Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Before Windows 7, the system and boot partitions were, by default, the same and were given the "C:" drive letter. [7]: 971 Since Windows 7, however, Windows Setup creates, by default, a separate system partition that is not given an identifier and therefore is hidden. The boot partition is still given "C:" as its identifier.
On Apple Mac computers using Intel x86-64 processor architecture, the EFI system partition is initially left blank and unused for booting into macOS. [13] [14]However, the EFI system partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates [15] and for the Microsoft Windows bootloader for Mac computers configured to boot into a Windows partition using Boot Camp.
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.
It allows users to create a bootable live USB flash drive using an ISO image from a supported Linux distribution, antivirus utility, system tool, or Microsoft Windows installer. The USB boot software can also be used to make Windows 8, 10, or 11 run entirely from USB.
Windows NT (and later Microsoft operating systems) uses the disk signature as an index to all the partitions on any disk ever connected to the computer under that OS; these signatures are kept in Windows Registry keys, primarily for storing the persistent mappings between disk partitions and drive letters. It may also be used in Windows NT BOOT ...
To set up a live USB system for commodity PC hardware, the following steps must be taken: A USB flash drive needs to be connected to the system, and be detected by it; One or more partitions may need to be created on the USB flash drive; The "bootable" flag must be set on the primary partition on the USB flash drive
A modern PC's UEFI or BIOS firmware supports booting from various devices, typically a local solid-state drive or hard disk drive via the GPT or Master Boot Record (MBR) on such a drive or disk, an optical disc drive (using El Torito), a USB mass storage device (USB flash drive, memory card reader, USB hard disk drive, USB optical disc drive ...
In Windows NT, the booting process is initiated by NTLDR in versions before Vista and the Windows Boot Manager (BOOTMGR) in Vista and later. [4] The boot loader is responsible for accessing the file system on the boot drive, starting ntoskrnl.exe, and loading boot-time device drivers into memory.