Computer Operating Systems PDF

DH33 34
Computer Operating Systems 1
June 2005
© SQA
Computer Operating Systems 1 DH33 34
Acknowledgements
SQA and COLEG wish to thank James Watt College and West Lothian College for the
development of this material.
Grateful thanks are expressed to the Microsoft Corporation for permission to use
screen shots throughout this publication.
© Scottish Qualifications Authority – Material developed by James Watt College of Further and
Higher Education.
This publication is licensed by SQA to COLEG for use by Scotland’s Colleges as commissioned
materials under the terms and conditions of COLEG’s Intellectual Property Rights document,
September 2004.
No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written consent of COLEG and
SQA.
© SQA Version 1 2 Developed by COLEG

Contents
Acknowledgements 2
Introduction to the unit 7
What this unit is about 7
Outcomes 7
Unit structure 8
How to use these learning materials 9
Symbols used in this unit 9
Other resources required 11
Assessment information 13
How you will be assessed 13
When and where you will be assessed 13
What you have to achieve 13
Opportunities for reassessment 13
Section 1: The structure and function of an operating system 15
Introduction to this section 17
Assessment information for this section 18
The main functional elements of a computer operating system 19
The function of the user interface 25
The function of the file system 31
Drive letters 31
The function of device drivers 38
The function of memory management 41
The function of the kernel 45
The function of utility programs 46

Using the internet 54
The function of an application program interface (API) 56
The function of operating system configuration files 58
Graphical user interface 60
Summary of this section 64
Answers to SAQ 65
Answers to activities 66
Section 2: Using a graphical environment to operate a computer 67
Starting up and shutting down the system 73
Creating and exploring hierarchical file storage structures 76
Copying, renaming and moving files and folders 82
Starting and stopping programs 86
Controlling printing 87
Using the online help facility 89
Answers to SAQ 91
Section 3: Install and configure operating environments 93
Installing a command line OS 99
Configuring the command line environment 104
Installing a graphical user environment 107

Configuring the graphical environment 109
Answers to SAQ 117
Section 4: Install and configure system and application software 119
Installing system software in a graphical environment 125
Installing system software in a command line environment 131
Installing application software in a graphical environment 132
Installing application software in a command line environment 139
Answers to SAQ 146
Work Log 147


Introduction to the unit

What this unit is about
This unit is designed to enable candidates to gain an understanding of typical current
computer operating systems. Candidates will learn how to use and install both
operating system and applications software. Candidates will become confident in using
a graphical user interface. Candidates will also gain experience of installing and
configuring system-level software (e.g. device drivers) as well as applications software.
It is intended for candidates on any computing or IT course who require knowledge and
skills in operating system function and operation.
Outcomes
The unit comprises four outcomes.
• Outcome 1 – Describe the structure and function of an operating system.
• Outcome 2 – Use a graphical environment to operate a computer.
• Outcome 3 – Install and configure an operating environment.
• Outcome 4 – Install and configure system and application software.
The first outcome is theoretical and ensures the candidate develops a knowledge of the
structure of a modern operating system and understands the functions and
relationships between main functional elements of such a system.
The second outcome covers the effective basic operation and control of a computer
using a graphical environment such as Microsoft Windows or a UNIX/Linux-based
graphical environment such as X-windows.
The third outcome covers the installation and configuration of operating systems. You
will gain experience of installing and setting up both a command line environment and
then a more complex, graphical operating system such as Windows.
The final outcome covers the effective installation of different types of system and user
software, including device drivers, utility programs and generic application programs.
Note that, although less used these days by ordinary users, command line skills are
still considered important and are required in particular if the student wishes to attempt
more technical units such as HN unit Computer Hardware: Hardware Installation and
Maintenance & Fault Finding or if working in an IT support role.
It is important to appreciate that, despite a practical requirement to install and configure
the MS-DOS 6.22 command line environment, its use will not be assessed here.
The required command line skills are developed in HN units such as Computer
Operating Systems 2 and Multi User Operating Systems.

Unit structure
This unit contains the following study sections:
Approx.
Section number and title study time
1 The structure and function of an operating system 10 hours
2 Using a graphical environment to operate a computer 7 hours
3 Install and configure operating environments 12 hours
4 Install and configure system and application software 11 hours

How to use these learning materials

In addition to having an overall aim and a number of objectives, most sections have a
number of in-built exercises. Key concepts are introduced in each section, so
candidates are strongly advised to work through the sections in sequence and not to
skip any of the exercises, even if they have some previous experience of operating
systems.
Symbols used in this unit

These learning materials allow you to work on your own with tutor support. As you work
through the course, you will encounter a series of symbols which indicate that
something follows that you are expected to do. You will notice that as you work through
the study sections you will be asked to undertake a series of self assessed questions,
activities and tutor assignments. An explanation of the symbols used to identify these is
given below.
Self assessed question
? 1
This symbol is used to indicate a self-assessed question (SAQ). Most commonly,

SAQs are used to check your understanding of the material that has already been
covered in the sections.
This type of assessment is self contained; everything is provided within the section to
enable you to check your understanding of the materials.
The process is simple:
• you are set SAQs throughout the study section
• you respond to these by writing either in the space provided in the assessment
itself or in your notebook
• on completion of the SAQ you turn to the back of the section to compare the
model SAQ answers to your own
• if you are not satisfied after checking your responses turn to the appropriate
part of the study section and go over the topic again.
Remember – the answers to SAQs are contained within the study materials. You are
not expected to guess at these answers.

Activity
A 1
This symbol indicates an activity, which is normally a task you will be asked to do that
should improve or consolidate your understanding of the subject in general or a
particular feature of it.
Remember that the SAQs and activities contained within your package are intended to
allow you to check your understanding and monitor your own progress throughout the
course. It goes without saying that the answers to these should only be checked after
the SAQ or activity has been completed. If you refer to these answers before
completing the SAQs or activities, you cannot expect to get maximum benefit from your
course.
Tutor assignment – formative assessment
T 1
This symbol means that a tutor assignment is to follow. These will be found at the end
of each study section. The aim of the tutor assignment is to cover and/or incorporate
the main topics of the section and prepare you for unit (summative) outcome
assessment.

