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Following the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, it was discovered that certain Lenovo computer models with Secure Boot had firmware that was hardcoded to allow only executables named "Windows Boot Manager" or "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" to load, regardless of any other setting. [183]
Prior to the development and ubiquitous adoption of the Plug and Play BIOS standard, an add-on device such as a hard disk controller or a network adapter card (NIC) was generally required to include an option ROM in order to be bootable, as the motherboard BIOS did not include any support for the device and so could not incorporate it into the BIOS's boot protocol.
Anyone who could switch on the computer could boot it. [citation needed] Later, 386-class computers started integrating the BIOS setup utility in the ROM itself, alongside the BIOS code; these computers usually boot into the BIOS setup utility if a certain key or key combination is pressed, otherwise the BIOS POST and boot process are executed.
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.
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 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.
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto configuration (e.g. Plug and Play and hot swapping), and status monitoring.
Double boot (also known as cold double boot, double cold boot, double POST, power-on auto reboot, or fake boot) is a feature of the BIOS, and may occur after changes to the BIOS' settings or the system's configuration, or a power failure while the system was in one of certain sleep modes.