Chapter 1.

3
Understanding Operating
System
CSC204
Practical Approach to Operating
System
CS110
 Chapter 1.3.1
Why is booting needed
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
 The BIOS system is what starts the computer
running when you turn it on. The following are the
steps that a typical boot sequence involves.

 Of course this will vary by the manufacturer of

your hardware, BIOS, etc., and especially by what
peripherals you have in the PC.
BOOTING CONCEPT
(overall)
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 1
 The internal power supply turns on and initializes.
The power supply takes some time until it can
generate reliable power for the rest of the
computer, and having it turn on prematurely could
potentially lead to damage.

 Therefore, the chipset will generate a reset signal to

the processor (the same as if you held the reset
button down for a while on your case) until it
receives the Power Good signal from the power
supply.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 2
 When the reset button is released, the processor will be ready
to start executing.
 When the processor first starts up there is nothing at all in the
memory to execute. Of course processor makers know this will
happen, so they pre-program the processor to always look at
the same place in the system BIOS ROM for the start of the
BIOS boot program.
 This is normally location FFFF0h, right at the end of the system
memory (ROM). They put it there so that the size of the ROM
can be changed without creating compatibility problems.
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 2
 Since there are only 16 bytes left from there to the end
of conventional memory, the location (FFFF0h) just
contains a "jump" instruction telling the processor where
to go to find the real BIOS startup program (inside OS
files in the hard disk).
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 3
 The BIOS
performs the
power-on self
test (POST). If
there are any
fatal errors, the
boot process
stops. POST
(BIOS) checks all
the hardware
devices
connected to a
computer.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts

What is MBR
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 4
 The BIOS looks for the video card. In particular, it looks
for the video card's built in BIOS program and runs it.
 This BIOS is normally found at location C000h in
memory.
 The system BIOS executes the video card BIOS, which
initializes the video card.
 Most modern cards will display information on the
screen about the video card.
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
STEP 5
 The BIOS then looks for other devices' ROMs to
see if any of them have BIOSes.
 Normally, the IDE/ATA hard disk BIOS will be
found at C8000h and executed. If any other
device BIOSes are found, they are executed as
well.

STEP 6
 The BIOS displays its startup screen.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
(additional info)
 The BIOS does more tests
on the system, including the
memory count-up test which
you see on the screen.
 The BIOS will generally
display a text error message
on the screen if it
encounters an error at this
point.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
(additional info)
 The BIOS performs a "system
inventory" of sorts, doing
more tests to determine
what sort of hardware is in
the system.
 Modern BIOSes have many
automatic settings and will
determine memory timing
(for example) based on what
kind of memory it finds.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
(additional info)
 Many BIOSes can also
dynamically set hard drive
parameters and access
modes, and will determine
these at roughly this time.
 Some will display a message
on the screen for each drive
they detect and configure
this way.
 The BIOS will also now
search for and label logical
devices (COM and LPT
ports).
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
(Additional info)
 If the BIOS supports the Plug and
Play standard, it will detect and
configure Plug and Play devices at
this time and display a message on
the screen for each one it finds.
P&P= is a technology that allows peripheral
devices to be connected to a computer and
used almost immediately.