Other resources required

Section 1
• Access to online resources, technical texts, journals and trade magazines.
• A stand-alone personal computer with a graphical operating environment (Windows
XP) installed.
• A supply of work log sheets, either supplied by the tutor or copied from the end of
this unit.
Section 2
Parts 1 and 2:
• Access to a computer with no critical data or applications loaded (all the directories
and files stored in the computer will be removed).
• A set of MS-DOS version 6.22 installation disks (consisting of three 1.44MB double-
sided, high-density 3½ inch floppy disks).
• A working printer attached to the PC.
Parts 3 and 4:
• Access to a computer with no operating system installed. A hard disk drive of at
least 2GB capacity and a minimum of 128MB of RAM is recommended.
• A Microsoft Windows XP installation compact disk, with End User Licence
Agreement (EUL)A and CD key.
• A computer with the capability of booting from CD or a bootable 3½ inch floppy disk
that provides a generic CD driver.
Section 3
Parts 1 and 2:
• Access to a computer with no critical data or applications loaded (all the directories
and files stored in the computer will be removed).
• A set of MS-DOS version 6.22 installation disks (consisting of three 1.44MB double-
sided, high-density 3½ inch floppy disks).
• A working printer attached to the PC.
Parts 3 and 4:
• Access to a computer with no operating system installed. A hard disk drive of at
least 2GB capacity and a minimum of 128MB of RAM is recommended.
• A Microsoft Windows XP installation compact disk, with EULA and CD key.
• A computer with the capability of booting from CD or a bootable 3½ inch floppy disk

Section 4
• A stand-alone PC with Windows XP installed as the operating system.
• Use will be made of the Start/Run/cmd Windows option to launch an MS-DOS
session (also using the Alt + Return feature to switch to full-screen mode).
• A supply of work log sheets either supplied by the tutor or copied from the end
of this unit.

Assessment information
How you will be assessed
The first outcome requires candidates to produce responses to written questions
testing underpinning knowledge. The other three outcomes are practical in nature and
could be assessed either by a separate method of assessment for each outcome or by
a single, workbook-style method containing a number of assessment tasks. Candidates
will be required to submit a log of each assessment task and should be observed by an
assessor to ensure the work is valid. Assessment is therefore to be carried out in
supervised conditions.
When and where you will be assessed

The assessments should take place at the centre which is offering tuition for the unit. It
may be possible to arrange assessment at an alternative venue but this will be at the
discretion of the centre.
What you have to achieve

Full details of what has to be achieved are given at the beginning of each section.
Opportunities for reassessment

Normally, you will be given one attempt to pass an assessment with one reassessment
opportunity.
Your centre will also have a policy covering 'exceptional' circumstances, for example if
you have been ill for an extended period of time. Each case will be considered on an
individual basis and is at your centre's discretion (usually via written application), and
they will decide whether or not to allow a third attempt. Please contact your tutor for
details regarding how to apply.


Section 1: The structure and function of an

operating system


Introduction to this section
What this section is about

This section will describe how a generic operating system is structured in hierarchical
terms, what each ‘layer’ of the operating system does and how it interacts with the
other layers.
This section will look in detail at each level of the operating system model, and will also
include some features which are not strictly speaking part of the operating system but
are too important to omit. These will include utility software, which extends and
enhances the functionality of the operating system, together with antivirus software and
other current third-party additions which should be an essential component of every
personal computer system.
Outcomes, aims and objectives

On completion of this section, the student should have an understanding of and be able
to describe each of the nine subcategories contained in the section; namely:
• the main functional elements of a computer operating system;
• the function of the user interface;
• the function of the file system;
• the function of device drivers;
• the function of memory management;
• the function of the operating system kernel;
• the function of utility programs;
• the function of an application program interface;
• the function of operating system configuration files.
Approximate study time

It is suggested that a maximum of 10 hours should be allocated to complete this
section. This figure includes the time required for assessment purposes.

Students will need to have access to online resources, technical texts, journals and
trade magazines.

Assessment information for this section

The assessment for this section will comprise a set of 30 objective (multiple choice or
short response) questions. Assessment will take place in controlled conditions and will
be closed book. Candidates may not bring to the assessment any notes, textbooks,
handouts or other material.

Candidates will be assessed at their study centre on a pre-arranged date. Candidates
will be given sufficient notice of the assessment.

To be successful in this section the candidate must answer at least 60% of the
questions correctly.

Should the required 60% not be met, the candidate will be given the opportunity to
attend a reassessment at a date to be notified, when a different set of questions will be
issued.

The main functional elements of a computer operating system
What is an operating system?

One of the primary functions of an operating system (OS) is to provide an interface
between the user and the computer system.
A computer system comprises many parts, and these parts work in different ways and
at a variety of speeds, e.g. the central processing unit (CPU) and the random access
memory (RAM) it writes to and reads from; storage devices such as disk drives; input
devices and output devices, like keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, etc. So another
function of an OS is to allow these parts to interact with each other. It acts as an
interface between them.
From a user point of view, a computer system is a complicated collection of electronic
parts, all of which have their own functions to perform, and it is unlikely that a user
knows, or wants to know, how these parts work. What an OS does is to enable an
operator to use the system. It enables the user to make things happen. It interprets the
user input and from that produces output for the user.
The OS is the single most important item of software on a computer. It is loaded when
the computer is switched on, and runs continually thereafter until it is turned off. Even
while you are running a program such as a word processor, the OS is busy behind the
scenes, keeping the computer operating efficiently and helping your program to do its
job.
The OS is responsible for dealing with the hardware of the computer and providing
services to applications software (programs). So, when you tell your word processor to
print a document or save some text on disk, it is the OS which actually communicates
with the printer and transmits the data to it, or which moves the read/write heads on a
disk drive to the correct place and writes your information onto the magnetic surface.
There are three different categories of OS. They are:
1. Single user, single task
2. Single user, multi-tasking
3. Multi-user, multi-tasking
Single user, single task

The simplest type of OS, and now obsolete in general use, it was produced for the
early ‘stand-alone’ personal computers (PCs) and designed to be exactly that –
personal. Although someone else may use our PC when we aren’t there, it is only ever
used by one person at a time and only one application can be open at the one time.
Example: Microsoft® MS-DOS for use with the IBM-PC or compatible.

