On 28 Jun 2021 at 14:09, Liam Proven wrote: > > On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 at 13:36, Paul Dufresne via Freedos-user > <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > > > More than once, I saw a motherboard manufucturer (I think it is ASUS) > > claiming to have FreeDOS exe to upgrade the BIOS > > but found the programs were Windows exe and would not run on FreeDOS. > > Question: > > Is it possible the download is a Windows self-extracting archive, and > inside it, there is an upgrade image file and a DOS flash tool? Have > you checked? > > Yes, this would on the surface appear to be a foolish thing for them > to do, *but* 64-bit Windows will not run a DOS or 16-bit Windows > self-extractor, so they may not have an easy choice. > That's a good point, never thought about that :-) > Non-technical users (that is, most of them) would not know what to do > with a Zip file. > Ooompfh! :-) :-) :-) Clearly Mr. Proven you have much more experience with front-line helpdesk work. In my industrial niche, I don't recall ever meeting a customer who would not know how to extract a ZIP file. Superficially I have to laugh at the idea that someone who cannot work with a ZIP file would be interested to flash the BIOS in their motherboard... then again, I'm probably anchored in a safe bay, protected from the actual rough seas. I live and work in a retro bubble. And looking at my teenage offspring, insisting on sending photoes from their phone into their computer by e-mail instead of just using a USB cable, I have an uneasy feeling, that your touch with reality is stronger than mine :-/
> If double-clicked Windows does not extract it but > mount it as a virtual folder -- resulting in a DOS program not being > able to see the contents of that folder, and also not be able to > execute. > That's a valid point. Then again - based on the relatively infrequent occasions when I need to download drivers or BIOS updates from vendors of SoHo PC hardware (the largest asian mainstream brands) I have to say that their download packaging people / download site maintainers generally (insert your preferred invective verb) at their job. Their creations are often unbelievable. Starting from naming and descriptions on the outside not matching what's actually contained or supported by the binaries and INF files inside. Including lots of bloatware in the package... I find it perfectly possible that the fine nuances of the EXE format, such as compatibility with DOS/Win32/Win64, are under their radar. I.e. I don't suspect some cunning plan, where plain sloppiness is a good explanation. I tend to actually shiver whenever I download some such stuff and the archive format is a self-extracting EXE. Download a bare opaque EXE from a website and just run it - such a barbarian practice, from a security perspective! And by doing that, even if those EXE archives are legit, they teach the users to consider this practice safe and normal ! Whenever *I* have to download an EXE, I first try to open it with 7zip to see if I can circumvent the inlined unpacker and check the contents "at my own terms" - which often fails, if the archive is a modern InstallShield or just something that 7zip doesn't know. If I'm really doubtful, I check the MZ/PECOFF header with appropriate tools (LordPE maybe, probably not IDA Pro) and maybe search for some strings inside the binary to see if it looks half genuine... It's always a pleasure to debate with you Mr. Proven :-) Frank P.S.: as for updating BIOS from *FreeDOS* - suppose that you actually get your hands on a DOS executable. It can be a single file (all in one), or you get an EEPROM image data file and an executable flasher util from the BIOS vendor. The actual executable flasher can have whims of its own: - can dislike FreeDOS, but run just fine in MS-DOS - can dislike EMS/XMS memory managers - can require an EMS/XMS memory manager - can require a memory manager, but specifically segfault with JEMM (= makes you revert to MS-DOS and himem-sys) Combined with disk sizes and geometries, FAT32 support and possibly other quirks of the platform, it can be an interesting exercise to get a working DOS that pleases the flasher tool :-) And then there are the modern EFI "firmware" generations that come with a flasher tool in the form of an EFI executable, so you need to know your way about the EFI shell, which hopefully is included in the "firmware"... or boot an EFI shell as a "payload" from an EFI-bootable disk drive or some such. P.P.S.: my favourite download was an installer of some custom health monitoring and GPIO API (for win32) from a PC vendor whom I would prefer not to name. There was no information about compatibility, but the contents were clearly original. The package installed without errors. And after a graceful restart, the PC would end up in a BSOD at boot, as soon as the kernel driver for that API got loaded. At customer premises, without a recovery environment at hand... We did not have another machine of that model to try on our own first, so the customer ran the risk and served as a test pilot. Ahh well. Fortunately he soon managed to plug the disk into another machine, find the culprit driver binary and erase it from the disk. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
