Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The ACPI Table

A storage area (In BIOS) that contains information of subsystem operation of a PC. ACPI - Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

ACPI_SLIC - controls and/or contains information about the software and operating system running on a computer. The licenses, product keys etc.

The DMI table is stored here as well. The name of the particular table will be vendor specific. Some BIOS vendors will provide toolkits to allow you to enter inventory data into your DMI table. Phoenix and AMI have toolkits but they only provide details on their pre-boots to manufacturers.

The ACPI Table for the Gigabyte m/b is presumably ACPITBL.BIN
The screenshot above shows the tables that are stored in the BIOS for a Gigabyte GA-EP45-U3DP motherboard. The table names and their offsets within the file are given and are to be used when the data is dumped and re-flashed.

This screen-shot shows an Asus BIOS dump (the SLIC Table)
The data in these tables can be dumped, edited and re-flashed to the BIOS or EFI storage media.

Activation of Windows by means of a BIOS MOD

The exact specification and location of the required certificates are known by the manufacturer of the hardware to be activated. This data is checked by the Windows Operating system to determine whether the copy of Windows is activated and genuine.

The Windows certificate can be placed in the ACPI table manually or by the use of a script.

If you have corrupted your BIOS

There are many ways you can  do this. If you apply a "patch" to your BIOS and it fails you will probably be in a position that your computer will not boot. It is for this reason that the manufacturers warn users when they attempt such actions.

To recover from a corrupted BIOS you will need to restore the BIOS to the factory settings and start over. This is why a Gigabyte motherboard is particularly useful as it has a Dual BIOS.

Links:

2 comments:

Nei-Hu said...

How do I find and edit the ACPI table?

Chu-Tung said...

windows rt acpi requirement