A 1.1
Research and record information about single user, single task operating systems.
Useful URLs:
http://www.imsai.net/history/imsai_history/cp-m_history.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/dos.htm
Useful texts:
The P.C. Support Handbook, The Configuration & Systems Guide by David Dick (page
44 onwards).
Single user, multi-tasking

Although you have sole use of your PC while you are sitting at it, you are quite likely to
want to do more than one thing at the same time. For example, you may want to print a
document at the same time as you are continuing to edit another document with a word
processor. You don’t want to wait until the computer has finished printing before you
can type anything new with the keyboard! Other examples of multi-tasking could be
downloading a file from the World Wide Web (WWW) while editing a document, or
playing an audio CD while working with a spreadsheet.
The solution is to let your PC’s processor run more than one program, or task, at the
same time. This is done by time slicing, in exactly the same way as different users are
time sliced on a multi-user computer. The processor’s time is split between the different
tasks, and they all appear to you to be running simultaneously. This is called pre-
emptive multi-tasking, as processes have no say over when they run or are paused,
and is used by all modern multi-tasking operating systems, including Windows 95
(though only for 32-bit versions of applications written specially for Windows 95 or
Windows NT/2000).
An alternative is co-operative multi-tasking, where a process is granted exclusive use
of the processor until it decides it is ready to voluntarily suspend itself – usually while it
is waiting for the user to press a key or move the mouse. This has advantage of
simplicity but relies on programmers writing their processes properly. It also makes it
difficult to implement an effective priority system if one process is more urgent than
others. This system was used by Windows 3.x, and in fact even Windows 95 will use
co-operative multi-tasking to share time between older (16-bit) applications.
Examples: Microsoft® Windows, Mac OS.

A 1.2
Research and record information about current single user, multi-tasking operating
systems.
Summarise the historical development of versions of Microsoft® Windows to the
present day.
Useful URLs:
http://www.levenez.com/windows/
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/windows.htm
Multi-user, multi-tasking
Larger computers, being more powerful and more expensive than a PC, are normally
used by more than one person at the same time. Each user sits at their own terminal –
a screen and keyboard just like that on a PC – which sends their commands to the
central computer and displays its responses.
Multi-user systems can split each user’s time up even further, so that each person
appears to be running more than one program at once. The more each user tries to do,
the slower their programs will appear to run, as their time slice has to be split between
all their different tasks.
Traditional multi-user systems offered only simple text-only terminals with none of the
sophistication of the graphics seen on PCs, but modern terminals offer a full graphical
interface.
So how does a computer spread itself among lots of users? Well, that depends on the
way it is designed.
Examples: UNIX, Linux, Solaris.
A 1.3
Research and record information about current multi-user, multi-tasking operating

systems.
Useful URLs:
http://vertigo.hsrl.rutgers.edu/ug/unix_history.html
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/linux/
The single processor system

Small multi-user systems are often physically very similar to PCs, and in particular they
only have one processor. As each user must get the use of the processor whenever

they want to communicate with the computer or run a program, it has to be shared.
This is done by dividing up the processor’s time into short intervals and allocating one
of these time slices to each user. So, the processor will service the first user for a few
milliseconds, then the second, then the next and so on. As the time slices are short and
each user is serviced many times every second, all the users have the impression that
their programs are running continuously.
The multiple processor system

More powerful computers often go a stage further and relieve the load of sharing a
single processor by having more than one processor. Where there are only a few
processors, users will still be allocated time slices on an available processor but each
processor will have to serve relatively fewer users and so each user will receive more
time and hence performance will be improved. In some multiple-processor computers,
each processor is responsible for a different task – for example, one might be used to
communicate with users’ terminals, one or more others to run users’ time-sliced
programs and yet another to control system functions such as disk storage and input or
output operations.
The very largest computers (one example is the Cray YM-P, used for heavyweight
mathematical calculations and producing much of the special effects footage in films
such as Jurassic Park) contain tens of thousands of identical processors; each of which
carries out a small part of a much larger calculation in parallel.
Distributed systems
Here, the user ‘sees’ a single computer system, but it is actually constructed from a
number of different host computers, which are connected together. This is completely
transparent to the user – all decisions about which specific computer any individual
user or program will use are taken by the distributed system’s operating system. Each
individual host within such a distributed system could be any type of computer, from a
single-processor PC up to a supercomputer.
Networked PCs
Increasingly often, businesses are deciding not to use large, multi-user computers but
to provide each user with their own single-user system and connect them together
using a local area network (LAN). A LAN requires the use of a network interface card
(NIC) in each computer, and the cards are connected by cable. The most common
cable type in use today is unshielded twisted-pair copper cable. It is also necessary to
use a network operating system (NOS) to provide the additional functionality required
by a network.
A network can provide the best of both worlds – each user has their own PC, and it is
able to access centrally stored information, and exchange files and electronic mail
easily with any other user connected to the network. Sharing common resources such
as printers, CD drives and modems, to name but a few, is another benefit of networked
systems.
Examples: Windows 2000 Server, Novell Netware and UNIX/Linux.
A 1.4
Research and record information about current network operating systems.

