Electronics, Embedded Systems, and Software are my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Apr 22, 2012
As I was working to get my led case lights ready to install (tutorial and videos coming soon!) I was trying to make the device interchangeable between windows and linux since I run both on my computer. So, I followed some ...great... online instructions which directed me to install something called ReadyDriver Plus. Basically, what it does is disable device driver signing so that you can install unsigned drivers such as libusb. Well, the first time I restarted, it did something weird. You see, I have a setup where my computer first loads GRUB and then from GRUB it will load the windows bootloader. I think that was the main problem with getting ReadyDriver Plus to work since all it is is a program that loads on boot to disable device signing in the startup menu for windows. However, because it didn't work properly it had the added effect of disabling ALL of my device drivers, including my wired keyboard and bluetooth dongle for the mouse. Great. So, I then manually told it to disable device driver signing (F8 when selecting Windows 7 from the windows bootloader, scroll down to "Disable driver signing") and it loaded again just fine. Then, I said to myself, "Oh, I can just do it that way when I want to use the lights in my computer on windows" and so I decided to un-install ReadyDriver Plus. Bad idea. Now, it doesn't show the bootloader screen for the windows bootloader and I discovered that the keyboard driver is no longer working again. So, I can't tell it to turn off device signing and I can't use the computer in windows mode. Great. Now, it seems the easiest thing to do is re-install windows. Hopefully it doesn't mind since it is on the same computer (read: motherboard) due to their crazy DRM stuff they put in windows 7.
In short, I don't think windows will be supported for my case lights just yet.
EDIT: Yay for system restore! Apparently when I installed Assassins Creed it created a nice system restore point. Now everything works great again. However, I still won't be messing with the drivers again for a while. I have to make sure I have plenty of time on my hands before I do that again just in case system restore isn't as awesome.