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Pre-installed software (also known as bundled software) [1] is software already installed and licensed on a computer or smartphone bought from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). [2] The operating system is usually factory-installed, but because it is a general requirement, this term is used for additional software apart from the bare ...
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. [1] POST processes may set the initial state of the device from firmware and detect if any hardware components are non-functional.
Version 2.0 of the Desktop Management BIOS specification was released on March 6, 1996 by American Megatrends (AMI), Award Software, Dell, Intel, Phoenix Technologies, and SystemSoft Corporation. It introduced 16-bit plug-and-play functions used to access the structures from Windows 95. [7]
Even drivers executing in user mode can crash a system if the device is erroneously programmed. These factors make it more difficult and dangerous to diagnose problems. [3] The task of writing drivers thus usually falls to software engineers or computer engineers who work for hardware-development companies. This is because they have better ...
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The IBM Personal Computer included ROM-based firmware called the BIOS; one of the functions of that firmware was to perform a power-on self test when the machine was powered up, and then to read software from a boot device and execute it. Firmware compatible with the BIOS on the IBM Personal Computer is used in IBM PC compatible computers.
Utility software is a program specifically designed to help manage and tune system or application software. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software , which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit ordinary users.
A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. . Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with different hardwa