Useful URLs:
• http://www.its.strath.ac.uk/courses/pc-networking/mod2.html
you may also find it useful to revisit some of the useful URLs from the previous
activities.
Real-time computer systems

Computers are increasingly being used to help (or even replace) humans in controlling
equipment and processes. Modern factories build everything from cars to clothes using
robots, and those cars are likely to have engines and braking systems controlled by
computers. Whenever we fly in a modern aircraft or ride in a train, our safety and
comfort are in the hands of computers.
These computers, whether controlling the Space Shuttle or your kitchen toaster, share
one common feature – they must all monitor and react very quickly to external physical
events. Computer systems capable of doing this reliably are said to operate in real
time.
All computer systems respond to important events which occur by sending signals,
called interrupts, to the processor. These tell the processor to stop whatever it is doing
and attend to an urgent event – such as a key being pressed on the keyboard or a fault
condition. When the event has been handled, the processor can return to whatever it
was doing before it was rudely interrupted. Obviously, a normal single- or multi-user
computer should minimise the frequency of such interrupts so that the processor can
spend as much of its time as possible running users’ programs – this is the priority in
most general-purpose computers.
A real-time system is exactly the opposite – its priority is the speedy and effective
servicing of many frequent and varied interrupts; any ‘normal’ program will execute only
when the processor has time to do so. Real-time systems offer guaranteed maximum
response times to interrupts – the interrupt latency – obviously important if the
computer is controlling a chemical plant or nuclear power station!
Batch processing
When general-purpose computers were first developed commercially in the 1960s and
1970s, they were not the small, powerful, interactive tools we see on our desks
nowadays. Originally it was not possible for users to interact with the computer directly
at all – their programs had to be produced on a stack of punched cards, which were fed
into the computer by an operator and the results (eventually) delivered back in the form
of a pile of printout.
Such computers were used mainly by business for batch operations such as
calculating and printing customers’ bills, often running on such a single task for hours
or days at a time.

Although all large modern computers can provide interactive multi-user capabilities,
batch operations are still a common and effective method of working. Banks, for
example, process millions of cheques each month; these are not entered individually
by hand but are processed together in a long run, usually overnight.
A key feature of batch processing is that it is very far from being real-time! If you buy
something with your credit card, this does not produce an immediate response from the
bank’s computer – no interrupt is generated to make you immediately poorer! There
may indeed be quite a delay between the event and it being processed – anything from
hours to days.
Another term often used for such an operation is background processing – the long,
non-interactive job is executed ‘in the background’, often while users and other
programs are interacting with the system in real time.

The function of the user interface

The OS is not only the most important piece of software on a computer, it is also likely
to be the most complex. It will not be one single monolithic program but can, like our
image of software in general, be further broken down into a number of layers. Each
layer is a different component of the operating system, with different responsibilities
and privileges. A typical model applicable to many different operating systems has the
structure shown in the following diagram.
Input / Output User Interface

(Controls device
drivers)
File Management
System
Kernel
Memory Management
We will look in detail at each of these five layers in turn.

The user interface is the layer of software with which the user interacts directly – the
command line interface (CLI) in MS-DOS and UNIX type OSs, or the graphical user
interface (GUI) in Windows, OS/2 and X-Windows in UNIX/Linux.
It is debatable whether the user interface is truly part of the OS or not. It may have no
more privileges than a user application, and be programmed in an identical way.
Because its function is so necessary, however, it is normally considered as a form of
‘official’ utility program. This rather loose connection with the operating system has one

significant advantage – it is usually quite practical to replace a user interface with an

alternative one! Consider the Windows 95 interface for example. By default it used the
‘new look’ desktop and taskbar, but this interface (however much Microsoft may have
suggested otherwise) was not a vital component of Windows 95, but just a GUI like any
other. You could have chosen to replace it with the Windows 3.1 Program Manager,
which was included in the early releases, or with any of a number of third-party
commercial alternatives.
The user interface component of an operating system is one example of a human-
computer interface (HCI). The design and implementation of HCIs is a specialist field in
its own right, but at a simple level we can define a number of functions we would
expect a practical user interface to provide.
The primary objective of any user interface must simply be to let us interact with the
computer. It must provide an input capability (for example, from a keyboard, mouse or
touch-screen), and a means of output. In older computers, output was often entirely by
means of text printed on paper by a teletype or line printer. As technology improved,
this became text displayed on a visual display unit (VDU), and developed into full-
colour, full-screen graphics.
More specifically, the user interface is responsible for giving the user the means to load
and run a program, and then for controlling and assisting the program’s interactions
with the user. The user interface must also let the user modify system settings, control
system functions and ask for information.
Command line interfaces

Dated operating systems, such as MS-DOS, VMS and older versions of UNIX/Linux
present a purely character-based CLI to the user. A prompt is displayed on the screen
to indicate that the CLI is ready to accept input (the infamous ‘C:>’ prompt in the case
of MS-DOS) and the user is required to type one of a restricted, predefined set of
single-word commands on the keyboard.
These commands are categorised as internal if the CLI can process and carry out the
command internally, or external if the CLI needs to call and run a program to carry out
the function required. Commands will often be followed by one or more parameters
and switches.
A parameter is information which the CLI (or the program it will run to execute the
command) requires in order to carry out its function. For example, the MS-DOS
command dir displays a list of the files in a directory or folder.
C:> dir
on its own lists the files in the folder which is currently open. If we give the command a
parameter, however, such as:
C:> dir windows
the CLI knows that we want to list the files and/or the subdirectories in the windows
folder, not the folder which is currently in use.
The equivalent UNIX/Linux command to list all the files in a directory is
$ ls

N.B. Commands in UNIX/Linux are case sensitive. The above command comprises the
lower case letter ‘l’ and a lower case ‘s’. The first character in the command is not the
numeral ‘1’.
A switch is a control we want to apply to a command, to modify the way it executes or
how it displays its output. In MS-DOS, switches are usually preceded by the forward
slash character, ‘/’, and are placed at the end of the command line after all parameters.
For example:
C:> dir windows /p
This lists the files in the windows folder as before, but this time if there are too many to
fit on the screen without scrolling, it pauses the output until a key is pressed after each
screenful to give us the chance to read it. The result of running the above command
would look something like the following:

Volume in drive C is OS
Volume Serial Number is 2245-1B01
Directory of C:\WINDOWS
. <DIR> 24/08/00 20:00 .

