Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Dell

Crapware installed from UEFI BIOS - Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT)

This is a interesting and describing forum post about Lenovo putting some Lenovo CrapWare in the UEFI BIOS which Windows will execute upon login (right before actually): http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29497693&sid=ddf3e32512932172454de515091db014 Lenovo has issued a fix: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/lse_bios_notebook and an article: http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013

Force Dell BIOS Upgrade

I just experienced a problem upgrading a Huawei N8300 OceanStor NAS Engine node (OEM'ed Dell PowerEdge R710 server). Running the linux binary update file looked good and it asked me to reboot. After reboot the same old v2.1.15 BIOS was there, not the latest v6.4.0 (as of writing this small post). Next up was creating a FreeDOS Bootable ISO with the bios update program included (see this page for how to do that in Windows). Running the BIOS upgrade program from FreeDOS (virtual media and DRAC) I got this error: Cannot use a "Dell System PowerEdge R710" BIOS in a " -  " Pres any key to exit. ROM update not performed. After some googleing I found the solution on Dell Community Forum - use the /FORCETYPE option. So to force the update, I just ran the update package with that option (I had renamed the file for 8.3 DOS filename): R710-640.exe /FORCETYPE And thats it. v6.4.0 BIOS up and running :)

Extend Windows volume after extending volume on Equallogic

After increasing the size of the LUN on the Equallogic, make sure the free space appears to the OS. Rescan Disks/hardware until it appears. Then use the following commands to extend the BASIC partition (clustering requires Basic Partitions unless you are using Veritas Volume Manager). Diskpart list volume select volume # extend Source: MS Technet Forums