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It seems unlikely it’s Goggle (how did you arrive at that?) or Windows defender, As I too have the folder, any my machine is so vanilla Chrome is now the only extra program on it bar some drivers which came through Microsoft anyway..

It looks as if they’re actually trying to service the DISM tool and failing? (unless it’s the “new kid on the block” (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-chaos-malware-infects-windows-linux-devices-for-ddos-attacks/) and they need to place the entire subsystem to get a DLL exploit to work..)

That said Windows update is unusually busy for the “up to date” state despite the optional KB5017380 being the only offer.. and the application servicing is going like crazy (see attached ) so that might explain – DISM would be needing to update the catalogue to successfully work with the changes.. so I’m putting that down to MS fixing their problems without bragging about what we were open to.. and yes, edge is on the list at the top..

So actually if you missed the target it might still pull it off course then?

I’d have thought you’d need a significant mass for that to work (as in space-time distorting, like a planet..), though the main idea on my part was you could ship up and store as much water as practical (over several missions) so you could also theoretically control the exit velocity of the water (low velocity at the start) to build up a suitable chunk of ice by accretion of subsequent discharges onto the initial release.

I guess the other main idea might revolve on using the high iron content of some objects but that would be a gamble.. a bit like waiting until an icy target got close enough then trying to coat one side of it in vantablack to get it boiling off in the solar warmth to generate a shift..

What backup solution do you use might be another question.

Myself I don’t bother much, but there is a good chance if you can find enough space for the data that you could back up all the partitions to an external device and repartition in new sizes restoring each data set to its place correctly (using DISM and diskpart, the hard way..) Windows will probably hardly notice. (you don’t have to process the MSR partition, just create it.)

The other thing worth a go before getting busy with partitions IF you have space on another “fixed” drive / partition is to station the entire setup file set there and run setup from within Windows, as setup then just has to update the local component store from the source location instead of localising the files from media to the installation drive first.. assuming it works like Windows 10.. might be worth doing setup /? in cmd prompt first to see if MS have added any useful options..

 

I find myself wondering if this project really did much more than prove some schoolboy physics. After all you have one shot.. literally. It took a while to get there as well – ideally you need something which is stationed and doesn’t need to accelerate to do its job..

If I were going to attempt something, for one it would have to be on a far larger scale (literally) to deflect something earth threatening.

What would I do? Look to creating a sat with a large bladder of water maintained in the liquid state either by suitable solar intervention or a nuclear reactor – really you’d want to work well away from this planet anyway and it wouldn’t be the first reactor up there..

You could then fire high pressure pulses of water at the target (which might or might not be rotating..) to either transfer inertia to slow it with a central hit (as the water would turn to ice almost on leaving the source (so it would work best if the water left at the triple point as you want it to freeze before it boils due to the low pressure) and the resulting ice relegate with the pressure of impact, tending to adhere to the target so you could both slow the target by multiple shots or alter the balance of the object, potentially causing it to spiral and deviate from its course. If things got too bad a large thermal charge suitably placed could vaporise the ice to counter or generate a large push.

The fun could be arranging a way to counter the recoil at the source craft as the water is “launched”..

 

 

It would be tempting to pull the drivers from the Lenovo install media (as it must have them in its boot image to mount the drives with VMD active), and then import them into a standard Windows media and see how far you can get installing from that. It is however also plausible they added a UEFI boot signature for their media which causes the firmware to retain the VMD controller activity and trust the driver (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-secure-boot)

That would tell you if its “all in the drivers” or if the Windows install has to be subtly tweaked somehow to enable it to continue setup in the absence of a traditional “mass storage controller”

As to the last bit, you’ve got a bit crossed on the functions. AHCI is Advanced Host Controller Interface. In plain English, Windows doesn’t need to determine exactly which track and sector the destination LBA is at and tell the drive to go there and then what to write, Windows just effectively says what data to what LBA and the controller and drive sorts the rest so Windows can get on with the important stuff..

RAID0 is a disk usage method – it determines how you spread the data across the drives you have when you have more than one in a machine. You could have redundancy, but lose capacity, or visa versa. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID for detail..

You won’t be able to simply change RAID mode afterwards as the data representing your installation needs to be organised differently across the drives in differing RAID configurations (as I hope the previous article clarifies) and I suspect the drive would be in AHCI mode regardless of the RAID configuration as most modern machines don’t give that option as increasingly they operate a UEFI boot process for security reasons. If you manage to turn that off I suspect most if the options as far as configuration will evaporate..

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wavy

Just for fun, found one of the machines in the series “roughly as described” used an I7 10750H, no mention of VMD on that information page..

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/201837/intel-core-i710750h-processor-12m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html

As there is no simplistic way to equate the I7 and Xeon processors, I just picked the top of the list of the Xeon third gen range – it’s specifically mentioned if the processor has the function on the spec page, so that’s probably what to check for (should your processor be different) before trying the setting. (for the Xeon chip I picked, the information is buried at the bottom of the advanced technologies section half way down the page below.)

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/215286/intel-xeon-gold-5315y-processor-12m-cache-3-20-ghz.html

 

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Mike

I’d be aware that they are indeed more reliable.

That is to say you need to be aware that they have a “lifetime” accounted by an internal algorithm, which once expired triggers the SMART error system. That can be a bit of a pain if you intend to actually use your machine significantly as it leaves you with a pinch point as to if you back up and replace or just turn off the message as we know this will happen just when that is simply not convenient..