.. <DIR> 24/08/00 20:00 .
SYSTEM <DIR> 24/08/00 20:00 SYSTEM
WINSOCK DLL 21,504 28/08/00 19:27 WINSOCK.DLL
WIN INI 8,252 08/06/01 21:50 WIN.INI
HWINFO EXE 110,592 23/04/99 22:22 HWINFO.EXE
NETDET INI 7,885 23/04/99 22:22 NETDET.INI
PIDGEN DLL 27,616 23/04/99 22:22 PIDGEN.DLL
SUBACK BIN 229,680 23/04/99 22:22 SUBACK.BIN
W98SETUP BIN 68,096 23/04/99 22:22 W98SETUP.BIN
HELP <DIR> 24/08/00 20:03 HELP
LICENSE TXT 32,424 23/04/99 22:22 LICENSE.TXT
SUPPORT TXT 845 23/04/99 22:22 SUPPORT.TXT
SYSTEM32 <DIR> 24/08/00 20:03 SYSTEM32
MPLAYER EXE 159,744 23/04/99 22:22 MPLAYER.EXE
CURSORS <DIR> 24/08/00 20:04 CURSORS
RUNHELP CAB 6,325 4/08/00 20:04 JAVA
COMMAND <DIR> 24/08/00 20:04 COMMAND
Press any key to continue . . .
An example from UNIX/Linux might be:
$ ls -l
which displays detailed (in long format) information about each file. Note the subtle
difference in syntax. The DOS switch is preceded by a ‘/’, while the UNIX/Linux switch
is preceded by a ‘ – ‘.
Other operating systems offer similar command-line functions, although they may have
different names and use different switches.

Graphical user interfaces

In contrast, a GUI expects the user to type little or nothing at the keyboard. Almost all
operations can be done using a mouse to point at menus of commands, or pictures
(icons) on the screen representing commands, and executing them by clicking a mouse
button.
Parameters and switches are replaced by dialogue boxes – pop-up windows
containing controls. Controls are graphical elements which we can manipulate by
clicking or dragging with the mouse. They include check boxes (when checked, the
switch is on, when unchecked the switch is off); radio buttons (a set of options, only
one of which can be ‘on’ at a time); list boxes (lists of, for example, file names from
which to select a parameter); edit boxes (boxes on the screen containing lines where
we can type in parameters); and buttons (to select further options or dialogue boxes).
Dialogue Box
Drop-Down List Box Buttons
Radio Buttons
Check boxes
Edit Box
Microsoft Corporation
If we wanted to obtain a listing of the contents of a directory (or folder) using Windows
2000, then by double clicking on a particular drive icon and then the given folder’s icon,
the output to screen could be similar to the one shown.


The function of the file system
Drive letters
Firstly, let us consider the drive letters assigned to the various disk drives and how they
come to be. As you will already be aware, the floppy disk drive (if your computer still
has one) is the A: drive, the hard disk drive is the C: drive with the CD drive (in most
cases) the D: drive.
Why is the main storage medium known as the C: drive, and not as you might expect,
the A: drive?
To answer this question we must go back in history to a time when computers did not
have a hard disk drive (HDD). These computers had two floppy disk drives (FDDs)
which were assigned the letters A: and B:. The A: drive was the boot device (i.e. where
the computer looked for the system files which allowed it to start). A system disk was
inserted into this drive, and the machine was switched on. The second drive (B:) was
used to hold a disk which served as a storage medium for programs and the data used
by these. These early floppy disks had very limited storage capacity (360KB, 720KB or
1.44MB). As applications became more sophisticated (required more storage space),
and the amounts of data being processed increased, it became more and more difficult
to have all the necessary information stored on one disk. The HDD evolved and it was
assigned the next available letter (C:).
The first level of ‘real’ operating system we will
meet is the file system. This is the layer of
system software responsible for organising and
managing the storage of data on a permanent
medium. Most of this storage is still magnetic, in
the form of hard and floppy disk drives (and
perhaps tape streamers), although optical media
A: such as CD-ROM and DVD together with
external semiconductor EEPROM devices
(‘travelling disks’ connected to a universal serial
bus) are becoming more common.
C: Concepts
On any computer system, it is desirable that
users have a way of storing and retrieving their
information, and programs are available for
loading into memory whenever they are
D: required. This leads us to the idea of a file
system, where information is structured and
organised in a similar way to any kind of manual
storage system.
Imagine the computer as a filing cabinet as represented above. We can picture each
disk drive as a drawer in the cabinet, capable of holding our information. We could just

fill a drawer by throwing individual sheets of paper into it in no particular order but, as
we all know, finding something again in such a mess is a slow and difficult process!
Instead, we would normally staple or clip together pages which were connected (such
as those making up a letter). We can organise computer storage similarly – each
document we create is stored as a single entity called a file.
Again using our filing cabinet analogy, we could organise things even better by placing
folders into the drawer and filing documents sharing a common topic in the same
folder. A computer file system lets us do just that – we can create folders, also known
as directories, to hold files we would like to group together (for example all the chapters
of a book or all the bills we have sent to a particular client).
The logical structure of a file system

Every disk has a main, sometimes referred to as a ‘root’, directory where everything
else is stored. If we want to create folders to hold particular categories of files, these
are placed within this root directory. We can also choose to subdivide a folder by
placing not just files inside it but other folders as well – and they in turn can hold other
folders and so on. We have complete freedom to organise the files on a disk in any
way we wish.
So, for example, on a simple single-user PC we might have three folders in the root –
one to hold our programs, one to hold our letters and another for a book we are writing.
The directory also holds a few miscellaneous documents. We can subdivide the folders
still further if we want.
See what our disk might look like in the following illustration.


Letters

Chapter 1

Root Book Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Programs
Miscellaneous files
Each file and folder must be given a name, and this must be one which has not already
been used for a file or folder at the same level (i.e. inside the same folder). So, in the
example above, we could not have two letters with the same name, although we could
have a letter with the same name as one of the documents in, say, Chapter 2 of our
book.

On most multi-user systems, each user is given a directory somewhere in the file
system (usually called by their name) and can then organise folders and files within
that as they choose. The overall structure is created and maintained by the system
administrator. A user would not normally be able to see anyone else’s directory – the
file management system would protect each user’s files from everyone else. If you
wanted to share a file with a colleague, however, the administrator could tell the file
system that you wanted to do so, and to specify who was to have access. You could
also say whether your colleague was to be allowed to modify the document, or merely
to read it, and you can usually specify a range of permissions for different categories or
groups of users.
The physical structure of a file system

Underneath this structure of folders and files, the computer has to have some way of
remembering where on disk it stores your information! To allow this, a disk is formatted
before use with a pattern of concentric circles called tracks. The disk (which literally is
a circular disk covered in magnetic material) is also divided into a number of equal arcs
or sectors.
Track 79
Track 78
Track 77
Track 3
Track 2
Track 1
Track 0
Floppy disks normally have 80 tracks on each side of the disk, and are split into 18
sectors. Hard disks can store data much more densely, and will have hundreds or even
thousands of tracks, usually split into 63 sectors.

