Thanks buddy Sorry I have been busy with school starting back up and all... Taking some hard classes at the university this quarter Thank you for the kind words though, they are appreciated EDIT: Wow...lol. Almost 2,000 people have downloaded v1.2.5... That's a lot Thanks to everyone for the support!
I must have done something wrong I tried to use this to activate my windows 7. I selected gigabit and then left the other box at acer and then just selected install. Now my motherboard wont boot into windows. It shows the splash screen for the mobo and i can enter the bios options but if i just let it run, it gets stuck and doesnt even get far enough for me to boot into windows. Im thinking i screwed up my bios but i went ahead and flashed a new bios from a cd and the flash went through just fine but still wont boot to windows. I also cleared the cmos. If anyone has any other thoughts, i would really appreciate it. EDIT: Ok so i was able to get it to boot into windows 7 install disk to reinstall windows 7 but i have a feeling it isnt gonna fix the problem. After i did the mistake above, when my motherboard transitions from screen to screen, it flashes a white screen for a millisec before going on. Ill update if the install works.
This program does nothing to your motherboard or BIOS, it installs a loader which emulates the SLIC tables that would be in your BIOS if you had a SLIC 2.1 compliant BIOS. You probably just used the "Default" loader mode when installing the loader...and it resulted in Windows not booting. I would recommend you try either the "Alternate" or "Forced" loader modes next time you try installing the loader as the "Default" mode is obviously incompatible with your system. (Change the "Loader Mode" combo box to either "Alternate" or "Forced" and try it, if that does not work, try the other one...) If you reboot and Windows does not boot, all you need to do is pop in the Windows 7 install disk and boot off of it. When it boots, select the Recovery options. If it tries to auto-diagnose your problem then cancel out of it and go to the advanced recovery options and select the option to start the recovery console... When you get to the recovery console command prompt (it will be a blank black screen with some words at the top and a command prompt where you can type stuff) type either "bootrec /fixboot" or "bootsect /fixboot". One of those commands should work. Then reboot your computer and Windows will boot normally, and now you can try installing again with the next loader mode... This is something you would have to do with any loader program that you tried (if it did not work the first time) as Windows not booting signifies an incompatibility with grub on your system (and not a problem with O7A it's self). With loader programs, sometimes a little trial-and-error is necessary to find the "Loader Mode" that works on your particular system. To recap, the issue is that your computer is incompatible with the loader mode you selected when you installed the loader, so you need to try a different loader mode next time is all... If none of the loader modes work then you may want to try a different loader program (Daz's is a good one ). If you cant get any loader programs to work then you may need to use a non-loader solution like a BIOS mod, RemoveWAT or CHEW-WGA...
Well, I guess no one must be having any major problems with the latest version 1.2.5 (aside from the minor incompatibilities with grub loader that occur every once in a while)... I am working on v1.2.6. I am just trying to make things even more user friendly and simple...and adding a new thing or two... Fortunately the code for v1.2.5 was very solid (the couple days that it took me to re-code everything I needed to paid off in spades!), so I didnt really have to fix or change anything as far as the main code of the program goes... I want people to let me know if they come across any bugs, or if you have any problems, suggestions, or comments...dont be shy EDIT: I also want to say a big thank you to everyone here at MDL. It is because of your support that O7A has become what it is...and you have given me the drive to create and update this program - to make it the best program it can be... With every release I make, thousands of people download the program...so that is pretty-much the only feedback I get (aside from the few very nice people who drop by every once in a while to say "hi" or "thanks" ). Since I rarely get any bug reports or anything (I hope that is due to my programming and not because people just dont want to register to leave me comments ) I can only assume that the program is working great (it has been working perfectly in all of my testing, and other people's testing) and people are having positive results with O7A. One last reminder: Please dont hesitate to let me know if anyone has any problems/comments/suggestions!!
