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In computing, the BIOS parameter block, often shortened to BPB, is a data structure in the volume boot record (VBR) describing the physical layout of a data storage volume. On partitioned devices, such as hard disks , the BPB describes the volume partition, whereas, on unpartitioned devices, such as floppy disks , it describes the entire medium.
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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.
The Master boot record is loaded at address 7C00h and loads the boot sector of the Windows Disk partition. The boot sector contains the disk boot program and BIOS Parameter Block table which searches for the location of the root directory and IO.SYS file, which then loads the IO.SYS file into memory.
Windows 2000 used its built-in kernel mode font, Windows XP, Vista, and 7 use the Lucida Console font, and Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 used the Segoe UI font. BSoDs on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are rendered in higher resolutions than previous versions of Windows, where it uses the highest screen resolution available on UEFI machines.
For NT and NT-based operating systems, it also allows the user to pass preconfigured options to the kernel. The menu options are stored in boot.ini, which itself is located in the root of the same disk as NTLDR. Though NTLDR can boot DOS and non-NT versions of Windows, boot.ini cannot configure their boot options.
On Windows NT operating systems, CHKDSK can also check the disk surface for bad sectors and mark them (in MS-DOS 6.x and Windows 9x, this is a task done by Microsoft ScanDisk). The Windows Server version of CHKDSK is RAID-aware and can fully recover data in bad sectors of a disk in a RAID-1 or RAID-5 array if other disks in the set are intact. [11]
Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is a set of tools based on Windows PE to help diagnose and recover from serious errors which may be preventing Windows from booting successfully. Windows RE is installed alongside Windows Vista and later, and may be booted from hard disks, optical media (such as an operating system installation disc) and PXE ...