Example:
A 3.5" floppy disk with 80 tracks and 18 sectors will have 80 x 18 = 1,440 storage
units.
Each holds 512 bytes, so the disk can hold 1,440 x 512 = 737,280 bytes
(720Kbytes) per side. As each disk is double-sided, this gives us a total of 2 x 720 =
1,400Kbytes (1.4Mbytes) per disk.
We therefore have a two-dimensional structure of storage spaces, each uniquely

specified by the track it is on and its sector position within that track. For simplicity,
each sector on each track (wherever on the disk it is) is used to store exactly 512 bytes
of data.
For a hard disk, the storage is made three-dimensional by stacking a number of
individual disks on top of each other around a central spindle, each with its own set of
read/write heads and positioning mechanism. This, coupled with the much greater
recording densities possible with the rigid, faster-spinning disks used, and a read/write
mechanism which does not touch the surface of the disk, gives hard disk drives a much
greater storage capacity than floppies. They are also much faster to access and can
transfer data at a much faster rate.
Blocks and clusters

While we could specify any storage area on the disk by giving its track and sector ‘co-
ordinates’, this would mean giving applications and other software sight of the physical
structure of our disks. This might confuse users, and would not be wise from a security
point of view. We really want to construct a more abstract interface for programmers
and users to work with in their interactions with the file system, and leave the physical
structure of the disk to the next lower operating system layer (input/output).
The most common such method is to group a number of storage areas together into
blocks, or clusters, of a larger size. Another name for a block or cluster is allocation
unit. These blocks are usually made up from contiguous areas on the disk for speed of
access, and are typically 1, 2, 4, 8 or even 16 kilobytes in size. (In general, the larger
the capacity of a disk, the larger its block size.)
Files are then stored in units of blocks, rather than sectors, and these blocks are
identified to the file system simply by a number, from 0 up to the number of blocks on
the disk. The terms block and cluster are generally completely equivalent – different file
systems just use different terminology.
Directories
We have already met the idea of directories, or folders, when we looked at organising
our files. But what are they? Well, each folder, including the root, is a structured list (or
table) held on disk and maintained by the file system.

Each entry in the table (a directory entry) relates to the properties of a single file or
folder. An entry will typically contain the name of the file or folder and information about
its status – whether it is read-only, or can be modified or deleted; which users are
allowed to access it (in a multi-user or network situation), and whether it has any
special status (if it is a file connected with operating system itself, or if it is hidden from
users).
An entry will also contain some information relating to how big the file is, and where on
disk the file is stored (or, if it is another folder, where on disk its directory table is
stored). There are several different methods used for this which are dependent on the
system used for allocating and keeping track of free disk space.
A typical method is that used by Windows, where each directory entry contains the
number of the cluster which holds the start of the file’s data. If the file is smaller than
the cluster size for that disk, then this cluster will contain the whole file, and we need to
store no other information. But what happens if the file is larger than a single cluster?
How do we know where the rest of it is stored?
There are three possible solutions to this. Firstly, we could insist that files are stored
contiguously – then, as we know the first cluster and the file’s size, we shouldn’t have
any problem finding its data. This has the advantage of being extremely simple –
what’s the catch? Well, what happens if we still have lots of free space dotted about
our disk, but we try to save a file which is larger than any single available free area?
Our simple system has no way to split such a file up, so we are sunk. Also, this system
makes it impossible for us to easily know which areas on the disk are used and which
are free – we would need to maintain a separate free space map, which would occupy
additional space on disk and slow down the file system.
Alternatively, we could use a little of the space in each cluster to hold a pointer to the
next one (and possibly to the previous one as well, for clusters after the first, in case
something goes wrong). This is a technique called a linked list – it has many
advantages over a contiguous allocation system, but it also has disadvantages. Most
significantly, the input/output system has no idea where it will be going to read the next
cluster until it actually reads the previous one. This may not seem important, but it
badly affects performance in systems which attempt to automatically read ahead, or
buffer, data to speed up file access. Like contiguous allocation, this system also
suffers from the need to maintain some kind of separate free space map so we know
which clusters are available for allocation to a new or enlarged file.
The third solution (and the one adopted by Windows) is to use an index table called
the file allocation table (FAT). The table has as many entries as there are clusters on
the disk and the start cluster number from a file’s directory entry is used to point into
the table. This entry contains the number of the next cluster allocated for that file (or a
special value such as –1 if it is the end cluster), and this is used to point into the table
again and get the next cluster number, and so on until all the file’s clusters have been
accounted for. Not only does this system give us a compact and fast look-up table to
find all the clusters used for a particular file, but it also doubles as a free space map!
Any cluster which has not been allocated has another special value (such as –8) in its
entry in the table, and we can find a free cluster to allocate to a file simply by looking
through the table from the start until we meet an entry with this value.

