Driver hack lets you run Linux after Windows BSODs, no reboot required

Now we need to have a linux driver that lets run Windows after kernel panic and we can switch between them without reboot, just like we wanted 20 years ago...

Somewhat related, there was a Laptop that could quick switch between Windows and Linux by abusing ACPI Sleep Support and rewiring the return vectors for the wake-up: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=q5M0TwnkWUM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=q5M0TwnkWUM</a> (technical explanation starts at around 48:10)<p>It&#x27;s all kinds of &quot;I don&#x27;t approve of the idea, but I tip my hat to the engineer that came up with it for sheer ingenuity.&quot;

&gt; While this driver is more or less just a funny joke about Windows and Linux, it does bring up the possibility of doing more with the same bug check callback feature. It&#x27;s not clear what you can and can&#x27;t do, but if it&#x27;s possible to run an emulator after crashing, then surely it&#x27;s possible to do other things, too. That&#x27;s all assuming Microsoft doesn&#x27;t revisit this feature of Windows and concludes it&#x27;s just a bit too easy to exploit.<p>Anyone else getting ChatGPT vibes from this conclusion?

&gt; it does bring up the possibility of doing more with the same bug check callback feature.<p>Personally I would just want a power off that does not make me guess if will cause the raid volumes to need to rebuild.<p>But since we are in the realm of possibilities and wishlists, Magic SysRq commands for the windows kernel would rank fairly high. [0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kernel.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;html&#x2F;latest&#x2F;admin-guide&#x2F;sysrq.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kernel.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;html&#x2F;latest&#x2F;admin-guide&#x2F;sysrq.htm...</a>

Not really an exploit if you have to have Test Mode turned on. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows-hardware&#x2F;drivers&#x2F;install&#x2F;the-testsigning-boot-configuration-option" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows-hardware&#x2F;drivers&#x2F;i...</a>

Once upon a time, there was a more serious effort at running Linux in a Windows device driver. It was called coLinux:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.colinux.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.colinux.org&#x2F;</a><p>You could run the Cygwin X server on the Windows side, and run X clients on the Linux side. It worked, and it was fast.<p>I think it required a lot of work whenever a new Linux kernel came out to put the appropriate &quot;yield&quot; code in, so probably maintenance was abandoned?<p>The last update on the homepage is a decade old. I wonder if it still works? It&#x27;s all been made obsolete though by WSL, I reckon.

Drat, I was hoping for a chainload of the Linux kernel. A sort of &quot;here&#x27;s a quarter, kid, go get yourself a real operating system&quot; option.

&quot;It would seem that either it wasn&#x27;t possible to run a full Linux distro, or it was simply too much of a hassle to get it to work&quot;<p>If it could get that far, getting an older DSL distro or similar is probably not that far behind, honestly. Using a BSoD as an environment bootstrap mechanism is hilariously jank, but I&#x27;ve seen worse in my hacking days.

This wins the award for most elaborate boot loader.

How do you emulate linux with 400 loc?

Devs website: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nsg650.github.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nsg650.github.io</a><p>&quot;I am a random 16 year old who likes messing with computers.&quot;<p>Things like this give me hope for the future!

This reminds me of using crashes in PSP games to run homebrew apps.

Would it be possible to save open files with this, so that you don&#x27;t lose your work after a BSOD?

With 400 lines, it&#x27;s probably more of a shell &#x2F; terminal emulator than a Linux emulator.

Now this is the kind of crazy stuff I come to HN for.