Hardware DEP - any risk to enabling?

Hi,
i thought i heard there was a chance that you might have problems booting if you enabled DEP in the Bios because some prgrams might not be compatible yet?...is this true and if so, is there a program should i download and burn to CD before i enable DEP...(CD is first boot option)


also Windows keeps reporting that DEP not avail. for my processor, but the
"securable" program and Intel website says it is avail..

 

I have DEP enabled on both of my computers one with an AMD and one with Intel. No problems with either. "AMD is my favorite"

 

That seems strange that you have option in the bios but not in windows. I always have hardware DEP enabled. There are a few games and apps that i need to exclud but for the most part everything runs fine.

 

By default DEP is enabled for "essential Windows programs and services only". You can also enable it for all programs.

If you do enable for all programs and you find a program that doesnt work with DEP, you can easily add it to the exclusion list.

 

i think its says "execute disable bit" or something in the bios - Vista gives
me the options for software DEP but says my cpu doesnt support hardware DEP..

am just wondering if i change the DEP setting in Bios, if i run into problems
will i be able to boot or at least get back to Bios so that i can change the setting again? (am not to knowledgeable on Bios, MBR and how that stuff works)

how do you know when DEP is the reason a program isnt working? do you usually get an error message that clearly points to DEP or do you just have to guess

 

If DEP blocks a program or process it should notify you of what it has done with a popup.

 

Software DEP is still ok.

Hardware DEP isnt controlled by the BIOS but you said you dont have hardware DEP anyways.

 

thanks bigc, i changed the bios setting to enable DEP and everything still works fine...interesting to me that Vista seems to report hardware DEP as unavailable instead of just reporting that its turned off in the bios..

i think that Steve Gibson was recommending hardware DEP because he thought it was more effective.....
he didnt sound to impressed with software DEP...

 

I had the same problem before, and indeed enabling in BIOS is mandatory.
But it is logical that Windows can't find it until then. It's not available.

Is this XP? I have XP, and set the boot.ini file to ' noexecute=AlwaysOn '.
I found OptOut (the choice you have in the GUI, on for all programs with exceptions) to be not exactly what it says. Some processes are excluded.

In AlwaysOn some things break/fail to open, like Opera (packer used), the normal java installer (one of the other installer works), IZarc, IceSword, Firefox has to be installed without the Talkback ext. or removed later, etc.

 

Does the BIOS really have the option for DEP? Is it only Intel CPUs?

 

I don't know, mine is Intel.
It's not "DEP" since DEP is MS terminology afaik.
I can't remember the wording, sorry WSFuser

But overall, and i think you know this, the CPU technology for that is widely called the NX bit, and MS's use of it is DEP.

 

On mine( Intel- Centrino). It is under Advanced Tab in BIOS, named as:

Execute-Disable Bit Capability. It was disabled by default and XP was repoting that my processor has no hardware DEP support. I came to know this after more than a year . It was SecurAble that told me that my processor supports hardware DEP but it is suppressed by BIOS. I enabled it and now XP recognizes hardware DEP.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/SecurAble.shtml

 

It was no software with me, it was Ilya Rabinovich!

 

thanks Aigle, same thing happened to me, luckily "securable" gives accurate info


@Pedro - thanks, am running Vista... boot.ini file is beyond my knowledge though

@WSFuser- i think some AMD cpu's support DEP



here is a good microsoft link that deals in detail with determining if hardware DEP is avail., takes you all the way to the Objects Manager, way past my knowledge:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912923

 

My AMD does support NX-bit (DEP) I just dont remember seeing any option about it in the BIOS.

 

Very cool thing and good explainations.

 

Consider using Comodo Memory Firewall as it is actually better than DEP alone as DEP actually does let some pretty nasty stuff through it should actually be blocking...

 

Already BO´´ed

 

yea, just re-installed....looks like they have the bugs worked out....