Article:		True Stories of Knoppix Rescues
Subject:		Generic Laptop, XP recovery
Date:		2005-01-05 23:08:11
From:		sootmann
I had a white-box laptop with unknown components and a hosed Windows installation. I had to reinstall Windows and most things went fine but I had no idea what type of video card was in it. Windows will not automatically update the video driver if it already has a 'suitable' driver, in this case, generic VGA. I booted knoppix and issued 'lspci' which lists all the PCI (and related, i.e. AGP) devices. From this, I found it was a certain flavor of ATI card so I booted back into Windows, downloaded and installed the driver, and the laptop went from 640x480x16 colors to 1024x768x16.7Mcolors. I also used Knoppix and 'scp' to copy all the files from a spyware-infested WinXP box to a Mac OS X box.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Generic Laptop, XP recovery
  2005-01-10 12:41:39  buggerlugs [View]
  
  
  Actually, there's a quick way to find out what video card is in your machine from the Windows command prompt.
  
  First you need to get to a command prompt and run the 'debug' command. Now enter the following command at the '-' prompt (careful here!):
  
  

  d C000:0010

  
  
  Press <Enter>, and you should see the contents (in hex) of the start of your video BIOS. Press 'd' a few more times to get more information. For example, here's what I see on my Dell laptop:
  
  

  
  
  -d C000:0010
  
  C000:0010  44 45 4F 20 0D 00 00 00-F4 00 7B 13 00 00 49 42   DEO ......{...IB
  
  C000:0020  4D 20 56 47 41 20 43 6F-6D 70 61 74 69 62 6C 65   M VGA Compatible
  
  C000:0030  01 00 00 00 80 10 7B D9-30 37 2F 32 34 2F 30 32   ......{.07/24/02
  
  C000:0040  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
  
  C000:0050  E9 DB 74 00 28 10 F4 00-E9 C4 12 E9 CB 12 50 4D   ..t.(.........PM
  
  C000:0060  49 44 58 00 5B 00 00 00-00 A0 00 B0 00 B8 00 C0   IDX.[...........
  
  C000:0070  00 5B FF 7F 4E 56 00 05-14 C5 AA B0 52 01 11 03   .[..NV......R...
  
  C000:0080  00 00 00 00 00 B7 94 B8-F8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
  
  -d
  
  C000:0090  0C 01 50 00 0C 78 71 28-D3 69 2D 6A BB 6E 70 6E   ..P..xq(.i-j.npn
  
  C000:00A0  84 6E 9D 01 C0 01 4F BE-00 01 01 00 3F 3E 37 36   .n....O.....?>76
  
  C000:00B0  A8 3E 6A D0 6A 80 1A 06-00 40 0D 03 00 64 B6 B4   .>j.j....@...d..
  
  C000:00C0  B6 BA B6 D2 B6 DE B6 DE-B6 B4 B6 16 C0 1C C0 00   ................
  
  C000:00D0  00 00 00 22 C0 25 C0 00-00 00 00 7E 6B 4E 6B 04   ...".%.....~kNk.
  
  C000:00E0  00 00 00 F4 D8 00 00 28-C0 6E 6B 5E 6B 00 00 00   .......(.nk^k...
  
  C000:00F0  00 00 00 00 50 43 49 52-DE 10 12 01 00 00 18 00   ....PCIR........
  
  C000:0100  00 00 00 03 70 00 01 00-00 80 00 00 4E 56 49 44   ....p.......NVID
  
  -d
  
  C000:0110  49 41 20 47 65 46 6F 72-63 65 32 20 47 4F 20 56   IA GeForce2 GO V
  
  C000:0120  47 41 20 42 49 4F 53 0D-0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   GA BIOS.........
  
  C000:0130  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
  
  C000:0140  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
  
  C000:0150  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 56 65 72   .............Ver
  
  C000:0160  73 69 6F 6E 20 33 2E 31-31 2E 30 31 2E 35 32 2E   sion 3.11.01.52.
  
  C000:0170  41 38 20 0D 0A 00 43 6F-70 79 72 69 67 68 74 20   A8 ...Copyright
  
  C000:0180  28 43 29 20 31 39 39 36-2D 32 30 30 31 20 4E 56   (C) 1996-2001 NV
  
  -d
  
  C000:0190  49 44 49 41 20 43 6F 72-70 2E 0D 0A 00 4E 56 31   IDIA Corp....NV1
  
  C000:01A0  31 20 42 6F 61 72 64 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   1 Board.........
  
  C000:01B0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
  
  C000:01C0  43 68 69 70 20 52 65 76-20 42 32 00 00 00 00 00   Chip Rev B2.....
  
  C000:01D0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 6E A3   ..............n.
  
  C000:01E0  02 7A C3 02 79 D9 02 74-97 02 69 F3 02 61 08 03   .z..y..t..i..a..
  
  C000:01F0  78 18 03 62 43 03 37 61-03 72 A9 03 67 25 06 66   x..bC.7a.r..g%.f
  
  C000:0200  25 06 68 25 06 63 DA B4-65 AF 03 71 25 06 6C 25   %.h%.c..e..q%.l%
  
  

• Generic Laptop, XP recovery
  2005-01-10 13:36:03  Dooglio [View]
  
  
  Oh how intuitive! I'm sure to remember that. Nuts to those cryptic Unix-like commands!