Hi HotCarl. I really love your activator and its definitely my favourite at this time so I'd like to thank you for all the effort you've put into this. If i could be so bold as to ask for some more work on one of your features. I prefer to use the "insert slic in Bootmgr" option simply because its a more clean approach IMHO. Also i use FD-ISR Pro and the current Grldr is not compatible with this software because it also uses a Grldr. In fact none of the Grldr seem to want to play with FD ISR (or vice versa). So my request is if its possible to make the "slic in bootmgr" less detectable by say encryption? If this proves too difficult then did you mind taking a look at the FD Grldr and seeing if it can be made to play nice with your loader? I know i have no right to ask for anything so i will not be offended if you dont have time or simply dont want to do it. Either way, i thank you for your time and again for this brilliant activator!
That is an interesting request you have there I love any feedback and requests I get, it helps me to evaluate ideas and perspectives that other people have that would make O7A a better program. Dont be shy to request anything...if I can do it and it seems like a good idea then I will add it in there and give you some credit for the idea. By "FD Grldr" I assume you must mean a Flash Drive grldr? - where if you have a flash drive inserted during boot, GRLDR will then boot from the flash drive and load Windows - and if you dont insert the flash drive then Windows just boots normally? Is that what you are talking about? That is an interesting idea, and may be something good to add to maybe the Advanced Options or something. I will definitely look into that and see what I can do, or would need to do to be able to add an option like that. As far as encrypting the SLIC in bootmgr, that also may be a good idea to further hide the loader file when the "Insert SLIC into bootmgr" option is used. I will see what I can do about that, but I cannot promise anything A quick question though if you do not mind: Has the current implementation in O7A of the "Insert SLIC into bootmgr" option worked well for you? (I just ask because I know the compatibility isnt as great as with GRLDR, so I was just curious how your experience with it was. ) Thank you for the nice comments and great suggestions!
HotCarl, sorry i took a while to respond but the time difference makes it hard to sync our conversation. I thank MasterDisaster for correcting your interpretation of my meaning for me although the whole "Flash Drive grldr" seems like a very interesting idea indeed! As you've already worked out I'm referrring to FirstDefense ISR v3.32.325 At the time that i activated my W7, I hadn't discovered your activator yet. I had the choice of Daz's loader or OmdHar's. Since OmdHar's gave me the choice of "slic in bootmgr" i used his with great success so far. I know that you have done alot of recoding (possibly a complete recode) of your app but i'm assuming that the "slic in bootmgr" is basically handled the same (i hope i'm not upsetting anyone ). Your in luck though, I have Rollback RX installed so i'm more than willing to test out your app in this regard. I'll do it as soon as i finish this post and report back! Upon reading your second reply i believe my best option with FD-ISR installed is the "slic in bootmgr" option. This is the method that i actually prefer. My only concern is that i've read in a number of places in these forums that this option may be easily detectable. Having said that, I had Vista right from the very beginning of its release and back then used the method provided by GKend. His method was the first to utilise the "slic in bootmgr" method (to the best of my knowledge) and to this date that original Vista is still activated even after 2 service Packs were applied. So it appears that even though its "easily" detected, MS seem reluctant to mess with the bootmgr file and i dont see why this will change with W7. But, if it could be encrypted it would make me feel more at ease I understand and thank you either way. In summary, I think that you agree with me that in my case the slic in bootmgr option seems to be the best option without getting into modifying FD-ISR's Grldr (of which i have no idea on how to do it). OK, I'm off to test your "slic in bootmgr" option and I'll report back within the half hour. Thankyou so much for your time and patience
