The term booting comes from the phrase
" lifting yourself up by your bootstraps" and refers to the computer
bring itself up to a working state without intervention from the user.
There are two types of boot states:
Hard boot or Cold boot and Soft boot or Warm boot.
A hard boot is more stressful on your computer because of the initial
power surge through your computer that occurs when you press the power
switch.
A soft boot or warm boot involves
using the operating system to reboot, for Windows XP, one way to soft
boot is to click Start, click Turn Off Computer, and then click Restart.
Windows NT2000 and Windows 9x/Me,
click Start, click Shut Down and then select Restart and click OK
For DOS, pressing Ctrl, Alt, and Delete at the same time performs a soft
boot.
The startup BIOS (Basic Input
Output System) controls the beginning of the Boot. This is programming
contained on the firmware chip on the motherboard that is responsible
for getting a system up and going and finding the Operating System to
load. a successful boot depends on the hardware, the BIOS, and the OS
all performing without errors. errors are communicated as beeps or as
messages onscreen. The boot functions are broken down into four steps.
1. The startup BIOS runs the Post
(Power on self test) this is a series of tests performed by the BIOS to
see if
it can communicate correctly with essential hardware
components required for a successful boot.
The startup BIOS surveys hardware components required for a
successful boot. It then begins the startup
process by reading configuration information stored primarily
in CMOS Ram, (a special kind of low-
power memory that stores information of a computer. it
is operated by a battery so it does not a leave
when the computer is turned off.)
2. The BIOS program searches for
and loads the OS, most times the operating system is loaded from logical
drive C on the hard drive. Configuration information stored
in CMOS Ram tells startup BIOS where to
look for the OS, Most new BIOSs support loading the OS from
the hard drive, a floppy disk, CD, DVD
or USB device. The BIOS turns to the specified device, reads
the beginning files of the OS, copies them
into memory, and then turns control over to the OS.
3. The OS configures the system and
completes its own loading, OS checks some of the same settings and
devices that startup BIOS checked, such as available memory.
Then the OS loads the core components
necessary to access the files and folders on the hard drive
and to use memory, the expansion bus on the
motherboard, and the cars installed in these expansion slots,
the OS also loads the software to control
installed devices, such as the mouse, video card, DVD drive,
these devices generally have device drivers
stored on the hard drive, Then the Windows desktop is then
loaded.
4. Application software is loaded
and executed and the user is in control.