What to do when you get your new tablet

[Jonathan]

During my time at this forum I’ve noticed that a lot of people are not taking steps to safeguard themselves against future problems with their tablets. This is what I’d recommend doing as soon as you get your tablet:

Windows:

1. Get a dump of your drivers using Double Driver
2. Get copies of your ACPI tables using RW Everything
3. Get a disk image of the whole drive (all partitions) using your favourite disk imager (I use Macrium Reflect Free)
4. Save your real Window’s key: enter this at a command prompt “wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey” followed by enter (DO NOT use a 3rd party tool to get this).
5. Make sure that you stop Windows from updating drivers automatically.

You should save copies of all of the above files on an external drive.

Android:

1. Look for a guide on how to root Android and do so.

General:

1. Go to UEFI Shell and save copies of your UEFI Variables using “dmpstore -s all_var.bin > all_var.lst”.
2. Go into BIOS Setup and save custom/user defaults if possible.
3. In BIOS Setup disable secure boot

[Jonathan]

The rationale for the above advice:

1. Chinese tablets tend to change revisions of hardware a lot use obscure devices and in general don’t have openly available drivers. By saving your drivers you have the correct ones for your device if you need them.
2. There are usually many ways to brick a Chinese tablet such that it is necessary to program the BIOS chip directly and this will wipe your Windows licensing tables, it is therefore sensible to have a backup of these.
3. It is not always easy to get the official Windows/Android re-installation files (not available at all, hosted on slow/unreliable servers etc.). It’s best to have your own. Additionally the Android distributions tend to use Intel’s Manufacturing Flash tool and wipe the Windows partitions (if present), using your own image saves this hassle.
4. It’s useful to have a human readable copy of your real product key, 3rd party solutions and the key shown in “System” are not the real key!
5. Chinese manufacturers do not seem to ever change the fields they should set, this causes the occasional issue when the wrong drivers etc. are used (which can and has bricked tablets).
6. The problem with Android is that for the most part it’s hardcoded for the hardware it’s supposed to operate on. When your tablet gets reconfigured in a way that Windows won’t start Android’s hardwired approach means it can still work (it becomes an advantage). However, without root you can’t do anything really useful.
7. Saving your UEFI variables (including saving custom settings) lets you get a known good copy of the BIOS settings in case you mess them up later.
8. It’s sometimes necessary to run tools (e.g. BIOS flashing utilities) that will be blocked by Secure Boot.

[Mallow Oni]

Thanks for a very useful post. Since I upgraded to a larger SSD I’d already done step 3 but I’ll take care of the others too. I tried to get my Windows key but it isn’t working. On my Windows 10 tablet I pressed Windows key + R, typed cmd, hit Enter, then alternately tried both manually typing and copy/pasting wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey then hitting Enter but each time it just returns OA3xOriginalProductKey on the following line. When I used Belarc Advisor it showed my product ID as well as well as the real key. Am I doing something wrong?

[Jonathan]

Mallow, firstly you’re welcome.

You will get just OA3xOriginalProductKey if you don’t have a key in your BIOS. Look for SLIC/MSDM tables in RW Everything, I’m guessing you don’t have them.

I’m sure that there will be utilities out there that return the real key but some don’t (the last time I checked Belarc Advisor was one that did not return the real BIOS key). I chose to use the inbuilt solution that I know will get the BIOS key if it exists. (Also avoids suspicion that can come from promoting 3rd parties 🙂 )

[Mallow Oni]

I vaguely recall something on these forums about Chinese tablet manufacturers using a program that intercepts the key check sent to Microsoft and tells the OS that it’s genuine. I’ll find that again and how to see if that’s what’s happening with my tablet. In any case thanks again and have a bump, Jonathan.

[Jonathan]

I think you’re after KMSpico @ My Ditial Life 😉

But it isn’t necessarily the case that your Windows activation isn’t legit just because you don’t have a key in the BIOS.

Thanks for the bump 🙂

[Author]

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