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Just got new CPU: Intel Core i7 and having issues with DBVM!

 
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SteveAndrew
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 2:44 pm    Post subject: Just got new CPU: Intel Core i7 and having issues with DBVM! Reply with quote

Okay so I've been needing a computer, and I finally saved up enough money to get a good one! So I was hoping to get DBVM running as well once I got my new rig! Everything is great, except I had trouble getting DBVM working, so what am I doing wrong?

Visit this thread for my specs:
http://forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?p=5424736#5424736

Or actually I'll post them here as well:
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.40 GHz)
Dedicated Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics
RAM: 8 Gigabytes
HD: 1 TeraByte Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)


The only thing necessary to know though I think is just the CPU...

It's listed on Intel's site as supporting VT-x: http://ark.intel.com/products/71459/Intel-Core-i7-3630QM-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz


Okay here's what I did... (With the latest Cheat Engine [which I freshly downloaded here from CheatEngine.org]) I used the 'vmcd.img' file and wrote it to a USB flash drive (4 Gigabyte) using Win32 Disk Imager software I found online which I think does a raw write (rather than copying the files from the .img normally to the USB as you have stated wont work):
https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download


It seems like I did that step right, as when I choose to boot up from USB on my boot menu I do get the main DBVM screen which has the options to choose from... However whenever I hit 0 to 'start virtualization' I never actually get back to Windows from doing so...

Also I'm confused about the driver signature enforcement... Do I have to press f8 and disable that first before booting from the USB (to load DBVM) or does DBVM loading automatically do that for you?

The first time I tried this I got : "raah" in red at the top of the screen which doesn't look good, looks like something went wrong... (Attached image 1)

The next time I tried it, and when I try it now I get to an orange 'BOOT' on the top left... but nothing seems to happen after that. (The cursor at the bottom still is blinking but other than that it seems frozen or like its not doing anything... (Attached image 2) [I think I changed an option in my bios which was called 'USB Debugging' and I set that to true, but I'm not sure if that's why I'm getting a little further]

And there was one time when I saw this: (Attached image 3) But I don't remember if I pressed 0 or I was testing some of the other options in order to see this:

Thanks for your help, I really want to get DBVM working!!! I even got a new CPU so that can't be the problem now can it? Shouldn't a Core i7 be supported by DBVM?

Thanks again so much!

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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 4:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It depends on luck, your harddisk config and your bios/mainboard. (I have seen systems that crash by just inserting a usb disk. Not even reading it. In dos)

Best bet is download this ce version: http://cheatengine.org/download/d1/CheatEngine62.exe (it has signed drivers)
Then go to the about screen, and click on "Your system supports dbvm".
It will then offload the current os into dbvm and continue from there. (skipping the tricky boot part)


If that doesn't work, then take the vmdisk.img file in the ce folder and write that raw to a usb disk
Configure your bios to emulate it as a floppy, and NOT as a Harddisk. (or else use the vmcd.iso and write that to a cd. It emulates a floppy as well)

Also, take out the usb disk before pressing 0

And of course, best option is getting an old 3.5" floppy disk drive and disk and write the vmdisk.img to there. No annoying disk order problems then (loading just takes a bit longer)



As for the pictures:
1: RAAH Means that after the virtual machine was launched it failed to read from the selected bootdisk (usually 0x80 is the default startup disk, but if the diskorder has been screwed with like a usb stick that is set as bootable harddisk the disks all shift one and need to be adjusted as well)

2: BOOT means that the virtual machine was properly running, and it read the first part of the disk and jumped to there. That it doesn't do anything after that might be an incompatibility with your cpu, or the wrong bootdisk was selected
This is good news though, as it means your cpu passed the initialization phase and the virtual machine is actually running.

3: This means that intel-vt was disabled in the bios, or it launched dbvm inside dbvm (It then fakes that intel-vt has been disabled in the bios)


If launching it with the about screen doesn't work, and you can't get it to boot properly, then execute this code and let me know the results

Code:

dbk_initialize()
for i=0x480,0x48a do
  print(string.format( "%x=%x", i, dbk_readMSR(i) ))
end
print(string.format( "3a=%x",  dbk_readMSR(0x3a) ))



And if possible (expect a bsod if your system doesn't support extended control flags)
Code:

print(string.format( "%x=%x", 0x48b, dbk_readMSR(0x48b) ))


I suppose your system doesn't have a serial port ?

