SECR9TOS @ WIN7VISTA.COM

ODIN The hardware independent activator

secr9tos

7/11/2010

The following will contain general information, tips and troubleshooting

ODIN

July 11, 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENT

First steps in getting Windows activated

o What is ODIN and what does it do with my system?

o What are the supported systems?

o Do I need ODIN?

o How can I check for SLIC?

Install ODIN

o Standard Installation

o Advanced Installation

Uninstall ODIN

Check Activation Status

o Offline

o Online

Things you should know

o Service Packs

o WU regarding ntoskrnl

o What you should not modify or delete

o PAE on x86

o Updating ODIN

o Manual Driver Unloading

o Kernel Debugging

Troubleshooting

o General advice

o Get individual help

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First steps in getting Windows activated

What is ODIN and what does it do with my system?

ODIN is a new way in activating Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as OEM and is not a GRUB

based loader or a pure software solution like Chew7. It installs a driver which simulates SLIC 2.1 support

for various OEM brands like Acer, Dell or Toshiba etc. On amd64 aka x64 systems this software will also

patch ntoskrnl, winload & BCD, otherwise it will not work “properly”.

What are the supported systems?

Windows 7 Starter x86

Windows 7 Home Basic x86

Windows 7 Home Basic x64

Windows 7 Home Premium x86

Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Windows 7 Professional x86

Windows 7 Professional x64

Windows 7 Ultimate x86

Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise

Keep in mind that IA64 is not the same as x64. Which means it is not compatible with Intel Itanium CPUs

and therefore must not be installed. ODIN will install the x86 driver if no x64 CPU was found!!!

Do I need ODIN?

You need ODIN if one of the following applies to your current situation:

Your BIOS has no SLIC table

Your BIOS has a SLIC 2.0 table

How can I check for SLIC?

If you don’t know what version of SLIC is present on PC, I recommend using “SLIC Dump Toolkit” for this

job. The latest version of it is included in the ODIN.zip package. (Image is taken from “Advanced” Tab)

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Install ODIN

Standard Installation

Installing ODIN is very simple. Just open odin.exe and press “Install Driver”. After the installation one of

the status shields will turn green and tell you that everything is fine. The only thing you need to do now

to complete the process is to restart your PC.

NOTE: On x64 OS ignore the pop-up regarding non-digital signed drivers during installation.

Advanced Installation

On the “Advanced” Tab of ODIN you can specify your preferred SLIC, CERT & Key if you are not satisfied

with the automatically chosen configuration.

There is also the option to un/install the driver silently:

Syntax: odin.exe [/I [/slic=OEM_BRAND] [/cert=OEM_BRAND] [/pkey=OEM_SLP]] [/U]

/I Stands for “Install”. If no additional parameters are specified it serves as an “automated-

install” switch.

/U With this option the driver gets removed from your system.

/slic= Specifies the SLIC the driver will use for emulation.

/cert= Specifies the CERT which will be installed on your PC

/pkey= Specifies a OEM-SLP key which gets applied during installation

Valid arguments for OEM_BRAND ( case-sensitive! )

Acer, Advent, Alienware , Asus, BenQ, Dell, Founder, FSC, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, Haier, Hasee, HCL, HP,

Jooyon, Lenovo, LG, Medion, MSI, NEC, Nokia, Quanmax, Samsung, Sony, Tongfang, Toshiba-ASU,

Toshiba-CPL, Toshiba-INV, Toshiba-QCI, Trigem, Viliv

Valid arguments for OEM_SLP

The most important point here is that the key must match your Windows Edition.

e.g: FJGCP-4DFJD-GJY49-VJBQ7-HYRR2 for Windows 7 Ultimate Acer

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How do I uninstall it?

Open odin.exe, press “Uninstall Driver” button, and restart your PC after the process.

NOTE: You can also use /U switch for silent uninstall

How do I check activation status?

Offline Method:

Open the “Control Panel” and navigate to “System” snap-in. The following should appear.

Alternatively you can open an elevated command prompt and type: “slmgr.vbs -dlv” or “slmgr.vbs -xpr”

Online Method:

Navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/genuine and press “Validate Windows” button. After the

validation process this screen should appear.

NOTE: Follow the instruction on the website if you have problems.

