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Restarting a computer also is called rebooting, which can be "hard", e.g. after electrical power to the CPU is switched from off to on, or "soft", where the power is not cut. On some systems, a soft boot may optionally clear RAM to zero. Both hard and soft booting can be initiated by hardware such as a button press or by a software command.
User initiated hard resets can be used to reset the device if the software hangs, crashes, or is otherwise unresponsive. However, data may become corrupted if this occurs. [ 6 ] Generally, a hard reset is initiated by pressing a dedicated reset button On some systems (e.g, the PlayStation 2 video game console), pressing and releasing the power ...
BIOS interrupt calls perform hardware control or I/O functions requested by a program, return system information to the program, or do both. A key element of the purpose of BIOS calls is abstraction - the BIOS calls perform generally defined functions, and the specific details of how those functions are executed on the particular hardware of the system are encapsulated in the BIOS and hidden ...
In many desktop computers, for example, the bootstrapping process begins with the CPU executing software contained in ROM (for example, the BIOS of an IBM PC or an IBM PC compatible) at a predefined address (some CPUs, including the Intel x86 series, are designed to execute this software after reset without outside help). This software contains ...
In FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD it can be changed before rebooting the system with the command nextboot -o "-s" -k kernel, and its bootloader offers the option on bootup to start in single-user mode. In Solaris the command reboot -- -s will cause a reboot into single-user mode.
Typical POST screen (AMI BIOS) Summary screen after POST and before booting an operating system (AMI BIOS) A power-on self-test ( POST ) is a process performed by firmware or software routines immediately after a computer or other digital electronic device is powered on.
When interrupt 19h is called, the BIOS attempts to locate boot loader software on a "boot device", such as a hard disk, a floppy disk, CD, or DVD. It loads and executes the first boot software it finds, giving it control of the PC. [28] The BIOS uses the boot devices set in Nonvolatile BIOS memory , or, in the earliest PCs, DIP switches.
In Windows 3.x and 95/98/ME, the boot loader phase is handled by MS-DOS.During the boot phase, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are executed, along with the configuration settings files WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI.