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On system with BIOS firmware, the BIOS invokes MBR boot code from a hard disk drive at startup. The MBR boot code and the VBR boot code are OS-specific. In Microsoft Windows, the MBR boot code tries to find an active partition (the MBR is only 512 bytes), then executes the VBR boot code of an active partition.
In this example of dual booting, the user chooses by inserting or removing the DVD from the computer, but it is more common to choose which operating system to boot by selecting from a boot manager menu on the selected device, by using the computer keyboard to select from a BIOS or UEFI Boot Menu, or both; the Boot Menu is typically entered by ...
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 computing, BIOS (/ ˈ b aɪ ɒ s,-oʊ s /, BY-oss, -ohss; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). [1]
Typical POST screen (AMI BIOS) Typical UEFI-compliant BIOS POST screen (Phoenix Technologies 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.
An option ROM for the PC platform (i.e. the IBM PC and derived successor computer systems) is a piece of firmware that resides in ROM on an expansion card (or stored along with the main system BIOS), which gets executed to initialize the device and (optionally) add support for the device to the BIOS.
When a user is logging on to Windows, the startup sound is played, the shell (usually EXPLORER.EXE) is loaded from the [boot] section of the SYSTEM.INI file, and startup items are loaded. In all versions of Windows 9x except ME, it is also possible to load Windows by booting to a DOS prompt and typing "win".
In the context of GPT on a BIOS-based computer, a BIOS boot partition is similar in some respects to the EFI system partition, which is used by systems based on EFI. The EFI System partition holds a filesystem and files used by the UEFI, while the BIOS boot partition is used in BIOS-based systems and accessed without a filesystem by holding raw ...