Boot managers that conflict with N3 security
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 3:43 pm
Hello Notion supportteam,
please note that this mail was also posted to the support forums in order to alert people with special bootloaders or partition setups to pay attention and at least make a full backup before installing Notion 3.
I am using the "Bootit Next Generation" Bootloader (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit ... ration.htm) in order to be able to maintain and backup various operating systems on my pc (Vista64, WinXP, different Linux distributions etc.).
Bootit NG uses a special partition at the end of the partition table of the first harddrive to store it's application data. Now it seems to me as if the Notion3 copy protection performs some modifications to the partition table: Each time I start Notion 3 my PC does not boot anymore as the Bootmanager can't find it's data partition. Fortunately I have the Bootmanager on a bootable CD so I was able to restore it again. This is absolutely reproducable, if I do not start Notion between starting and shutting down the PC then it boots next time, if I started Notion3 in between the PC does not boot anymore.
Please try to verify this and consider it as very serious, if this really turns out to be a side effect of the Notion3 copy protection.
Probably it would be good to inform all your customers to be extremely careful with installing Notion 3 on computers with custom bootloaders or special partition setups in that case, until a fix is available.
NothanUmber
please note that this mail was also posted to the support forums in order to alert people with special bootloaders or partition setups to pay attention and at least make a full backup before installing Notion 3.
I am using the "Bootit Next Generation" Bootloader (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit ... ration.htm) in order to be able to maintain and backup various operating systems on my pc (Vista64, WinXP, different Linux distributions etc.).
Bootit NG uses a special partition at the end of the partition table of the first harddrive to store it's application data. Now it seems to me as if the Notion3 copy protection performs some modifications to the partition table: Each time I start Notion 3 my PC does not boot anymore as the Bootmanager can't find it's data partition. Fortunately I have the Bootmanager on a bootable CD so I was able to restore it again. This is absolutely reproducable, if I do not start Notion between starting and shutting down the PC then it boots next time, if I started Notion3 in between the PC does not boot anymore.
Please try to verify this and consider it as very serious, if this really turns out to be a side effect of the Notion3 copy protection.
Probably it would be good to inform all your customers to be extremely careful with installing Notion 3 on computers with custom bootloaders or special partition setups in that case, until a fix is available.
NothanUmber