The main drawback to this system is its vulnerability. If the index table is damaged or
destroyed, we have lost all of the information we need to know which cluster belongs to
which file – all we would have left is the first cluster number for each file from its
directory entry. For this reason Windows actually keeps backup copies of the FAT on
every disk, enabling system utility software to check and repair the FAT. It is also
common to keep an additional copy of the FAT as data in a special file, which gets
updated every time the computer starts up.
The FAT made use of by Windows has evolved over the years to cater for the
demands of larger capacity disk drives; these changes are reflected in the progressive
FAT16, FAT32 and NT File System (NTFS) metadata techniques.
An alternative to the index table system is used by UNIX and CP/M. Here, each file has
a block of data associated with it (its directory entry in CP/M, or its I-node entry in
UNIX), which includes a list of some or all of the data block numbers used to store its
data.
Disk management
The space on any disk drive is finite, and it would be unfair if any one process or user
were able to use so much of it that other processes were left with too little. To prevent
this, the file system in many advanced operating systems divides up available disk
space and allocates it as equally as possible to different users and to different
processes when they run. Where a process is given a proportional share of whatever
space is free at the time it runs, the form of allocation is called dynamic. Often,
however, each user on a multi-user system will be allocated a fixed amount of disk
space, which is the maximum available to them and their programs in total. This can
only be varied by applying to the system administrator and is known as static
allocation. Note that most single-user operating systems, including MS-DOS and
Windows, perform no form of disk space allocation. It is then left up to the user how
disk space will be used, and any program can use as much space as it wants.
File management
Even on a single-user system, we need to be careful about how information in files is
shared. What if one program tries to read information from a file at the same time that
another process or program is modifying it? The first program would not know whether
each piece of the information it read was old or new, and would end up with
inconsistencies in the data it was working with.
To prevent this, the file system controls access to shared files. When a program asks
the operating system to open a file for it to use, this is only permitted if no other
process is using the file at that time. If the file is already in use, the program has to wait
until it is free – just like borrowing a library book. This system is known as file locking
and is supported by most operating systems, including Windows. It has the advantage
that it is simple to implement but has one major disadvantage – the entire file is locked
and unavailable to other programs for an indeterminate time. If it is a large and
important file, for example a company database, many different programs or users may
be wanting access almost all the time. So how can they share the file more efficiently?
The key is to realise that these different users or programs are each likely to only want
access to one relatively small part of the file at a time – and these are likely to be

different parts. We could therefore split the file up into sections, or records, and lock
each section separately. When a program moves on to use a different part of the file,
the section it was using becomes unlocked and available for another process to
access. The optimum size for each record is a complex issue, but is generally not large
and may be as small as 128 bytes. This system of access control is called record
locking and is commonly found on multi-user or networked computers. It is supported
by UNIX and Windows, although programs which wish to use record locking must be
written specially to do so. If this is not done, then only the less efficient file locking will
be available to that program when it runs.
The function of device drivers

Below the file system is the layer which deals with the physical interaction of software
with the outside world – the input/output (I/O) system. All the physical communication
with external devices, such as disk drives, keyboard, printers and screen, is controlled
by this layer. Whenever a higher layer needs to access a device, for example when the
file system wants to read a block from disk, a request is sent downwards to the I/O
layer.
It is normally processes in the I/O layer which are called into action by the kernel when
an interrupt occurs. Interrupts are mostly caused by an external device such as a disk
drive or communications port signalling to say ‘I’m ready to take some more data’ or ‘I
have some data for you’. When the kernel receives an interrupt like this, it checks to
see which device it came from and then calls in an I/O process to actually deal with the
transfer.
There are two main categories of I/O – that where the data is in the form of single
numbers or characters (for example, keys pressed on a keyboard) and that where
larger blocks of data are to be transferred at the same time (for example, reading or
writing a block from disk).
Character I/O
This is characterised (pardon the pun!) by the small amount of data to be transferred
on each interrupt. This is not to say that overall a great deal of data may not be coming
or going, just that at any one time we are only dealing with one element, usually an 8-
bit byte or ASCII character.
Typical character-mode devices are the keyboard, mouse, joysticks, communication
ports and printers. Usually when an interrupt is received an I/O process is called, which
will carry out the actual reading or writing of the data, sending it to or getting from the
higher-level layer or application which is using the device concerned.
Block I/O
This is required where lots of data (for example, a 2,048 byte disk block) has to be read
into or written back out from memory. While it is possible for block mode I/O to be
carried out in just the same way as character mode, by a process reading or writing the
data one byte after another as quickly as possible, this is an awful waste of the
processor’s time.

Instead, it is normal for the interrupting device to carry out the transfer of the data into
memory by itself, using hardware. This is known as direct memory access (DMA), as it
is used wherever large amounts of data need to be transferred between a device and
contiguous memory locations as a block.
All that the I/O process needs to do is tell the device where in memory to start dumping
the data and when to start. Another interrupt will then be received when the device has
finished transferring the data, and the I/O process then sends a message to the higher-
level process telling it the data it wanted has arrived or been safely written out.
Device drivers/handlers
What is a device driver? One definition of a device driver is:
‘A program which controls a particular type of device that is attached to your computer.’
There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers, diskette drives, and
so on. When you buy an operating system, many device drivers are built into the
product. However, if you later buy a new type of device that the operating system didn't
anticipate, you'll have to install the new device driver. A device driver essentially
converts the more general I/O instructions of the operating system to messages that
the device type can understand.
Some Windows programs are virtual device drivers. These programs interface with the
Windows virtual machine manager. There is a virtual device driver for each main
hardware device in the system, including the hard disk drive controller, keyboard, and
serial and parallel ports. They are used to maintain the status of a hardware device that
has changeable settings. Virtual device drivers handle software interrupts from the
system rather than hardware interrupts.
In Windows operating systems, a device driver file usually has a file name suffix of DLL
or EXE. A virtual device driver usually has the suffix of VXD.
In a PC, neither the OS nor the Read Only Memory Basic Input/Output System
(ROMBIOS) contains code to deal with every type of I/O device which may be attached
to a computer, only the basic ones. If a more sophisticated device is added, for
example a higher-performance Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) disc drive, a
scanner or a modem, then some special software must be added to the operating
system. Other operating systems, such as UNIX, require such software for all input and
output devices attached to the system.
Such a program is called a device driver, or a device handler, and contains all the
program code needed to communicate with the device. It is not held in read-only
memory (ROM) like the BIOS, but is loaded into RAM from disk every time the
computer starts up. Once a device driver is loaded, the kernel is able to call one of the
device driver processes to deal with any interrupt from the device, and the I/O system
can use device driver processes to control it.
Device management
Where more than one program or process may want to use a peripheral device (such
as the printer we used as an example earlier), the I/O system is responsible for
controlling and sharing access to the device.