STEP 10
 The BIOS will display a summary
screen about your system's
configuration.
 Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
(addional Info)
 If no boot device at all can be found, the system will
normally display an error message and then freeze up the
system.
 What the error message is depends entirely on the BIOS,
and can be anything from the rather clear "No boot
device available" to the very cryptic "NO ROM BASIC -
SYSTEM HALTED".
DOS Booting Linux Booting
Sequence Sequence
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
Windows Kernel Initialization (Kernel
Initiation Sequence)
Chapter 1.3.1
Understanding Booting
Concepts
 Architecture-independent Linux Kernel
Initialization
Chapter 1.3.2
Hard Disk and Partition
 Partitioning is a process of dividing the Hard
disk into several partitions and use anyone of
the partition to install OS or use two or more
partitions to install multiple OSes.
 But you can always have one partition, and use
up the entire Hard disk space to install a single
OS, but this will become data management
nightmare for users of large Hard disks.
 A primary partition is a
partition on which you can
install an operating
system
 up to four primary
partitions on a basic disk
 Extended or logical
partitions are basically
used for data storage.
Chapter 1.3.2
Hard Disk and Partition
Chapter 1.3.2
Hard Disk and Partition
 This Partition Table is a table which lists the
available Primary Partitions in the hard disk. So
it can have only four entries.
 Partition Table can have two possible entries:-
1. up to 4 Primary Partitions .
2. up to 3 Primary Partitions and 1 Extended Partition.
(Total not exceeding)
Chapter 1.3.2
Hard Disk and Partition
Partition Boot Sector (PBR)
 This is the logical first sector, that is sector at the
start of a Primary Partition.
 This is also 512 byte area, which contains some
programs to initialize or run OS files. All Primary
Partitions have it’s own PBRs.
Extended Boot Sector (EBR)
 This is the logical first sector, that is the sector at
the start of the Extended Partition.
 This EBR contains a Partition Table, which lists the
available Logical Partitions inside Extended Partition.
That is it contains the Starting addresses of each
Logical Partitions.
Chapter 1.3.2
Hard Disk and Partition
Logical Extended Boot Sector (LEBR)
 This is the logical first sector residing at the
start of each Logical Partition.
 This is similar to PBR for Primary Partitions.
Chapter 1.3.2
Single OS Boot
 Whenever PC is turned ON, BIOS takes the
control, and it performs a lot of operations. It
checks the Hardware, Ports etc and finally it loads
the MBR program into memory (RAM).
 Now, Master Boot Record (MBR):- takes control of
the booting process. Functions of MBR, when
there is only one OS is installed in the system
are as given below:-
1. The boot process starts by executing code in the
first sector of the disk, MBR.
2. The MBR looks over the partition table to find the
Active Partition (where the OS will reside).
Chapter 1.3.2
Single OS Boot
3. Control is passed to that partition's
boot record (PBR) to continue booting.
4. The PBR locates the system-specific
boot files (such as Win98's io.sys or
WinXP’s ntoskrnl).
5. Then these boot files continue the
process of loading and initializing the
rest of the OS.
 Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
Two different types of Boot
Process in multiple OS
environment,
Microsoft way
Non-Microsoft way (or Third Party
Boot Loader way!)
 Chapter 1.3.2 Multiple OS Boot
 Microsoft way
 If Win98 is installed in the Primary
Partition, and afterwards WinXP is
installed in a Logical Partition, then
theoretically both OS should have their
own Boot Records, i.e PBR for Win98 and
LEBR for WinXP, which contain
program to boot the respective OS, so
that each individual OS can be booted up
by the MBR by passing control to
respective PBR of the OS as described in
previous section.
 Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
 Microsoft way
 But this does not happen in Microsoft Boot
loader! It does a peculiar thing, that it always
considers the current Active Partition as the
default System/Boot Partition.
 That is Primary Partition in which Win98 was
installed is the Active Partition, then when WinXP is
installed another partition, instead of writing the
code for booting in it's partition, WinXP writes the
code in current Active Partition (that is,
whereWin98 is installed)!
 Program responsible for loading the WinXP is ntldr
standing for NTLoader.
Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
Microsoft way
Theoretically, this should be in it’s partition,
but this copied to that of Win98.
Then files responsible for Win98 booting is
combined into a single file called
bootsect.dos and this is also placed in
the Win98 partition.
Then, WinXP creates another file called
boot.ini which contains the names of
Microsoft OSes installed and path for
System files of each OS.
Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
Microsoft way
 After all this prelims, Windows multiboot can be
represented as below:-
1. When BIOS hands over control to Microsoft MBR , this
program looks into Partition Table for Active Partition.
2. Then it hands over the control to the PBR of Active
Partition. In this case, the Active Partition is where
Win98 was installed.
3. But Win98 PBR has been altered by WinXP, and it no
longer contains Win98 boot program (like io.sys or
msdos.sys). But it contains ntldr! Peculiarity is that
one OS’s Boot program is in another OS’s Partition!
Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
Microsoft way
4. ntldr looks into boot.ini file and finds out
the Microsoft OSes installed in the System
and displays the option menu.
5. When user selects Win98, the file
bootsect.dos (which is in same
partition) is executed, and if WinXP is
selected, ntoskrnl is executed (which is
in another partition!).
Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
Benefit of multiple OS
 it’s very easy to configure
Drawbacks of multiple OS
 two OSes are not independent of each other.
 It is because, that Microsoft MBR always boots
into the Active Partion (that is it always boots into
Win98 Partition, but executes WinXP program!) and
from here other OSes are loaded.
 This does not provide flexibility of installing multiple
Microsoft OSes in a random order, because here
older version of OS should be installed first and then
newer versions of OSes should be installed.
Chapter 1.3.2
Multiple OS Boot
 This boot process also has two limitations:-
1. There can be only one Real Mode DOS based
OSes like Win95/Win98 along with NT based
OSes. If you want both Win95, Win98 with any
NT based OS, then it’s simply not possible.
2. Microsoft MBR looks for Active Status in
Primary Partitions only and not in Logical
Partitions. This means, Microsoft OSes should be
installed in Primary Partitions only if it should be
bootable (For this reason itself, WinXP boot file
ntldr is placed in Primary Partition of Win98
instead of it’s own Logical Partition).