Questions tagged [boot]
Bootstrapping (booting) process, utilities and customisation.
90 questions
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Linux hangs at boot with `invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP` on Pentium II Mendocino [closed]
Linux 5.10 (Devuan 4) on a Slot 1 Celeron Mendocino was hanging at boot with Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!. The boot log (directed to the serial port so it didn't ...
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What do these errors mean in Windows XP Professional? [closed]
I have an old PC with Windows XP Professional installed.
It was working normally.
The PC is connected to a Biesse machine (model Rover A3.30 manufactured in 2007).
This machine is operated by software ...
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6
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Did the CDC 7600 have a 'deadstart switch panel' like the 6600?
The CDC 6600 had a panel of 12 rows of 12 switches which was used to start the machine. A 12-word program for Peripheral Processor 0 (PP0) could be set up on the switches and loaded into PP0 memory, ...
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How plausible is this anecdote about "toggling in" an operating system?
The parody essay Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1983) states:
What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front ...
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How does NTLDR determine which partition it was booted from? Which versions require the partition number to be passed in the DH register?
The GRUB4DOS README says that the boot partition number must be passed to NTLDR (Windows NT--2000--XP bootloader file) in register DH, in addition to the BIOS boot disk drive number in DL.
However, ...
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Bad blocks... or SCSI termination issue on Amiga 2000?
I have my Amiga 2000 system set up with about 3 SCSI drives and a SCSI scanner.
The system was having trouble booting. I disconnected the scanner and the system now boots, but one HD is showing bad ...
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3
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Differentiating between Windows 98 boot menu selections
The bootloader of Windows 98 (if configured so via msdos.sys) can display a boot menu after io.sys is loaded, but before config.sys is processed. The bootloader can even chainload another version of ...
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Which PDP-8 boot process variations did exist?
There's a general boot process for PDP-8, described in many documents at bitsavers.org. That includes first manually entering RIM bootloader through a control panel, running it to load BIN loader from ...
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4
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2
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Best practices for an installer updating CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
Installers for DOS applications, particularly ones which interface with particular hardware or provide networking services, often have to add lines to CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Obviously there's ...
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Why does MS-DOS 6.22 boot so slowly?
I'm running MS-DOS 6.22 and other versions of MS-DOS in qemu-system-i386, and I've noticed that MS-DOS 6.22 boots very slowly: several seconds. Why is it, and how can it be fixed?
Some more info:
...
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What is this FreeDOS kernel loader found on the “W3x4NTFS” disk image?
I've found an io.sys file which looks like an uncompressed FreeDOS kernel (kernel.sys), prefixed with a 4048-byte loader starting with MZ, containing the following ASCII strings:
Disk read error.
...
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Why does the MS-DOS 4.0 and 6.22 boot sector change the disk parameter table?
I'm talking about this piece of code (see also full MSBOOT.ASM file), present in both MS-DOS 4.0 and 6.22:
; mov byte ptr [di-2], 1 ;AN000; Head settle time
;J.K. Change the head settle to 15 ...
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12
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Triple-booting Windows NT 4.x/5.x, Windows 9x, and MS-DOS using NTLDR
I was pretty sure booting a non-NT OS (DOS, Windows 9x, and even Linux) via NTLDR was as simple as just extracting the boot sector (the VBR) into c:\bootsect.dos and declaring something like this in c:...
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How to fix old PC with black screen, POST code 00h, and no beeps after CMOS battery replacement and BIOS flash?
I’m facing a serious issue with my old PC featuring an APC Raptor AT-11/04/03 motherboard and AMIBIOS from American Megatrends (1997). I was getting a "low CMOS battery" error, so I soldered ...
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Boot sector code which can boot both MS-DOS and PC DOS
Has there been boot sector code (either as binary or assembly source) released, which can boot MS-DOS and PC DOS, by autodetecting the files found in the root directory of the FAT12 or FAT16 ...
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