Working in System BIOS
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex
Hi, You may have success using some form of ocr; the 2 approaches to this involve: Taking a picture of the screen with an iPhone / other camera. You can then attempt to ocr it on the device or for potentially better results try transferring the image to a computer and doing it there. It's also possible to use a cheap capture card to grab the output of the screen directly as an image and perform ocr on that; this way the blind photographer is taken out of the equation. You may have success with a very expencive device called a pc wezel which is meant to be able to let you control the bios through serial, but I have no experience with it and I'm guessing that it's not going to work with uefi based systems. Personally, I'd try deleting the partitions on any installed hard drives and then seeing if it will boot from usb; quite often I find that if a bios can't find anything to boot from that's in the boot order it will try absolutely anything (Even pxe in some situations), but if it sees a hard drive with a partition on it (Even if it's empty) it will just print a generic operating system not found message. As a last resort, you may be able to get the installer booting by disconnecting the sata cable from the target drive, starting to boot from usb and then fairly quickly connecting it again. This works much better under 7 where you are able to hotswap drives. Assuming one of the above methods works for you and that the hardware is more or less the same between systems, I'd probably get one good install going, make an image and deploy that to the rest of the systems; this can be done in Windows. Cheers, Ben. On 8/28/12, Alex Coleman <AlexC@davis-express.com> wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Hi, You may have success using some form of ocr; the 2 approaches to this involve: Taking a picture of the screen with an iPhone / other camera. You can then attempt to ocr it on the device or for potentially better results try transferring the image to a computer and doing it there. It's also possible to use a cheap capture card to grab the output of the screen directly as an image and perform ocr on that; this way the blind photographer is taken out of the equation. You may have success with a very expencive device called a pc wezel which is meant to be able to let you control the bios through serial, but I have no experience with it and I'm guessing that it's not going to work with uefi based systems. Personally, I'd try deleting the partitions on any installed hard drives and then seeing if it will boot from usb; quite often I find that if a bios can't find anything to boot from that's in the boot order it will try absolutely anything (Even pxe in some situations), but if it sees a hard drive with a partition on it (Even if it's empty) it will just print a generic operating system not found message. As a last resort, you may be able to get the installer booting by disconnecting the sata cable from the target drive, starting to boot from usb and then fairly quickly connecting it again. This works much better under 7 where you are able to hotswap drives. Assuming one of the above methods works for you and that the hardware is more or less the same between systems, I'd probably get one good install going, make an image and deploy that to the rest of the systems; this can be done in Windows. Cheers, Ben. On 8/28/12, Alex Coleman <AlexC@davis-express.com> wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Hi, I forgot to add that depending on your install media you might not be looking at booting from usb from the point of view of the bios. I have a caddy that takes a 2.5 optical drive and makes it into an external usb drive; the chipset that it uses makes it show up as a cd drive as opposed to USB and I've used it successfully on older systems when booting from usb according to the bios isn't possible. Cheers, Ben. On 8/28/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:
Hi,
You may have success using some form of ocr; the 2 approaches to this involve:
Taking a picture of the screen with an iPhone / other camera. You can then attempt to ocr it on the device or for potentially better results try transferring the image to a computer and doing it there. It's also possible to use a cheap capture card to grab the output of the screen directly as an image and perform ocr on that; this way the blind photographer is taken out of the equation. You may have success with a very expencive device called a pc wezel which is meant to be able to let you control the bios through serial, but I have no experience with it and I'm guessing that it's not going to work with uefi based systems.
Personally, I'd try deleting the partitions on any installed hard drives and then seeing if it will boot from usb; quite often I find that if a bios can't find anything to boot from that's in the boot order it will try absolutely anything (Even pxe in some situations), but if it sees a hard drive with a partition on it (Even if it's empty) it will just print a generic operating system not found message. As a last resort, you may be able to get the installer booting by disconnecting the sata cable from the target drive, starting to boot from usb and then fairly quickly connecting it again. This works much better under 7 where you are able to hotswap drives.
Assuming one of the above methods works for you and that the hardware is more or less the same between systems, I'd probably get one good install going, make an image and deploy that to the rest of the systems; this can be done in Windows.
Cheers, Ben.
On 8/28/12, Alex Coleman <AlexC@davis-express.com> wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Hi, I forgot to add that depending on your install media you might not be looking at booting from usb from the point of view of the bios. I have a caddy that takes a 2.5 optical drive and makes it into an external usb drive; the chipset that it uses makes it show up as a cd drive as opposed to USB and I've used it successfully on older systems when booting from usb according to the bios isn't possible. Cheers, Ben. On 8/28/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:
Hi,
You may have success using some form of ocr; the 2 approaches to this involve:
Taking a picture of the screen with an iPhone / other camera. You can then attempt to ocr it on the device or for potentially better results try transferring the image to a computer and doing it there. It's also possible to use a cheap capture card to grab the output of the screen directly as an image and perform ocr on that; this way the blind photographer is taken out of the equation. You may have success with a very expencive device called a pc wezel which is meant to be able to let you control the bios through serial, but I have no experience with it and I'm guessing that it's not going to work with uefi based systems.