About driver signing. If you actually BOOT up with dbvm, and ce's driver is unsigned (your own modifications) then ce will provide you with a option to force load the driver into system memory.


Also, I have not tested this on windows 8. Big chance that it won't currently work there

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SteveAndrew
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 12:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright thanks for the very full and detailed response... I've played around with it a lot now, hoping I could get it to work and I guess I just don't have any luck with DBVM... Yet! Very Happy

Yes though, since I actually got to where it says "BOOT" I still have much hope that it CAN work for me and my new rig!

The CE with signed drivers, and trying the offloading didn't work. I did see the DBK64 and flashing colors in the top left hand side of the screen, which means the driver successfully loaded I'm fairly sure. Then a second or two after that, the system BSOD's (With the new looking Windows 8 blue screen of death) [img]http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/140584/win8bsod.jpg;pvf298025dfda97db2[/img]

Except it said 'CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT' as the error (if I remember correctly)


As for floppy emulation, I don't think my BIOS has floppy emulation... In fact I think it may have something to do with BIOS why I can't get it to boot... In Windows 8 (I'm not sure if its because of Windows 8 only, or because of my new hardware [If my PC came with Windows 7 would it still have this UEFI thing?])

There is something called UEFI, which was my default booting and I think safe boot (an option it has) was off by default...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface

So actually to even start booting from my USB stick (or even get to my BIOS [as there is no hotkeys like normal to get to it like with standard BIOS {Like: F2 - Boot Menu F12 - Setup}] I had to mouse off the side of the screen to the right (New windows 8 thing) click Settings->Change PC Settings->Advanced Startup[Attached image]

Then it gave me options where I could boot from a USB or CD, or view the BIOS Settings (which looked like a normal BIOS so even with the UEFI, I think there is still a standard BIOS underlayer)

There was an option to enable legacy boot though, and that seems to get the old bootstyle back where you can press F2/F12 to get to the boot menu or BIOS settings...

The thing is with the legacy boot it stopped booting after messing with DBVM many times (I'm not sure if DBVM screwed it up, or what happened but it says 'Operation System not found." when trying to boot up using legacy boot... (without trying to DBVM it of course) switching back to UEFI removes the F2/F12 options again, but it then knows how to still boot Windows 8... After reading the wikipedia I think it has to do with the bootsector got screwed or something and it maybe just needs a 'bootsect /nt60 driveletter:' executed to fix it...

As for number 3, Yep that's what happened it booted from DBVM into DBVM so that's why I saw that error as got to that error again after failing to remove the USB stick when I set the drive to 0x80 (I guess that's why you said to remove it so there's no chance of that)

I suppose if I fix the legacy boot option I can actually get it to start booting Windows through but I don't want to screw up my Windows 8 as its completely legitimate right now Smile So I'm not sure if I should go through with that...

As for using an actual floppy drive, I suppose a USB floppy drive wouldn't work right? As it would probably still be thought of as a USB device pre-boot... (It's a laptop so can't stick a regular floppy into it)

I'm gonna get some new CD's to try the CD method, not sure how to make an ISO out of an IMG, but I think I could just use IMG burn without needing to...

As for that code, I would put that into CE's source somewhere and re-compile it right? It looks like pascal and 'dbk_initialize()' and 'dbk_readMSR' don't seem like they would be available to be used just anywhere (they would be undefined in say a fresh new project)

So I'm gonna try that code and try and sort out these other issues!

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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 12:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT usually indicates that one of the secondary cpu's has crashed. This is usually a result of the virtual machine running on that core encountering a situation it didn't handle and is waiting for user input on how to handle it (without a hardware serial port attached this is basically just a full freeze)

You are sure you have no virtual machined running in the background of your system ?