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Things you should know

Service Packs

It’s recommended that after you have installed a new Service Pack on your PC, you should re-install

ODIN on an x64 based operating system. To do so, first uninstall it and finally install it again after a

restart.

WU regarding ntoskrnl

In general I recommend the same as listed under “Service Packs”. Please keep in mind that this only

applies to amd64 systems, an x86 OS is not affected by this.

What you should not modify or delete

On x64 systems:

%systemroot%\System32\drivers\oem-drv64.sys

%systemroot%\System32\xNtKrnl.exe

%systemroot%\System32\xOsLoad.exe

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\oem-drv64

The {default} BCD entry.

On x86 systems:

%systemroot%\System32\drivers\oem-drv86.sys

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\oem-drv86

Only delete/modify one of the things mentioned above if you were told so by secr9tos, a win7vista.com

staff member or another experienced user you trust. Otherwise it will result in an operating system boot

failure in the worst case.

PAE on x86:

Oem-drv86 does not support PAE due to the limitation of +/- 2GB jump instructions in assembler.

Therefore you must not use a modified kernel or any other method to forcefully enable PAE.

If you do not know what PAE is visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Extract form the article: “In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a feature to allow x86

processors to access a physical address space (including random access memory and memory mapped

devices) larger than 4 gigabytes.”

My advice: If you want to use more than 4GB of RAM then switch to an x64 OS.

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Updating ODIN

Download the latest ODIN.zip from a place you trust and do the following:

Uninstall the driver

Restart your computer ( recommended )

Install the new driver

Restart your computer ( required )

Check your activation status

In general it’s recommended to update to the latest version due to the fact that there might be new

features included or some bugs got fixed, if any.

NOTE: A new ODIN version might think that the prior driver installation is corrupt. This occurs if the

configuration of the driver has changed from one build to another. Simply press the “Uninstall Driver”

and proceed with the other steps in the list.

Manual Driver Unloading

Both, the x64 and x86 driver, are manually unloadable but it’s not recommended to do so for two

reasons:

1. You won’t be able to re-load the driver within this Windows Session.

2. You become non-genuine as long as the driver is unloaded.

Kernel Debugging

In general you should not issue a kernel debug at boot-time. There are two reasons for this:

1. If your Windows boots with “/DEBUG ON” parameter and no debugger is attached during the

HAL initialization, your PC will freeze and must be rebooted by force. ( power-off )

2. If your Windows boots with “/DEBUG ON” parameter and a debugger is attached during the HAL

initialization, your Win7 or 2k8 R2 will become non-genuine.

If you attach a kernel debugger after the system has booted and oem-drv86 or oem-drv64 gets

unloaded for some reason you will enjoy a BSOD because the driver will not have the opportunity to

undo the changes done to the kernel module in RAM.

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Troubleshooting

General advice

If the install of ODIN failed for some reason or you were told to delete core components of this

activation tool, run odin.exe and press the “Uninstall Driver” button. This option will uninstall everything

in forceful mode and cleans everything from your HDD. In case the install has failed go to “Get individual

help”.

In case your Windows OS refuses to boot correctly due to a Blue Screen Of Death ( BSOD ) do the

following:

1. Power on your PC and press F8 immediately until you enter the advanced Boot-Menu

2. Select “Repair Your Computer” and hit <Enter>

3. After boot the Windows RE will ask you for username and password

4. Open a command prompt window

5. Now type the following into the cmd-windows

a. On x64: del <win7_drive_letter>:\Windows\System32\drivers\oem-drv64.sys

b. On x86: del <win7_drive_letter>:\Windows\System32\drivers\oem-drv86.sys

6. Restart

7. Start ODIN.exe and remove the remaining parts of the activation tool

NOTE: the drivers have never ever caused a BSOD so far, neither in the early alpha stages nor in this

release.

The log about the install or uninstall process gets automatically saved to: %systemroot%\Logs\odin.log

regardless if you use silent or GUI based un/installation.

Get individual help

To get individual help and support for your situation, problem or whatever you should visit

win7vista.com. Please don’t forget that without a detailed description of your problem, the log created

by the installer and the crash-dump in case of a BSOD, your issue can’t be fixed. Therefore it’s not

productive to complain on 3rd party forums about ODIN if you have not provided the required

information.

NOTE: You need a least a VIP subscription on win7vista.com to get individual support.