On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 02:12:08PM -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
Frank Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:58:35 -0400
> m wrote:
>
>> Vostro 1500 works fine wth F10 , i had to opt for the intel wireless otherwise
they shipped broadcom(no thank you). Also had to nuke XP (kinda fun actually) but beware
the "media direct button"(i think its called) it will hose your install.
>
> There is actually a button on the keyboard(?) that will cause the laptop to
> stop working? And you can't disable that?
>
> Really?
>
> That alone would be a darn good reason to stay far far away from the thing....
>
If the button does what the one I have on my Toshiba, it boots from
a special partition on the drive. This normally loads a media player
that works without Windows. I have never checked to see if the
location was "hard-wired" into the BIOS, but I could see it causing
problems if it is. You would never know what code was going to be
run if you deleted the partition. I am not sure what error checking
is done. I am not going to delete it and find out - I like being to
use the laptop as a DVD/CD player without having to boot a "normal" OS.
I have also heard of laptops that have a button that will restore
the OS from a recovery partition, but they normally require you to
confirm that this is what you want to do.
I don't remember all the details of what its supposed to do, only that it
killed an innocent werewolf(F8). I think the confirmation mechanism was designed to work
with windows only, i formatted the drive before use but this was apparently in a ROM or
something because as soon as it got pressed the floor fell out from under me.It formatted
and overwrote sections of the drive. I heard that Dell was going to fix this thing but i
don't know that they ever did.
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
--
"Any fool can know. The point is to understand" --Albert Einstein
Bored??
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