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Windows Boot Manager
The Windows Boot Manager (BOOTMGR) is the bootloader provided by Microsoft for Windows NT versions starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It is the first program launched by the BIOS or UEFI of the computer and is responsible for loading the rest of Windows. It replaced the NTLDR present in older versions of Windows. The boot sector or UEFI loads the Windows Boot Manager (a file named BOOTMGR on either the system or the boot partition), accesses the Boot Configuration Data store and uses the information to load the operating system through winload.exe or winresume.exe on BIOS systems, and winload.efi and winresume.efi on UEFI systems. Launching 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. The VB ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The early 1980s and home computers, rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the List of the largest software companies, largest software maker, one of the Trillion-dollar company, most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Active Partition
A boot flag is a 1-byte value in a non-extended partition record, within a master boot record. It appears at the beginning of a partition record, as the value 0x80. A value of 0x00 indicates the partition does not have the boot flag set. Any other value is invalid. Its primary function is to indicate to a MS-DOS/MS Windows-type boot loader which partition to boot. In some cases it is used by Windows XP/2000 to assign the active partition the letter "C:". The active partition is the partition where the boot flag is set. DOS and Windows allow only one boot partition to be set with the boot flag. Other boot loaders used by third-party boot managers (such as GRUB or XOSL) can be installed to a master boot record and can boot primary or extended partitions, which do not have the boot flag set. There are many disk editors that can modify the boot flag, such as Disk Management in Windows, GPartEd in Linux, and fdisk. Some BIOSes test if the boot flag of at least one partition is set, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Commercial Software
Commercial software, or, seldom, payware, is a computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes. Commercial software can be proprietary software or free and open-source software. Background and challenge While software creation by programming is a time and labor-intensive process, comparable to the creation of physical goods, the reproduction, duplication and sharing of software as digital goods is in comparison disproportionately easy. No special machines or expensive additional resources are required, unlike almost all physical goods and products. Once the software is created it can be copied in infinite numbers, for almost zero cost, by anyone. This made commercialization of software for the mass market in the beginning of the computing era impossible. Unlike hardware, it was not seen as trade-able and commercialize-able good. Software was plainly shared for free (hacker culture) or distributed bundled with sold hardware, as part of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Command (computing)
In computing, a command is an instruction received via an external Interface (computing), interface that directs the behavior of a computer program. Commonly, commands are sent to a program via a command-line interface, a scripting language, script, a network protocol, or as an event triggered in a graphical user interface. Many commands support arguments to specify input and to modify default behavior. Terminology and syntax varies but there are notable common approaches. Typically, an option or a flag is a name (without Whitespace character, whitespace) with a prefix such as dash or Slash (punctuation), slash that modifies default behavior. An option might have a required value that follows it. Typically, flag refers to an option that does not have a following value. A parameter is an argument that specifies input to the command and its meaning is based on its position in the command line relative to other parameters; generally ignoring options. A parameter can specify anything ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Windows Registry
The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and user interfaces can all use the registry. The registry also allows access to counters for profiling system performance. In other words, the registry or Windows Registry contains information, settings, options, and other values for programs and hardware installed on all versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems. For example, when a program is installed, a new subkey containing settings such as a program's location, its version, and how to start the program, are all added to the Windows Registry. When introduced with Windows 3.1, the Windows Registry primarily stored configuration information for COM-based components. Windows 95 and Windows NT extended its use to rationalize and centralize the information in the profusion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Boot
A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece. Traditionally made of leather or rubber, modern boots are made from a variety of materials. Boots are worn both for their functionality and for reasons of style and fashion. Functional concerns include: protection of the foot and leg from water, mud, pestilence (infectious disease, insect bites and stings, snake bites), extreme temperatures, sharp or blunt hazards (e.g. work boots may provide steel toes), physical abrasion, corrosive agents, or damaging radiation; ankle support and traction for strenuous activities such as hiking; and durability in harsh conditions (e.g. the underside of combat boots may be reinforced with hobnails). In some cases, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a database system. Often the term "database" is also used loosely to refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database. Before digital storage and retrieval of data have become widespread, index cards were used for data storage in a wide range of applications and environments: in the home to record and store recipes, shopping lists, contact information and other organizational data; in business to record presentation notes, project research and notes, and contact information; in schools as flash c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Firmware
In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ..., firmware is software that provides low-level control of computing device Computer hardware, hardware. For a relatively simple device, firmware may perform all control, monitoring and data manipulation functionality. For a more complex device, firmware may provide relatively low-level control as well as hardware abstraction Service (systems architecture), services to higher-level software such as an operating system. Firmware is found in a wide range of computing devices including personal computers, smartphones, home appliances, vehicles, computer peripherals and in many of the integrated circuits inside each of these larger systems. Firmware is stored in non-volatile memory either read-only memory (ROM) or progra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Hibernation (computing)
Hibernation (also known as suspend to disk, or Safe Sleep on Macintosh computers) in computing is powering down a computer while retaining its state. When hibernation begins, the computer saves the contents of its random access memory (RAM) to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage. When the computer is turned on the RAM is restored and the computer is exactly as it was before entering hibernation. Hibernation was first implemented in 1992 and patented by Compaq, Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston, Texas. Microsoft's Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11 employ a type of hibernation (Fast Startup) by default when shutting down. Uses After hibernating, the hardware is powered down like a regular shutdown. The system can have a total loss of power for an indefinite length of time and then resume to the original state. Hibernation is mostly used in laptops, which have limited battery power available. It can be set to happen automatically on a low battery alarm. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Device Driver
In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used. A driver communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device (drives it). Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface. Purpose The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Ntoskrnl
ntoskrnl.exe (short for Windows NT operating system kernel executable), also known as the kernel image, contains the kernel and executive layers of the Microsoft Windows NT kernel, and is responsible for hardware abstraction, process handling, and memory management. In addition to the kernel and executive layers, it contains the cache manager, security reference monitor, memory manager, scheduler (Dispatcher), and blue screen of death (the prose and portions of the code).Russinovich, MSystems Internals Tips and Trivia ''SysInternals Information'' Overview x86 versions of ntoskrnl.exe depend on bootvid.dll, hal.dll and kdcom.dll (x64 variants of ntoskrnl.exe have these DLLs embedded in the kernel to improve performance). However, it is not a native application thus it is not linked against ntdll.dll. Instead, ntoskrnl.exe has its own entry point "KiSystemStartup" that calls the architecture-independent kernel initialization function. Because it requires a static copy of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |