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An example of a computer with multiple operating systems per storage device is a dual-booting computer that stores both Windows and Linux on the same disk drive but where the BIOS in the system does not let the user boot individual drives and partitions.
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.
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.
GNU GRUB, a popular open source bootloader Windows Boot Manager. A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader [1] [2] or called bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. If it also provides an interactive menu with multiple boot choices then it's often called a boot manager. [2]
The keyboard works even if the BIOS keyboard service is not called; keystrokes are received and placed in the 15-character type-ahead buffer maintained by BIOS.) The boot program must set up its own stack, because the size of the stack set up by BIOS is unknown and its location is likewise variable; although the boot program can investigate the ...
Unlike the legacy PC BIOS, UEFI does not rely on boot sectors, defining instead a boot manager as part of the UEFI specification. When a computer is powered on, the boot manager checks the boot configuration and, based on its settings, then executes the specified OS boot loader or operating system kernel (usually boot loader [62]).
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 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.