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Can NX bit be enabled by Win8 without BIOS support?

Batch

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Posted November 15, 2012 at 9:51AM

My laptop processor is an Intel Pentium M 740 (1.73Ghz) which supports the NX (Never eXecute, aka XD) bit. However, the latest available BIOS for the motherboard does not provide access to switch the NX bit on /off.

Windows 8 requires NX to be on. I've run the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant and this has detected that "Your processor doesn't have NX turned on or might not support NX. Setup will attempt to turn on NX during installation. If your processor doesn't support NX, the installation will be cancelled and your PC will roll back to the current OS". I find this to be ambiguous as to whether Win8 requires the BIOS to be able to switch on NX or whether Windows 8 can switch it on without support from the BIOS. Can anyone shed more light?

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Batch

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Posted November 18, 2012 at 7:34PM

Although no one has posted any replies, I've found this click here on superuser.com (see the bottom part of the answer) which suggests that Win8 may well turn the NX bit on (as the processor supports it) even though the BIOS doesn't include any facility for managing the NX bit.

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Batch

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Posted November 18, 2012 at 8:45PM

I also found this utility (coreinfo from microsoft sysinternals) click here with more info on its usage here The Windows Club thread. So I can see my lappie definitely supports NX bit (just not visible in BIOS).

Only posting this as a matter of record in case is of any use to anyone else.

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