As for UEFI, make sure UEFI isn't enabled or set to emulate a legacy system (certainly no safe boot). DBVM has no support for this and it royally screws up booting legacy boot code like dbvm (A lot of linux distros have trouble with this as well)

That it broke booting 8 might be because it was installed with uefi enabled and when it's disabled it didn't handle it well (similar to the ahci thing if you change it in bios)

If windows 8 requires it then there's not much to do besides removing the harddisk with windows 8, add a new empty one and install an older os like xp or win7. (And afterwards re-attach the windows 8 harddisk and select which disk to boot from in the bios)

usb floppy: If you can boot of DOS 6.1 or older with that usb floppy disk it may work, but chances are it only works after windows has been booted up and the proper drivers are installed, in which case it won't work


As for the code I posted that is code you need to run inside ce's lua script engine. (ctrl+alt+L from the main window)
Those functions are exported to the lua interface.

dbk_initialize will load ce's driver
dbk_readMSR reads a machine specific register (in this case, the VMX capability registers)

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SteveAndrew
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 7:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well unless Windows 8 includes its own virtual machine, I'm sure there is no virtual machine running except when I try DBVM... (I tried it immediately before installing any games which might be infected with malware/ a VM malware [It was one of the first things I tried after excited I got my new awesome computer...{ An i7 really makes a difference over an i5 I've now noticed} after having previously an i3, i5, and now i7 in a brand new computer with other great specs too])... but I strongly doubt my games... any of my games are like that anyway... only a couple of them I had to disable the pre-installed crap mcafee AV (false positives)

Okay so you mean to not enable 'legacy boot' its different than 'legacy usb' which I do have enabled in BIOS... hmm well it seems I can't disable UEFI without enabling 'legacy boot' though I'll look again maybe I didn't look close enough...'

Yea and now that I think about it I'm not 100% sure if it was able to boot without UEFI enabled... I think it was I remember booting windows 8 from legacy boot after trying DBVM like once or twice, but yeah UEFI is confusing I know macs use EFI which is intels version of UEFI which microsoft adopted after intel gave EFI to the UEFI forum which worked on it, improving it for a few years until microsoft all of a sudden liked the idea of it...

I'm not sure if Windows 8 required UEFI as it seemed like I got it to boot using 'legacy boot' which is the standard boot process which I've become accustomed to for years, only now I got introduced to UEFI which is throwing me off completely... as it's supposed to be 'more secure' but you know how that goes, hackers have already created bootkits that circumvent it's so called 'protection' but I think it only applies if 'safe boot' is off but that probably can be defeated too.. (I've had safe boot off, but with UEFI off it's not even an option to enable 'safe boot')

The USB floppy yeah I was thinking about picking one up but now after what you said, yes its unlikely that it will work without drivers after the OS has already booted up... Would be tricky to find one that didnt work that way...

Lastly that code you posted I've ran both of them in the lua script engine of CE of the signed driver version (which loaded DBK64 on launch (likely because of my settings to specify kernel debugging and kernel read/write/query memory options)

The first one showed this:
Code:

480=da040000000010
481=7f00000016
482=fff9fffe0401e172
483=7fffff00036dff
484=ffff000011ff
485=100401e5
486=80000021
487=ffffffff
488=2000
489=1727ff
48a=2a
3a=5


then I hit 'Clear Output' from the file menu and ran the second one... and got this:

Code:

48b=8ff00000000


It didn't crash on the second one so I suppose my system is all good in terms of supporting extended control flags as it did not BSOD on either of those two...

I'm not sure if my laptop has a second hard drive bay (although it probably should / most likely does) But I do have a spare laptop hard drive from my old hackintosh laptop [I was showing it off at a party when I shouldnt of been because it ran OSX natively + win 7 dual boot with chameleon bootloader and some girl spilled vodka all over it lol I'm still mad at her for it but oh well I shoudn't off been showing it off...] Though I think the hard drive is fine on it and only its water/vodka damage is effecting its ability to boot (it wont turn on) The hard disk should be fine I think...

Well I'm going out right now to a place downtown where my friend is spinning at tonight (dj'ing) so I'll play around more later and actually decide if I wanna test that hard drive in my computer...

I'll probably install windows 7 or xp, on it since those are known to work with DBVM... Very Happy

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Hatschi
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had the same issues with Windows 7 and Windows 8. It's either related to the processor or to UEFI motherboards. I doubt there will be a fix (soon).
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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2013 6:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is a small chance this bug (vmxoffload and watchdog timeout) has been fixed in the svn

There was an issue with getting the TSS base address where ,due to sign expanding a 8 bit value ,stuff went wrong

Booting is still as annoying as ever though (probably depends on bios)

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