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coreboot, formerly known as LinuxBIOS, [5] is a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware designed to perform only the minimum number of tasks necessary to load and run a modern 32-bit or 64-bit operating system.
UEFI requires the firmware and operating system loader (or kernel) to be size-matched; that is, a 64-bit UEFI firmware implementation can load only a 64-bit operating system (OS) boot loader or kernel (unless the CSM-based legacy boot is used) and the same applies to 32-bit.
Over time, the PE format has grown with the Windows platform. Notable extensions include the .NET PE format for managed code, PE32+ for 64-bit address space support, and a specialized version for Windows CE. To determine whether a PE file is intended for 32-bit or 64-bit architectures, one can examine the Machine field in the IMAGE_FILE_HEADER. [6]
TianoCore EDK II (formerly Tiano) is the reference implementation of UEFI by Intel. EDK is the abbreviation for EFI Development Kit and is developed by the TianoCore community. [ 1 ] TianoCore EDK II is the de facto standard generic UEFI services implementation.
A 32-bit kernel can also be manually selected, in which case only 32-bit executables will run. The isainfo command can be used to determine if a system is running a 64-bit kernel. For Solaris 11, only the 64-bit kernel is provided. However, the 64-bit kernel supports both 32- and 64-bit executables, libraries, and system calls.
UEFI support in Windows began in 2008 with Windows Vista SP1. [22] The Windows boot manager is located at the \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ subfolder of the EFI system partition. [23] On Windows XP 64-Bit Edition and later, access to the EFI system partition is obtained by running the mountvol command. Mounts the EFI system partition on the specified drive.
EasyBCD has a number of bootloader-related features that can be used to repair and configure the bootloader. From the "Manage Bootloader" section of EasyBCD, it is possible to switch between the BOOTMGR bootloader (used since Windows Vista) and the NTLDR bootloader (used by legacy versions of Windows, from Windows NT to Windows XP) in the MBR from within Windows by simply clicking a button.
In UEFI systems, the Linux kernel can be executed directly by UEFI firmware via the EFI boot stub, [8] but usually uses GRUB 2 or systemd-boot as a bootloader. [9] [10] If UEFI Secure Boot is supported, a "shim" or "Preloader" is often booted by the UEFI before the bootloader or EFI-stub-bearing kernel. [11]