Ok, in short, yes.....your "slic in bootmgr" works on my system. I'm able to activate. BUT It seems to interfere with the Grldr of FD-ISR and if it interfere's with this Grldr then it will probably interfere with others such as a dual booted linux system.(I'm guessing). So the details In the interests of developing and improving the "slic in bootmgr" options, here are my observations Firstly this was tested on my system running W7x64 (not in a VM). Because i had used Om DHar Vista7 Slic Ldr to initially activate my W7 i thought it prudent to uninstall it using his latest loader v2.4.0. I'm sure yours would have done the job but his should undo it precisely, right? Anyway, after a reboot i noticed that my FD-ISR pre boot screen was not appearing so a quick uninstall and reinstall fixed this. So now i was running an unactivated W7 system, black screen, not genuine displayed at bottom right and "activate immediately" displayed in the System properties window. Pretty scary. I ran your loader v1.2.5 and chose "slic in bootmgr". It did its thing and i rebooted as recomended. Upon reboot, the FD pre boot screen no longer appeared much to my disappointment. A quick uninstall and reinstall of FD fixed this but IMHO the "slic in bootmgr" option should not tamper with the Grldr that FD uses or any other Grldr installed. After all I chose "install" not "uninstall". My guess is that you have your app do a check to see if any other "loader" is installed and if it encounters a Grldr then it assumes its a loader and removes it.(i'm probably wrong ). I believe this is a bug in your program in either the checking routines or in the actual method used to insert the slic in the bootmgr. I thought that i would test how your app would uninstall the "slic in bootmgr" method. Again your app removed the FD-ISR Grldr but correctly restored the Bootmgr file rendering me unactivated as expected. I cant say for sure if your app just doesnt like the FD-ISR Grldr or if this will occur with any Grldr in which case could be a problem. What are your thoughts?
Yes, you are correct in assuming that they both work basically the same way so you should be fine. The slic in bootmgr option is definitely best for your setup, no question. If the one you have is working then I am sure mine would work for you just fine...but you are always welcome to try it out. BTW, as far as "grldr" goes (just to clarify), that is a loader option just like the "bootmgr" option. When you install the loader the default way (without inserting slic into bootmgr) then that means the program is installing a grldr file on your system volume (your Windows boot volume). The file is just called "grldr" and is the loader file that is normally used by default in most loader programs. It works by running the grldr file before Windows starts up, where the grldr file loads up the SLIC tables into memory and emulates the SLIC. After loading up the SLIC, the grldr file then chain-loads the Windows bootmgr file which loads Windows. Then when Windows loads it sees the SLIC that grldr loaded and assumes it came from your BIOS...and you will be allowed to activate Windows offline if you have the proper certificate and SLP product key installed... (remember, this is the condensed version I am giving you ) When you insert the SLIC into bootmgr, you dont need the grldr file anymore to load the SLIC because bootmgr is now set up to do it... So you can have Windows load normally with it's bootmgr file, not knowing that it has code in it that is loading up the SLIC tables into memory right before Windows starts up. And you can use your software normally because there is no extra grldr loader file that must be ran first, before bootmgr and Windows... It really is a much cleaner way to do it, unfortunately the compatibility isnt the greatest...and you risk the possibility of somewhere down the line a Windows Update will replace the bootmgr file with a normal one (because bootmgr is a Windows file after all), in which case you may be able to just reinstall the hacked bootmgr file (we will have to see if or what MS does...) I hope that clears things up a little bit. I know it can be a little confusing when people try to explain things over the internet...