Personally, I'd try deleting the partitions on any installed hard drives and then seeing if it will boot from usb; quite often I find that if a bios can't find anything to boot from that's in the boot order it will try absolutely anything (Even pxe in some situations), but if it sees a hard drive with a partition on it (Even if it's empty) it will just print a generic operating system not found message. As a last resort, you may be able to get the installer booting by disconnecting the sata cable from the target drive, starting to boot from usb and then fairly quickly connecting it again. This works much better under 7 where you are able to hotswap drives.
Assuming one of the above methods works for you and that the hardware is more or less the same between systems, I'd probably get one good install going, make an image and deploy that to the rest of the systems; this can be done in Windows.
Cheers, Ben.
On 8/28/12, Alex Coleman <AlexC@davis-express.com> wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Thanks much. -----Original Message----- From: Ben Mustill-Rose [mailto:ben@benmr.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 10:52 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Working in System BIOS Hi, I forgot to add that depending on your install media you might not be looking at booting from usb from the point of view of the bios. I have a caddy that takes a 2.5 optical drive and makes it into an external usb drive; the chipset that it uses makes it show up as a cd drive as opposed to USB and I've used it successfully on older systems when booting from usb according to the bios isn't possible. Cheers, Ben. On 8/28/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:
Hi,
You may have success using some form of ocr; the 2 approaches to this involve:
Taking a picture of the screen with an iPhone / other camera. You can then attempt to ocr it on the device or for potentially better results try transferring the image to a computer and doing it there. It's also possible to use a cheap capture card to grab the output of the screen directly as an image and perform ocr on that; this way the blind photographer is taken out of the equation. You may have success with a very expencive device called a pc wezel which is meant to be able to let you control the bios through serial, but I have no experience with it and I'm guessing that it's not going to work with uefi based systems.
Personally, I'd try deleting the partitions on any installed hard drives and then seeing if it will boot from usb; quite often I find that if a bios can't find anything to boot from that's in the boot order it will try absolutely anything (Even pxe in some situations), but if it sees a hard drive with a partition on it (Even if it's empty) it will just print a generic operating system not found message. As a last resort, you may be able to get the installer booting by disconnecting the sata cable from the target drive, starting to boot from usb and then fairly quickly connecting it again. This works much better under 7 where you are able to hotswap drives.
Assuming one of the above methods works for you and that the hardware is more or less the same between systems, I'd probably get one good install going, make an image and deploy that to the rest of the systems; this can be done in Windows.
Cheers, Ben.
On 8/28/12, Alex Coleman <AlexC@davis-express.com> wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
When you say you're trying to set up an unattended install, do you mean you're still working on the answer file? The reason I ask is because I think it matters whether you want to modify the boot sequence on one machine or twenty. I did about twenty installs on Dell workstations this summer and I just memorized the sequence of keys to press to boot from my device. You may need sighted assistance to get started or yu may be able to get it by experimenting. Most likely, pressing F12 during boot will bring up a list of bootable devices. If you have a light probe, that can help you tell if that menu has appeared. I would find the highlighted item with my light probe. It would be beeping and when I pressed the down arrow, I would know it moved to the next item. Then I could find the next item by moving the light probe down a little. If that didn't work, I'd know I wasn't in the boot device menu. I also have one of those PC Weasel cards someone else mentioned. The good news is that they work really well in Dell workstations. Some BIOS setup programs don't test for whether the VGA card can go into graphics mode. But Dell's BIOS always have. So it dropps back into character mode and the PC Weasel works. The bad news is that these card haven't been manufactured for about 5 years and they are getting to be very difficult to find. They work by looking like a VGA card to the system but putting out characters on a serial port on the card. You connect a null-modem cable and get the output in a terminal emulator on another PC. But I don't think the PC Weasel or the OCR approach is practical for a large number of installs. Better to try to memorize the key sequence. One other note just for future reference... There is a linux command to change the boot sequence. Its "ipmitool chassis bootdev <device>". Of course, this requires you to already have linux installed and to have ipmi working, which in itself is no small task. Well, its fairly easy on Dell servers and I already wrote a entry on it for the IAVIT wiki. There is also the Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) that can be ordered as an add-on for Dell servers. But I don't know if any of this can help you. On Aug 28, 2012, at 7:47 AM, Alex Coleman wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