It’s not a scam though – we ran several of the early 30GB (SV300?) Kingston drives to that point, the strange thing is the noticeable temperature rise at end of life seemed to be coming from the chipset, not the memory.. We had to autopsy having replaced it just to see, of course.. then tried to kill them. There must have been a fair amount of life left at 100% as we used one as a gash image drive and it took some hammering before it died.

I’d wonder what sort of laptop you have. I asked Google as I had not seen this one – it seems to be a server orientated technology in Xeon processors:

“Intel® VMD is an Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor feature that enables direct control and management of NVMe SSDs from the PCIe bus without additional hardware adaptors. ”

from

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-volume-management-device-overview.html

That said given the “level” of the device I’d also anticipate the driver for that would be offered at DXE level (that is to say, through UEFI boot drivers) as it’s not fun building in mass storage drivers into all your media. Basically it needs a “firmware hard disk controller”.. as to what / which I don’t know!

I’d also anticipate though possible it seems unlikely you’d have two populated SSD slots in a laptop to even be able to evaluate if the setting can be activated ( as RAID seems to be the target, and in the likely absence of a suitable processor).. so I’d have to suggest stay with the default settings makes sense.. I’d postulate someone slipped up and didn’t remove the option from the BIOS settings menu, which indicates maybe you haven’t the latest BIOS on offer..

 

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Mike

You’re not leaning on the control key as you do that are you? Or have you been in the devtools on Chrome and enabled responsive mode (assuming you aren’t using a tablet PC of course..)

To be honest I filed that feature set with the standard mouse middle wheel “click scroll lock” (don’t know the proper name. I cut the wire to the switch so now the just does up and down. Brutal, but my mouse is a few years old!)

 

A router I use does that because of ISP scheduled firmware checks when “not in use”.

I suppose it could be you have one of these and it’s under attack, using the bandwidth running a botnet etc.. might be worth checking all devices have up to date firmware.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/moobot-botnet-is-coming-for-your-unpatched-d-link-router/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/zyxel-releases-new-nas-firmware-to-fix-critical-rce-vulnerability/#

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/qnap-patches-zero-day-used-in-new-deadbolt-ransomware-attacks/

Could also be worth revisiting the MTU setting if you have recently installed security software or such.. especially if you didn’t use the removal too for a pre-existing product.

Diskgenius is still there. I guess if all else is lost, maybe you could  disconnect the current OS drive and use the portable version if that program from USB after booting a recovery environment or such might be safe enough? (that might even all fit on one USB). A lot of the simpler “portable” apps seem to run fine from the recovery command prompt..

https://www.diskgenius.com/download.php

Just see if it’ll fix the partitions – data recovery is best done to external media, though that is simple enough to drive so if you must you could connect a second external drive maybe?

 

I must admit I haven’t had your joy in retrying old media, in fatc I found after a couple of head passes it started to fail. As to the working fine old optical drive usage is the key. The laser fires up every tome you open “my computer” so the drive can return the disk presence information. If you hardly ever do that and seldom reboot it’ll last. The drives I was dealing with loaded weekly data updates to servers running 24/7/365 so it’s a bit of a different aspect. Also the “until IDE went extinct” was a reference to the fact there was no “drop in replacement.. so some downtime, firmware and software updates were the order of the day.

As to why that is.. about that SCSI interface. It’s still “around” but it won’t be on any laptop as it’s a bit too “heavy computing” for that..

Serial attached SCSI, SAS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI

The physically looks for all the world like a SATA connection but it doesn’t work with that as the weird “jumpers” topsides between the “SATA” data and the power are part of the interface.. attached a pic.

 

 

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OscarCP

If you want to sort out old devices, the change suggested by Paul T (https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/memory-integrity-error/#post-2474483) will work fine, maybe in adding the pipe to file, change the end of the line to

> %userprofile%\desktop\problem.txt 

so it overwrites the problems.txt file, rather than tagging information on the end..

in the same vein, the following will replace the same file with a list of disconnected devices:

pnputil /enum-devices /disconnected > %userprofile%\desktop\problem.txt

Dig through the results and research the items you feel might be a problem and post back the details for any which concern you. As PeachesP indicates, an out of date driver isn’t usually a massive problem (and you can of course remove them, but there are risks so it might not be worth doing), as you wouldn’t handle those drivers that would cause an issue (eg ELAM drivers) in that way anyway..

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windbg, PeachesP

Where do they get the media to use that technology?

Everything including or preceding the CD went “ex stock” at a previous employer of mine years ago (about 2017 for CD, floppies about Y2K). You can burn a CD to a DVD if you need to – we had more issues with the +r / -r /RW etc media compatibilities of the optical drives out there, and had nothing strange upgrading to DVD drives.. until IDE went “extinct”.. then it got a bit more interesting..

I guess they must have a government facility manufacturing obsolete media not to mention head cleaning disks…

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geekdom

I’d back up what’s needed and rummage in the F12 boot menu.

Dell usually have some sort of factory default – later ones as given can even download software straight from the factory via LAN.

Once its running just load the latest ISO should sort it. The hard bit should be the backing up. I’m not quire clear as to if you have a fix or need to get in, but given the mess can only suggest if all else is lost, three unexpected reboots during start-up might yield the return of the full recovery menu booted from the hard disk, which if it has enough content left to yield the bitlocker tokens, should plausibly unlock the hard disk Windows installation’s recovery system with a Windows username / password first (as the BIOS will recognise the hard disk recovery as a secure environment – hopefully SMM is on as default?). If that doesn’t work maybe run past the BIOS drive diagnostics just in case.