Can companies 'lock' your MOBO to certain hardware?

Hardware Hub Motherboards
1

A couple of months back I purchaced the ASUS 7870 to replace and old GPU (6770) along with a Corsair CX750M (builder) PSU. As soon as I booted my PC, nothing appered, monitor did not respond or light up. Usually it would come up as Advent and load normally.

 

I originally bought my PC as the Advent DT2410.

 

 

Thanks, Blotty.

2

You didn't uninstall the drivers before you put the new hardware in did you? And no they cannot lock down removable parts from a PC, that's preposterous.

3

Thanks :)

So the only reason it wasn't working was the drivers? (I know everything else was correct)
Where could I find these to remove them, also would it stop my old GPU from working?

4

That is all incorrect. 

  1. There are no drivers for a PSU
  2. Installing a videocard, no matter what type, will always show a display, even with NO drivers at all, windows would use default drivers.
  3. Even with no drivers, hard drive, or OS, his PC should still show at least the BIOS logo.
  4. Companies could lock down hardware in the BIOS or the Motherboards kernel if they wanted to, although I have never heard of anyone doing this.

 

If it isnt booting, are the fans spinning up? Do lights come on? Keep the new PSU in, and put in the old GPU. See if it works then. If so, you could have a bad card.

5

 I know PSU's have no drivers, sorry about the misunderstanding :D - So even if the card was not going to boot properly, something would appear?

 

And yes, all my fans (including the GPU's) all spin :)

6

Not the card, no. If nothing appears on the screen, at all, and only when you have the new GPU installed, then theres most likely something wrong with your GPU :(

7

But I even sent the first one back, got a new one, and the same thing happened.

8

And no they cannot lock down removable parts from a PC, that's preposterous.

Actually, yes, they can. And that's bad.

Currently most motherboards ship with a BIOS or with UEFI. They are both propreitary closed source software which has total controll over your computer at any given time. It's one of the biggest problems imho (it could keylog you, search the RAM for passwords and key and sent everything via ethernet to the NSA). You can only be sure that it doesn't do so if the programm is free/open source software. There are no BIOS and UEFI implementations (execpt openBIOS but it's not really a full BIOS) that are free/open source software but there is a project called coreboot (and which can be coupled with OpenBIOS) which is free software and should be used more!

Unfortunately coreboot is only supported by server motherboards and special hardware like the chromebook. So if ASUS is asking you again what features you want (aka feign interest): coreboot. Fuck everything else because without coreboot your system is not secure and never will be.

9

Thanks for going into detail about what I posted. I knew that It could be done, I just didn't know the finer details ;P

10

You're welcome ;P

11

Thanks dude, so should getting a new motherboard fix it? Or do what without a complicated process? - I'm fairly new to the whole PC business...

12

Nope. All x86 motherboards for PCs are using either BIOS or EFI. There is nothing easy you can do about it.

13

I think he meant to get around his current hardware lock.

14

Oops.

I don't know about the specific device but to be honest I don't think it's a hardware lock at all. Sorry.