HP laptop built-in webcam disappeared between Xubuntu 16.04 and 18.04

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 at 06:59, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Semi-final results:
>
> The flash drive the utility created failed to boot - invalid system
> disk (the flash drive).

Did you *start* with a bootable flash drive?

If you use Unetbootin under Linux, one of the built-in options is to
create a bootable FreeDOS 1.0 drive for you. You can then test this,
and if it works, copy the BIOS updater onto it.

> The drive, as created by the HP utility in my Win 10 VM, contains this:
>
> $ ll -a /media/admar/7CEB-CF88/
> total 3212
> drwxr-xr-x  3 admar users    8192 Dec 31  1969  ./
> drwxr-x---+ 4 root  root     4096 Aug  2 21:52  ../
> -rw-r--r--  1 admar users 3145728 Nov  9  2015  68CAD.BIN
> -rw-r--r--  1 admar users      54 Jul 11  2008  config.sys
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 admar users   38193 Dec 12  2011  eRompaq.exe*
> -rw-r--r--  1 admar users   18353 Aug 16  2002  gpl2.txt
> -r--r--r--  1 admar users   45341 Dec  4  2009  KERNEL.SYS
> drwxr-xr-x  2 admar users    8192 Aug  2 05:27 'System Volume Information'/

Not sure. Win10 is quite different and if asked to make a bootable
drive I have no idea what it might copy.

Does the stick boot any other computer? Does it boot a VM?

Did you use Virtualbox? How did you attach the USB key to the VM?

> Apparently if I want to update the BIOS, I'll have to install Win 10
> on my one spare 2.5" hard drive.

:-(

Well, as I said in the blog post I've sent to the list a few times
about cleaning up Windows, it's worth keeping Windows around even if
just for stuff like updating Flash.

I often hear Linux/FOSS Unix evangelist/zealot types boasting about
how they have a Linux-only PC. If you encounter someone like this, ask
them how they update their BIOS. You may well find that you get a
blank look. They don't and how to do so has never occurred to them.

There _are_ Linux tools but only for a relatively tiny handful of
machines, they're non-trivial to use, and people in general don't
update their firmware enough.

> I tried using the two Windows drives I have, but I can't remember the
> passwords for either one

:-o

You don't just use a standard one? Gosh. I know it is not "best
practice" but it makes life much easier. Since I almost never use
Windows I don't consider it a big risk that all my installs have the
same password for the only user account.

(Since Win8 it wants to link to my Microsoft Account, which is my ~25
year old Hotmail account, which I only use as a spam bucket -- so I
just use that. Then the password is the same on all of them anyway.)

You could crack it with an NT password cracker. There are several.
I've used Petter Nordahl-Hagens a few times:

https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

You can also do it from an Ubuntu live medium:

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14369/change-or-reset-windows-password-from-a-ubuntu-live-cd/

-- 
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