ASUS ExpressGate -- beware of ripoff!

[mhilarius]

ASUS is NOT clear which boards have full ExpressGate

Hmmm, must of been a mistake with the packaging on your box. Other Asus boards clearly label if Expressgate Light is being used (example below). I would be contacting Asus about that.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...39&modelmenu=1

OK, in some cases the say, n others they do not.
For example look at the M3N78-VM

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=2268&l1=3&l2=149&l3=643&l4=0

Great deal. The board costs around $95
Pretty decent platform, with embedded nVidia video, hybrid SLI support, etc.
The webpage simply says "Instant Internet Access with Express Gate?"
However on setup one finds the usual message about using the installer under Windows.
It IS a ripoff!

[Kano]

As you need an USB stick with unmodded apps you can put the thing on it too. It just needs 240 mb from it. I would not overrate the internal SSD, because it is more easy to mod without. The BIOS hotkey should work with external usb stick too, maybe only on a few ports. If you want you could attach it internally too *g*.

[cobra-kai]

Express Gate on Asus M3A78-EM

I just bought the M3A78-EM board. On the Asus website, it says nothing about the Express Gate being "Light", and the description of the Express Gate feature says that it is a "unique motherboard built-in OS", see

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...52&modelmenu=1

When I boot, I get the dreaded message about installing Express Gate using the Windows installer. What does this mean? Do I have the onboard SSD or not? I do not have Windows installed on the computer, neither do I want it. If I was able to boot into Windows temporarily, say from a USB stick, could I then install Express Gate to the SSD and then be done with it?

[Kano]

Just use my script in the install onto usb stick section. That emulates the SSD and should work. No Win needed.

[mgc8]

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...52&modelmenu=1
When I boot, I get the dreaded message about installing Express Gate using the Windows installer. What does this mean? Do I have the onboard SSD or not? I do not have Windows installed on the computer, neither do I want it. If I was able to boot into Windows temporarily, say from a USB stick, could I then install Express Gate to the SSD and then be done with it?

From what I learned after browsing several ASUS product pages, if it is not specifically written "Express Gate SSD" then no, you don't have the SSD. The description icon is also different (see P5QDeluxe for what it looks like when it's "full"). That means the hardware (flash chip) is missing from your board and you need to install EG to the hard-disk from windows. If you still want to use it, follow Kano's adice above. I personally find this completely useless if it's not embedded, so I disabled it and also mailed ASUS about this -- which you could (politely) also do...

[cobra-kai]

Thanks for the replies. After finding the FAQ on ASUS' site, it seems that they changed the name of Express Gate to Express Gate SSD and Express Gate Lite to Express Gate. Very confusing indeed. I'll consider running it off a USB stick, if only for the reason that I had my mind set on this nifty feature.

[Kano]

Well using it from USB stick seems a better idea than using the internal SSD, because you can resize the DVMUSB partition if needed to add more custom apps. Thats impossible for the SSD and testing is much more complicated too - you have to create DFI files all the time.

[cobra-kai]

Well using it from USB stick seems a better idea than using the internal SSD, because you can resize the DVMUSB partition if needed to add more custom apps. Thats impossible for the SSD and testing is much more complicated too - you have to create DFI files all the time.

True. My critique of having a USB stick permanently attached to the computer is one of sheer vanity. Also, allowing your BIOS to start off removable devices might not be for those that are security-minded. But then it seems that activating Express Gate on at least my MB could be just about as bad - it suffices that a USB stick (or any connected mass storage device I suspect) has the SplashTop files on it, and it will allow you to boot off that device. Does anyone know if the SplashTop files have a digital signature that is checked by the BIOS-resident parts of Express Gate?

I completely failed to make a bootable USB stick with Kano's lilo script, btw, and that was on two different USB sticks that have both had Ubuntu and Gentoo LiveCD images and installed systems booted off them. So it was a little bit by chance that I discovered that with an Express Gate (Lite) MB, it is enough just to copy the files from the Express Gate image file to the stick. I guess then that it is a reasonably safe bet that if you made a micro partition (first partition?) on your harddrive (NTFS or FAT, I suppose), and just copied the files into that, you could boot your system from that. Anyone tried that?

One last thing, and I realize I have sadly drifted off topic - the list of keyboard layouts in the Express Gate that I downloaded (1.2.4.0 I think, from the ASUS FTP site) was rather short (US/UK/French/Japanese and a few others). I miss my Swedish letters... Any remedy for this?

[Kano]

You would not need a bootloader on the stick when you can start it via BIOS - it would find it too when you select it.The international support is pretty bad, basically english + chinese is tested only - german is pretty bad supported as well. If it does not boot just try different usb ports, it is usally not the stick, but only a few ports work.

[cobra-kai]

Like I said previously, I wanted to try installing SplashTop on a small HD partition using Linux, and getting my Express Gate (Lite) MB to boot into that (without LILO or GRUB, as you can do with a USB stick + Express Gate Lite MB). Using parts of Kano's script, I simply copied the files from the mounted Express Gate SSD image file to a 1.0GB (overkill, I know) FAT16 partition that I made at the beginning of the HD. This was enough to make the Express Gate BIOS bootloader believe that I had SplashTop installed (showing the splash screen where you can choose to boot into the OS or into SplashTop), but it froze when it tried to boot into SplashTop. Any ideas?