full-disclosure - BIOS Hacking?

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Date: Fri Apr  1 01:01:26 2005
From: nick at virus-l.demon.co.uk (Nick FitzGerald)
Subject: BIOS Hacking?

Gautam R. Singh wrote:

> Is there any way (software/program) to change the BootUp device order
> in the BIOS from the OS (Eg. Windows) itself?
> 
> While logged on to my Win2k I want to change my BIOS settings?

Boot-order settings are proprietary, so vary from BIOS vendor to BIOS 
vendor (and even possibly from version to version from the same 
vendor).  However, there is nothing special about what you want to do 
so long as the user running the utility (presumably supplied by your 
BIOS vendor _if_ such exists for your BIOS) has sufficiently high 
privileges.  Boot order (like all BIOS configuration options) is stored 
in CMOS and/or a fragment of Flash ROM used for EBCD so probably 
requires admin/system privs to alter (at least, to alter directly).

The laptop I'm writing this from has the capability to do what you ask, 
as do many others I've used.  This is achieved through vendor-supplied 
utilities in all cases I've looked at.  Such utilities seem much rarer 
(or at least, it is rare for them to be installed/supplied) on desktop 
boxes.  If you have a "cheap white box" style system you may well find 
a "mainboard utilities" disk amongst the various manuals and disks you 
probably never took out of the box, and usually this will include tools 
for altering the BIOS settings (and monitoring things like temperature, 
fan-speed, etc depending on your board) from inside the OS.  If you 
haven't such a disk, try searching around the websites of your 
mainboard and/or BIOS vendors.

Regards,

Nick FitzGerald