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COA Ex11

BIOS is the first software that runs when a computer is powered on. It performs hardware checks and loads the master boot record (MBR) from the hard disk. The MBR contains a primary boot loader that loads a secondary boot loader, which then loads the operating system. This process, from turning on the computer to loading the OS, is known as the booting sequence. It initializes hardware, searches for the MBR to load the boot sector code into RAM and transfers control to it to continue the boot process.

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44 views2 pages

COA Ex11

BIOS is the first software that runs when a computer is powered on. It performs hardware checks and loads the master boot record (MBR) from the hard disk. The MBR contains a primary boot loader that loads a secondary boot loader, which then loads the operating system. This process, from turning on the computer to loading the OS, is known as the booting sequence. It initializes hardware, searches for the MBR to load the boot sector code into RAM and transfers control to it to continue the boot process.

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Experiment No.

11
AIM

Study of BIOS, POST and Booting Sequence.

THEORY

What is Booting?

Booting is a process or set of operations that loads and hence starts the operating system, starting
from the point when user switches on the power button.

What is Booting Sequence?

Basically documents related to booting are generally confusing as they are often related to some
specific operating system that is Linux machine or Windows machine. But I will keep it as general
as possible.
General Booting sequencecomprises of the following steps:
Turn on the Power button.
CPU pins are reset and registers are set to specific value.
CPU jump to address of BIOS (0xFFFF0).
BIOS run POST (Power-On Self Test) and other necessary checks.
BIOS jumps to MBR(Master Boot Record).
Primary Bootloader runs from MBR and jumps to Secondary Bootloader.
Secondary Bootloaders loads Operating System.

These are the tasks that are carried during booting process. Now let us discuss them in detail.

As soon as we turn the power button, the reset signal is sent and the registers in the CPU are set
to their pre defined value. The first and foremost is the reset vector as shown in the figure
(example is taken of 4GB RAM). It should be noted that RAM contains the garbage value at this
time, and the instructions/data stored at any memory location is due to the memory map of the
chipset. Memory map maps the location (address) to flash memory containing values or
instructions. It is ensured that the instruction stored at this reset vector location is jump to system
BIOS, as BIOS takes up further process of powering up the system.

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BIOS-Basic Input Output System

As we have seen that at power up CPU is reset and its registers are set to the default value, which
is an address pointing or directing to the hardware containing BIOS. Generally the hardware is
EEPROM containing the BIOS. The tasks performed by BIOS are categorized as follows:
POST- Power on Self Test is the foremost routine which checks and tests the basic hardware. If it
fails then it displays error.
Initialization of the hardware devices by letting them run their individual BIOS( eg. video card
have their own inbuilt BIOS code).
Searching for the Master Boot Record and reading it.
Copying the boot sector code to RAM and then switching the control to it.

Boot Sectors

A sector is a part of thehard diskhaving length of 512 bytes. A sector is termed as boot sector
because of its location and because this sector is responsible for the further boot process of the
system. This boot sector is generally called Master Boot Record. The MBR is a 512-byte sector,
which is located in the first sector on the disk (sector 1 of cylinder 0, head 0). As soon as BIOS
gets the boot sector, it tends to copy MBR to RAM and switches the execution authority to it. In the
MBR the first 446 bytes are the primary boot loader, which is also referred as PBL.
The next sixty-four bytes are the partition table, which has the record for each of the partitions.
The MBR ends with two bytes that should be 0xAA55. These numbers act as validation that this
sector is the boot sector or Master Boot Record.

CONCLUSION

Thus we have successfully studied all the booting processes successfully and understood the
concepts of booting sequence, basic input output system as well as post concepts.

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