MSI Wind – making System Control Manager more likeable

System Control Manager is an MSI software designed to handle keyboard shortcuts with Fn key for Wind netbooks. Since I have Wind U115 with hybrid hard disc (8GB SSD drive for system and 160GB mechanical drive for data which can be turned off due to lower energy consumption) I am forced to use. IMHO it is very unreliable, uncomfortable and unstable piece of software.

Am I really forced to use it? Not if I know assembler 🙂

SCM have 2 main functions: showing the OSD (icons like WiFi turn on/off etc)  and to switch on and off HDD (when I type HDD I mean the mechanical drive to distinguish it from solid state drive – SSD).

What is wrong with SCM? It’s sometimes not loading properly or loading very long. There are inconvenience related to switching the HDD. And it is very ugly. When I using Fn+F10 to switch off the HDD the ugly window shows up and ask me for confirmation. Well, if I wouldn’t be sure that I want to turn that thing off, certainly I wouldn’t press the Fn+F10 right? But even worse is – this window often loose its focus and it shows up not on top. It’s annoying. OK, lets launch IDA Pro.

How does it work?

System Control Manager consist of 3 main files:

  • MGSysCtrl.exe – tray application,
  • MSIService.exe – service that actually do all the magic,
  • MSIWmiAcpi.dll – library that communicate with the service,
  • MGKBHook.dll – library to set the global hook to keyboard.

HDD off confirmation window are enclosed in MGSysCtrl. Interesting functions I’ve found:

set_hdd_off     equ 0x415290    ; BOOL __cdecl set_hdd_off()
set_hdd_on      equ 0x4156D0    ; BOOL __thiscall set_hdd_on(void *this)
set_hdd_state   equ 0x40E330    ; int __cdecl set_hdd_state(bool hdd_on)
show_hdd_window equ 0x415890    ; int __thiscall show_hdd_window(void *this)
endDialog       equ 0x42AF65    ; int __stdcall CDialog::EndDialog(int nResult)

Purpose of first three functions are obvious. Fourth one is called when the window is created. Last function is closing the confirmation window. We can use it to disable the confirmation window and to turn off the HDD without confirmation (just Fn+F10). To do that I’ve created some patch (nasm code):

set_hdd_state    equ 0x40E330
endDialog        equ 0x42AF65

use32

org 0x415890
    mov esi, ecx    ; need this ?
    push 1
    call endDialog

    push 0
    call set_hdd_state
    add esp, 4
    mov eax, 1
    ret

It changes show_hdd_window() function to call endDialog() and then set_hdd_state(1). I know it’s ugly solution (creating window and closing it instantly) but I couldn’t manage pretty way to do that. In theory it should be possible to disable function that shows up the window, but I was unable to do that, MSGSysCtrl always crash. My ugly solution is doing its job, and as they say – if it works, don’t touch it.

Now it works much better. But still there are things to improve. I actually consider to write my own app to replace the original SCM. But there is still much to reverse. Or maybe I’ll use original service and dlls to just write my own OSD + HDD controlling program?

MGSysCtrl-mod.rar