Tag Archives: intel

are @sainsburys £99 #lowspec @hp ac100na @microsoftuk #windows notebooks a waste of time and money ? #mktg #fail

are @sainsburys £99 #lowspec @hp ac100na @microsoftuk #windows notebooks a waste of time and money ? #mktg #fail

the sainsburys hp ac100na is a low spec intel celeron N3050 with 2G ram and 30G disk

it is almost impossible to upgrade it from windows 10 1709 to 1803 or 1809 but if you have 100 spare hours and follow these hacks you can however you may just prefer to try and return it to sainsburys or throw it away in your nearest WEEE recycling bin

hacks required to upgrade to windows 10 version 1809 on a hp ac100na

  • turn on flight mode (to prevent auto updates over wifi)
  • run disk clean-up (this takes around 4 hours each run)
  • select delete all previous versions
  • watch out for the nasty disk clean-up bug (see below)
  • reboot
  • ensure you have at least 12G of free disk space
  • turn off flight mode (to allow auto updates to kick in)
  • allow auto update to run
  • restart after a few updates have downloaded (do not wait for all updates to download or you will run out of diskspace)
  • hopefully these partial updates will get installed on restart

REPEAT the above steps until windows 10 1803 and windows 10 1809 have been installed

and if you get any windows 10 version 1809 0x80070002 errors DO NOT click retry but keep REPEATING the above steps until windows 10 1803 and windows 10 1809 have been installed

win1809fail

so if you havent given up and get lucky you should end up with a 1809 install confirmation screen

win1809

the nasty windows 10 disk clean-up bug

disk clean-up randomly injects a compress your drive option into list of folders to clean up so you cannot just tick all the folders without reading every one carefully

wincomp

footnote MOST but not all intel celerons are rubbish for example the intel celeron N2840 used in lenovo ideapad flex 10 is actually amazing and appears to be 10x faster than the intel celeron N3050

 

spot the difference between the HP Pavilion 15-cx0001na and HP Pavilion 15-cx0999na gaming notebooks ? is it £200 ?

spot the difference between the HP Pavilion 15-cx0001na and HP Pavilion 15-cx0999na gaming notebooks ? is it £200 ?

according to intel

the 15-cx0999na has B&O audio

hp

buy here

intel #core online connect fingerprint reader #goog #login #security

if your laptop or notebook has an intel core processor and a fingerprint reader you might like to try intel online connect to log into goog with your finger instead of a password

windows 10 18.03 breaks lenovo thinkpad display brightness and then bricks notebook @microsoftuk pls fix asap #fail

windows 10 18.03 (1803) update breaks lenovo thinkpad display brightness controls and then bricks notebook @microsoftuk pls fix asap

after updating to windows 10 18.03 (1803) on a lenovo thinkpad t410

  • display brightness controls no longer work
  • if you click reset your security processor (clear TPM) notebook is bricked and never reboots

workarounds

  • DO NOT upgrade to windows 10 18.03
  • turn nightlight settings on to reduce display brightness
  • DO NOT click on reset your security processor
  • if you do then factory reset your BIOS and completely disable intel amt

windows 10 18.03 bricks thinkpad t410

debian linuxlite 3.8 (ubuntu 16.x) intel microcode

debian linuxlite 3.8 (ubuntu 16.x) intel microcode

after yoiu have installed this you should see

# journalctl | grep microcode

Feb 19 14:57:18 lili kernel: microcode: 
CPU0 sig=0x40651, pf=0x1, revision=0x1d

Feb 19 14:57:18 lili kernel: microcode: 
Microcode Update Driver: v2.01 <tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk>, 
Peter Oruba

microcode – everything you ever wanted to know

microcode – everything you ever wanted to know

you need forget everything you thought you knew about microcode was in the old Z80 days

run cat /proc/cpuinfo to see what cpu chip & microcode version you have

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 69
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4310U CPU @ 2.00GHz
microcode : 0x1d
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr 
pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss syscall 
nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon nopl xtopology 
tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 
pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes 
xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single 
retpoline kaiser fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 
invpcid xsaveopt arat
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2
bogomips : 5202.00

 

have a look at your logs to see if you have any microcode patches

dmesg | grep "microcode"

journalctl -b -k | grep "microcode"

 

you need to enable nonfree deb/rpm repos so you get access to microcode packages

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

 

then install the microcode package

aptitude update
aptitude install amd64-microcode

 

check your kernels params and reboot

 

Notes

Unfortunately, the license of the microcode update data from AMD and Intel are not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Therefore, microcode update data will be available through the non-free distribution. The new processor microcode update system is available for both non-free Wheezy and non-free Squeeze (through the backports repository).

Meltdown (the vulnerability affecting only Intel chips) cannot be fixed with microcode updates alone and requires changes to core OS functionality, which may reduce performance further.

Spectre (the vulnerability affecting Intel, AMD and ARM chips) may be able to be worked around with microcode updates alone.

DDR2 and DDR3 memory is now available in 3 types (@amd, @intel and dualmode)

DDR2 and DDR3 memory for desktops and notebooks is now available in 3 types (@amd, @intel and dualmode)

  • Intel DDR2/3 are 10bit with 8K blocks (DO NOT WORK WITH AMD HW)
  • AMD DDR2/3 are 11bit with 16K blocks (DO NOT WORK WITH INTEL HW)
  • Dual Mode should work with both AMD HW and Intel HW

See

RMS talks about #freedom and @intel and others

RMS talks about #freedom and @intel and others

The Intel Management Engine with its proprietary firmware has complete access to and control over the PC: it can power on or shut down the PC, read all open files, examine all running applications, track all keys pressed and mouse movements, and even capture or display images on the screen. And it has a network interface that is demonstrably insecure, which can allow an attacker on the network to inject rootkits that completely compromise the PC and can report to the attacker all activities performed on the PC. It is a threat to freedom, security, and privacy that can’t be ignored.

 

cpu comparisons from @cpuboss, @cpu-world and @specout

cpu comparisons from @cpuboss, @cpu-world and @specout