Ishimaru Chiaki
August 1st, 2008, 07:38 PM
Hello.
I am seeking your help because there's an English name I just can't find for something I would like to mention when I talk about M$'s nasty deals with PC builders, so everytime I try to post something related to this on an English board (Forumotion support forum, for example), I delete my post before I even send it. For information, English isn't my mother tongue, I'm French from Québec.
On the French Ubuntu community, there is something that is very documented and that we froggies call "tatouage". But I just can't find the equivalent English name, whatever I type these keywords on Google : Windows, OEM, Ubuntu, Packard Bell, lock, issue, watermark, watermarking, watermarked
I just can't find relevent English articles about this issue. It doesn't seem as much documented than on the French side.
What I talk about is a kind of forced sale technique which has been dealt between M$ and a few builders (Packard Bell, HP, Médio, Gericom, Dell...).
This technique is a kind of lock which is used with OEM versions of Windows with a restore partition, and it consists on watermarking the Windows' MBR or locking the BIOS. If someone installs Ubuntu (or another Linux distro) and decides to install GRUB on the MBR, Windows won't boot, or worse, the machine won't boot since Windows detects that something is missing, and this technique told it to refuse booting if this happens. This issue is more frequent on laptops from builders I mentioned above.
Some tips have been found to install Ubuntu without affecting the MBR : install with the Alternate CD and install GRUB on Linux's root partition.
For those who understand French, here is the documentation about this issue, so you will understand better what I mean : http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/windows/pc_tatoue
Thanks in advance.
Ishimaru
I am seeking your help because there's an English name I just can't find for something I would like to mention when I talk about M$'s nasty deals with PC builders, so everytime I try to post something related to this on an English board (Forumotion support forum, for example), I delete my post before I even send it. For information, English isn't my mother tongue, I'm French from Québec.
On the French Ubuntu community, there is something that is very documented and that we froggies call "tatouage". But I just can't find the equivalent English name, whatever I type these keywords on Google : Windows, OEM, Ubuntu, Packard Bell, lock, issue, watermark, watermarking, watermarked
I just can't find relevent English articles about this issue. It doesn't seem as much documented than on the French side.
What I talk about is a kind of forced sale technique which has been dealt between M$ and a few builders (Packard Bell, HP, Médio, Gericom, Dell...).
This technique is a kind of lock which is used with OEM versions of Windows with a restore partition, and it consists on watermarking the Windows' MBR or locking the BIOS. If someone installs Ubuntu (or another Linux distro) and decides to install GRUB on the MBR, Windows won't boot, or worse, the machine won't boot since Windows detects that something is missing, and this technique told it to refuse booting if this happens. This issue is more frequent on laptops from builders I mentioned above.
Some tips have been found to install Ubuntu without affecting the MBR : install with the Alternate CD and install GRUB on Linux's root partition.
For those who understand French, here is the documentation about this issue, so you will understand better what I mean : http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/windows/pc_tatoue
Thanks in advance.
Ishimaru