceptive things by tacking it onto their not-free software download pages:
Abuse of the term “free” will never end, so it pays to be vigilant and cautious when looking for anything which is truly free. I still say that the people who use this type of trickery are lousy people, and I for one will not ever download (and especially not pay for) any such software. A “free trial” is one thing, but they knew what they were doing with that “free download” garbage, and we shouldn’t allow it to work on us. Vote with your dollars: if you’re going to end up paying for something, make sure it’s not marketed deceptively first.
(Coincidentally, I was looking for WMV file editing software right after typing this, and Wondershare Video Editor came up with both “FREE DOWNLOAD” and “[checkmark-shield icon] SECURE DOWNLOAD” in a blog post of theirs with obviously planted comments at the bottom; visiting their normal site reveals that the software is a free trial and actually costs $40. For obvious reasons, WonderShare will never see a dime of my money.)
Don’t get me wrong. I love a lot of the concise, reference-supported articles I find on RationalWiki, especially when it concerns pseudoscience such as the HHO/water-powered car. It’s a handy shortcut to refuting ridiculous things that aren’t scientifically accurate, and nothing makes me feel much more joy than when a bunch of Internet conspiracy theorists are told that they’re wrong and it really rustles their jimmies.
Sadly, rational thought and scientifically backed information dissemination are thrown out the window with a ferocity when you start looking up anything that touches the feminist agenda. Look up “feminism” on RationalWiki and you’ll immediately find weaselly, highly subjective statements that lean squarely in the favor of a radical feminist’s perverted perception of reality. For example, the section entitled “Academic Criticism” begins the heading “Seeing rape everywhere” with these two sentences: “Feminists have in the past, and continue in the present to emphasize the importance of addressing modern rape culture. Something no one but the most aggressive MRA types think is a bad goal.” For one thing, there is no such thing as “rape culture,” as seen by the fact that I can drive for four hours and not only see no one being raped, but not even be exposed to anything that comes remotely close to mentioning rape….that is, unless we’re re-defining “rape” as feminists are constantly attempting to re-define it, where it effectively becomes “being a male near a female,” at which point the term “rape” would become irrelevant to most people and lose all of its power and importance. The other thing that’s quite ridiculous is the notion that “the most aggressive men’s rights activists think stopping (implied rape) is a bad idea” along with all of the notably absent supporting references attached to it. Hmm…
But wait! Let’s not jump to conclusions based solely on the fact that no substantive criticism of feminism exists in a criticism section of a feminism article on a “rational wiki!” Let’s see if the same treatment is given to articles that cover opposing viewpoints! Aha…we’ll look at the text for misandry, the antonym for the oft-used and heavily abused term “misogyny.” Uh-oh…it doesn’t look good at all, since there’s an entire SECTION of the article entitled “Concise explanation of why the concept is bullshit.” Let’s see what’s under this damning title…oh, here we are: “Sexism, like racism, is an institutional oppression on basis of sex.”
No, sexism isn’t institutional oppression on basis of sex; in fact, there’s nothing “institutional” about it. Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster agree: “sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex.” I don’t see anything institutional about that definition; do you? “Oh, but you’re ignoring OTHER DEFINITIONS!” the clever feminist might bleat, to which I respond with the other definition: “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.” Wait, that doesn’t support “institutional oppression” either, does it? D’awwww, call in the waaambulance because the astute feminist needs to fill out an Internet butthurt report form to squelch the horrible feeling of one’s religion being proven wrong in yet another increment.
I could go on and on ad nauseam discussing why every facet of modern feminism is wrong, but that’s not the point of this post, and other people have said it far better than I have said it. I should also point out that while I’m disappointed at a lack thereof for the “Feminism” article, the “Men’s rights movement” article does make a valiant (and perhaps a little rational in some places) attempt at presenting some points and refuting them. Unfortunately, almost all of those points are misrepresented at least partially, and it’s quite clear that RationalWiki’s articles that involve any gender politics are effectively ruled by a feminist matriarchy; in other words: “no male-positive opinions allowed.”
The bottom line is that RationalWiki is mostly rational on most topics, but they’ve chugged the Feminazi™ Kool-Aid and you simply can’t trust them to be “rational” in any concept that might be “explained” by feminist pseudoscience. RationalWiki people, if you’re reading this, take the time to correct this egregious mistake. I’d rather not have people leaving the so-called “RationalWiki” and saying pure bullshit like this:
“Mothers who breastfeed boy babies need to stop. We need to empower more females in this world and by breastfeeding them we are giving them a good start in life which they deserve over a baby boy [sic] which are already physically stronger than baby girls. I have feminist views and I am not ashamed to admit that. No baby boy will ever be fed from my breasts if I am unfortunate enough to have a son. Formula for him and circumcision to take away sexual pleasure from him when he grows up.”
A user came into my computer repair shop with an Acer laptop that happened to be a Google Chromebook. This laptop was dead. It simply doesn’t work. The hard drive works, and under Linux I can mount the filesystems on the hard drive, but the rest of the laptop is shot. We wanted to move the user’s drive to an external hard drive enclosure so that he could at least retrieve his family photos and other data stored on the computer. Obviously, the data would need to be copied off of the Linux filesystems and the drive reformatted to Windows’ NTFS so that it could be read on a Windows PC, and then the data would be copied onto the newly formatted hard drive. The user gets an external hard drive plus all his data, and everyone is happy.
Except for one tiny little problem.
Google Chromebooks encrypt all of the user’s data.
With a key stored in the computer’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
If the computer was stolen by someone, this would be a good thing, because that someone wouldn’t have access to the user’s private files. That’s what encryption is supposed to be for, after all…but this laptop wasn’t stolen. The owner had it in his possession, knew the login password, and that should mean that the owner can get into the computer and retrieve his data.
Except the password for that data is stored away in a chip that won’t hand it out unless the computer works and Google’s Chrome OS is what asks for it.
Where does that leave my customer? Simple! With absolutely nothing. A failure of the computer in this case has become equivalent to a total hard drive failure. All of his data is lost forever. There is simply no way I can retrieve it for him without the encryption key locked away in a chip I can’t extract it from. Because the encryption key is not available to the user, the user can’t give it to me to decrypt his information.
Thus, you simply don’t own your own data when it’s on a Chromebook. The maker of the computer and the writer of the operating system do. Please don’t waste your money on a Chromebook…but if you do, back up your stuff.
(To a real external hard drive, not “the cloud.”)