That is why I said to leave it, but I was too late...lol. That bootmgr mode can be finnickey, so it is not really recommended. If you get it working, dont mess with it...lol I just asked since you had a functional backup that you could go back to if it didnt work is why. But you seem to be confused about what "grldr" is. I said something in the comment above, but I think I can make it clearer... A grldr file is a loader file, like the "bootmgr" file is when you select the insert SLIC into bootmgr option...except when you use grldr (or grub loader) you have an additional "grldr" file on your hard drive that loads up the SLIC that you need for activation. So when you use the insert SLIC into bootmgr method, instead of installing the "grldr" file, it uses the existing Windows bootmgr file to load the SLIC instead. ("grldr" has nothing to do with FD, they two just interfere with each other because FD is expecting to load Windows (because FD loads up first with it's boot screen) and not the "grldr" loader file which would need to load before Windows loads. That is why you need to just stick with the SLIC in bootmgr implementation because then FD can do its thing at boot and load (the hacked) bootmgr like it's loading Windows normally.) *Basically*, it goes like this: Normal GRLDR implementation: Start PC => Power on self test...etc. => GRLDR loads SLIC => GRLDR chain-loads bootmgr (normal bootmgr file without SLIC) which loads Windows Normal bootmgr implementation: (shortest path) Start PC => Power on self test...etc. => bootmgr loads SLIC then loads Windows Your implementation: Start PC => Power on self test...etc. => FD Loads => FD chain-loads bootmgr which loads Windows As you can see in that very basic rudimentary diagram/description above, in your implementation FD is expecting to chain-load bootmgr, not the "grldr" file that FD would need to load in order for the normal loader method to work. That is why you need to use the bootmgr method... Since FD is expecting to chain-load bootmgr, it will not be looking for the "grdr" file and it will skip right over it and chain-load the normal Windows bootmgr (which is why you need to use the hacked bootmgr by using the insert SLIC into bootmgr option when installing)... By the way, there is no "FD grldr". EDIT: 1 last thought: you may have to install the loader program first (with the insert slic into bootmgr option selected), then install FD. I think it must work that way because the hacked bootmgr must be placed in there first, then install FD so it will load and point to the hacked bootmgr...then everything should be good . (that is only if you could not get your backup to put things back to how they were before...)
lol...that is fine to say. His probably activates with FD because his program does not run the bootsect.exe tool after installing the hacked bootmgr, where mine does no matter what type of loader file is installed (to ensure that things are installed properly...but this can interfere with FD). I was thinking about making a command line switch so that a user could run O7A with the "/FD" (or something like that) switch so that when O7A installs the bootmgr file, it will not run the bootsect tool after installing the bootmgr file (it is the running of the bootsect.exe tool by O7A after installing the bootmgr file that disrupts FD, I will look into adding a command line switch so the user can force O7A not to run bootsect.exe after installing bootmgr (for the slic in bootmgr option only)).
Without really testing anything I have a suggestion to this current issue. FD-ISR must install some kind of file on the system right, odds are you can get a hex editor and look for "bootmgr" in the file, so simply rename the loader file to "bootldr" and insert this name into FD-ISR's file, this then making the bootup: Start PC => Power on self test...etc. => FD Loads => FD chain-loads GRLDR => GRLDR chainloads bootmgr The other method is to form a custom menu.lst which chainloads FD-ISR, either way would work but this one (custom menu.lst) is the one that would require no file editing I'm not sure what the command is to insert the SLIC on Carl's version but on my own it would look something like: Code: default 0 timeout 2 title Windows 7 (With loader) init fallback 1 find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /winx.ld chainloader /FD-ISR_file_here title Windows 7 (Without loader) find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /winx.ld chainloader /FD-ISR_file_here title Debug init --debug pause Press any key to boot find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /winx.ld chainloader /FD-ISR_file_here title Grub Command Line commandline
Those are both great ideas! I had thought of the first idea you mention already...but I dont know how comfortable carfal is with using a hex editor, so I didnt mention it... But that is a very valid idea. Just open the FD file that is running when your PC boots with a hex editor and search for "bootmgr" or "b.o.o.t.m.g.r" or something like that. You just have to be sure that the file name you replace "bootmgr" with is the same number of letters long (e.g. "grldrrr", or "bootldr" like Daz said, or something (and make sure you rename your grldr file to "grldrrr"/"bootldr"/whatever you named it, as well )) because you dont want to make the name shorter or longer as that would change the file and cause it to fail a CRC check...so it will not run. The second idea would probably work if FD is ok with being chain-loaded after the grldr file. I dont think FD would have a problem with that, so the second option might be the better route for carfal to go if he ever decides to ditch the "SLIC in bootmgr" setup he has and wants to use grub loader instead... Thanks for the great ideas Daz