John, I've got the answer file built and was looking for a way to make sure I could boot from CD in the bios. I ended up having someone look at it. I just have to press the spacebar at just the right time to invoke it. -----Original Message----- From: John G Heim [mailto:jheim@math.wisc.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:29 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Working in System BIOS When you say you're trying to set up an unattended install, do you mean you're still working on the answer file? The reason I ask is because I think it matters whether you want to modify the boot sequence on one machine or twenty. I did about twenty installs on Dell workstations this summer and I just memorized the sequence of keys to press to boot from my device. You may need sighted assistance to get started or yu may be able to get it by experimenting. Most likely, pressing F12 during boot will bring up a list of bootable devices. If you have a light probe, that can help you tell if that menu has appeared. I would find the highlighted item with my light probe. It would be beeping and when I pressed the down arrow, I would know it moved to the next item. Then I could find the next item by moving the light probe down a little. If that didn't work, I'd know I wasn't in the boot device menu. I also have one of those PC Weasel cards someone else mentioned. The good news is that they work really well in Dell workstations. Some BIOS setup programs don't test for whether the VGA card can go into graphics mode. But Dell's BIOS always have. So it dropps back into character mode and the PC Weasel works. The bad news is that these card haven't been manufactured for about 5 years and they are getting to be very difficult to find. They work by looking like a VGA card to the system but putting out characters on a serial port on the card. You connect a null-modem cable and get the output in a terminal emulator on another PC. But I don't think the PC Weasel or the OCR approach is practical for a large number of installs. Better to try to memorize the key sequence. One other note just for future reference... There is a linux command to change the boot sequence. Its "ipmitool chassis bootdev <device>". Of course, this requires you to already have linux installed and to have ipmi working, which in itself is no small task. Well, its fairly easy on Dell servers and I already wrote a entry on it for the IAVIT wiki. There is also the Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) that can be ordered as an add-on for Dell servers. But I don't know if any of this can help you. On Aug 28, 2012, at 7:47 AM, Alex Coleman wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Yeah, I went through the same thing last fall when i was building my answer file. Its worth while adjusting the BIOS on your test machine. I must have installed Win7 50 times on that machine. It would have been a huge bummer to have to hit a key to boot from the Win7 CD each time. But once i had an answer file, I just trusted my timing. And as I said in another message, a light probe can come in handy too. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Coleman" <AlexC@davis-express.com> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:15 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Working in System BIOS
John, I've got the answer file built and was looking for a way to make sure I could boot from CD in the bios. I ended up having someone look at it. I just have to press the spacebar at just the right time to invoke it.
-----Original Message----- From: John G Heim [mailto:jheim@math.wisc.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:29 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Working in System BIOS
When you say you're trying to set up an unattended install, do you mean you're still working on the answer file? The reason I ask is because I think it matters whether you want to modify the boot sequence on one machine or twenty.
I did about twenty installs on Dell workstations this summer and I just memorized the sequence of keys to press to boot from my device. You may need sighted assistance to get started or yu may be able to get it by experimenting. Most likely, pressing F12 during boot will bring up a list of bootable devices. If you have a light probe, that can help you tell if that menu has appeared. I would find the highlighted item with my light probe. It would be beeping and when I pressed the down arrow, I would know it moved to the next item. Then I could find the next item by moving the light probe down a little. If that didn't work, I'd know I wasn't in the boot device menu.
I also have one of those PC Weasel cards someone else mentioned. The good news is that they work really well in Dell workstations. Some BIOS setup programs don't test for whether the VGA card can go into graphics mode. But Dell's BIOS always have. So it dropps back into character mode and the PC Weasel works. The bad news is that these card haven't been manufactured for about 5 years and they are getting to be very difficult to find. They work by looking like a VGA card to the system but putting out characters on a serial port on the card. You connect a null-modem cable and get the output in a terminal emulator on another PC.
But I don't think the PC Weasel or the OCR approach is practical for a large number of installs. Better to try to memorize the key sequence.
One other note just for future reference... There is a linux command to change the boot sequence. Its "ipmitool chassis bootdev <device>". Of course, this requires you to already have linux installed and to have ipmi working, which in itself is no small task. Well, its fairly easy on Dell servers and I already wrote a entry on it for the IAVIT wiki. There is also the Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) that can be ordered as an add-on for Dell servers. But I don't know if any of this can help you.
On Aug 28, 2012, at 7:47 AM, Alex Coleman wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
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I just hit f12 then figure out how many down arrow presses gets it to boot from USB. This works on the Dells I have. Regards, Kerry. On 28/08/2012 8:47 PM, Alex Coleman wrote:
Does anyone have any tips on how to modify system bios settings with speech, or through some other means? Most all of our machines are some flavor of Dell Precision workstations. Specifically, I need to be able to set the boot priority so that I can boot from a USB device. ... Trying to setup a Windows 7 Unattended Install. Thanks for any pointers or help that you can provide. Alex _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
participants (5)
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Alex Coleman -
Ben Mustill-Rose -
John G Heim -
John Heim
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Kerry Hoath