Re: Determining if onboard VGA is used

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:38:33 -0700, Crazy
<Crazy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Ok now that all the frothing at the mouth is over....

You need to probe the BIOS. The BIOS will know what is enabled or disabled.

You need to do more than a simpe BIOS probe. The BIOS probe will only
be useful on some motherboards, but definitely not all.

With the BIOS on certain systems, you have the option to "Enable
Onboard Video". But just because I've enabled that option doesn't
mean that I'm actually USING it.
I can enable the option and still plug a PCI-E card into its slot and
use it.
So unless the BIOS is storing a boolean flag somewhere as to what is
actually being used (0 for onboard or 1 for peripheral), then this
method is unreliable even at best of times.


Someplace in the BIOS memory area's this is going to be present.

Yes, but that's yet another problem. Every motherboard will use a
slightly different BIOS. So even if you locate something at a
specific address on a particular board, that same address could store
something completely different on a different board. Furthermore,
there are many different BIOSes out there (different manufacturers,
different sizes, different versions, etc)...and there's nothing in
terms of a "standard" universal addressing system, unfortunately.


Check this link, its a good starting point:

http://www.magsys.com.uk/delphi/magwmi.asp

There's nothing there.
The correct link is http://www.magsys.co.uk/delphi/magwmi.asp

And the problem with using WMI to probe hardware is that you need
administrative privileges for certain functions. For example, have
you ever tried getting a hard drive's serial number through WMI? Can't
be done unless you're logged on as admin.
.

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