Perhaps the most common devices which have to be shared are printers. As a printer
can obviously only print one document at a time, simply locking the printer as if it were
a file would mean other programs waiting a very long time to print. Instead, it is more
efficient if the I/O system takes care of holding print jobs in a print queue, and
pretends to each program that its document has been printed immediately.
All the queued documents are held in a special file on disk, called a spool file. The I/O
system process which controls this is called a print spooler. It is usually possible to
control the operation of the print spooler from the user interface or with a utility program
– this lets us change the order in which queued jobs are printed (if one is urgent, for
example), or we could remove a job from the queue to save paper if we discover a
mistake in our document before it gets printed.
Other devices such as hard disk drives and CD-ROMs can also be shared, and
typically the I/O system makes sure that requests from the file system to access
information stored on different parts of a disk are sorted into the most appropriate order
before carrying them out.

The function of memory management

Below the I/O layer of an operating system is the memory management layer. This is
responsible for sharing the physical memory in the computer between the different
processes which want to use it, and dealing with the situation of a program requiring
more memory than is present or available.
What is memory?
Semiconductor memory is used to hold the programs which the processor is currently
executing as well as any data these programs are using. So, for example, when you
run a word processor program, both the program and any documents you type using it
are held in memory. Only when you save your document as a file does it actually get
written to disk in permanent form – most memory is volatile (it loses all the information
it holds when the computer is turned off).
Computers contain two principal types of memory. Most of the memory found in a
modern PC is RAM – this is the volatile stuff used to hold the programs you load from
disk, and their data.
The second form is ROM. This is memory which can only be read from; its contents
cannot normally be altered after it is manufactured. It also has the useful feature of
being non-volatile – unlike RAM, ROM doesn’t lose its content when switched off.
Together, these features make ROM ideal for one particular purpose – holding the
computer’s BIOS or start-up program.
Memory as a system resource

Memory capacity, like disk drives, is measured in bytes. As memory chips have got
larger, so we have increased our units of measurements, first to kilobytes and more
recently to megabytes.
1 Kilobyte = 1,024 bytes
1 Megabyte = 1,024 Kilobytes = 1,048,576 bytes
Although the multi-megabytes of RAM found in modern PCs may seem vast, it is soon
used up once users start running programs. Just like disk storage space or access to a
printer, memory is a vital system resource which must be carefully managed and
shared between programs and processes as they require it.
Memory management
At its simplest, memory management consists of loading a single program from disk
and allowing it free use of all the memory it can find. This was the approach adopted by
the older and now essentially obsolete single-user, single-tasking operating systems
such as CP/M and MS-DOS. In fact, later versions of both developed some ability to
have more than one program loaded at once and therefore also had to develop some
basic management facilities to ensure that physical memory was shared fairly between
them. Even then, if a program wanted more memory than was physically present or
allocated to it, it could not proceed and would usually freeze!

More complex situations arise, however, in any system which supports true multi-
tasking or is multi-user. Here, there is usually no effective limit on the number of
programs a user can load and run simultaneously, or to the amounts of memory each
may demand for its data. Obviously, no matter how much physical memory is present it
will, sooner or later, not be enough! On such systems, it is not good enough to refuse
the program the memory it needs; some method has to be contrived to provide it.
When a program demands the use of an area of memory which is not physically
present, the memory management layer of the operating system is invoked – usually
by a special interrupt generated by the processor itself. The program is not aware that
it has been paused, but the operating system now has the chance to do something to
get the program some memory from somewhere before letting it continue. So how do
we produce memory which does not exist – rabbit-like, from a hat? Almost! If we have
run out of the real thing, we must invent some fake stuff – known more formally as
virtual memory.
Protection
Usually, we would not want one process to be able to access memory used by another,
or by the operating system! To prevent this, segments are tagged with information
about which process ‘owns’ them, who else is permitted access and whether these
‘visiting’ processes are allowed to modify the contents of the segment or merely to read
data from it. Any attempt by a process to use a memory segment to which it has not
been granted access will be prevented.
Paging
The simplest solution to this apparent conundrum is to divide our physical memory into
a number of logical pages. When a program requires memory, either for itself when it is
loaded or later when it requests some extra for its data, we allocate it a number of
pages.
So what happens when all the pages are in use, and a program requests some more?
The memory management system looks through its records for a page which has either
been in memory the longest (the least recently loaded method) or which has not
actually been used for the longest time (the least recently used method). When the
most suitable page has been found, it is removed from memory and written out to a
special system file on the hard disk – the swap file. The page requested by the running
program is then read from disk into the now vacant page. This process is known as
swapping and provides a way of giving programs an apparently limitless amount of
virtual memory.
When a page which has been swapped out to the swap file on the hard disk is required
by a program, the memory manager is again triggered by the processor and can swap
the required page back into memory.
There is one apparent problem with this system – the pages of physical memory which
are swapped out to make room are unlikely to be the same pages that the program
wants to use. If a program requests Page 6, for example, what use is it to find that the
least recently used page was Page 3 and swapping that? The program does not know
anything about the swapping process, remember – it simply expects to find its memory
at the location it looks for it!

This is the real significance of virtual memory. Swapping is only part of the story.
Hardware, either within the processor or in a special chip called a memory
management unit (MMU), automatically translates the logical addresses used by
programs into the physical addresses corresponding to where the information is
actually stored. This process is also quite transparent to a program – it looks in
memory location 1234 for a piece of data and has absolutely no idea that it has actually
been re-directed to physical address 6789!
The mapping process uses a page table held in a special protected area of memory.
The program issues an address (the memory location it wants to access) to the
processor, which is split into two parts – the page number and an offset within that
page. Hardware in the MMU uses the page number to look up the page table; the entry
in the table at that position is the physical page number where the page is loaded, and
some other important information (called its tag) such as when the page was last used,
whether it has been modified – and whether it is actually present in memory at the time!
Program address
Page number Offset
Tag Physical page P
Page table Page P
If it is not present, perhaps it has been swapped out of memory – and another page
must be swapped out to make room for it; this can be accomplished by the memory
manager.
Segmentation
The major drawback to paging as a memory management system is that by definition
all the pages are the same size. If our pages are large, we are likely to waste memory
as many processes will not use the whole of every page allocated. If, on the other
hand, we make the pages small we will have a large number of them, will need to swap

them more often and will need large page tables which themselves will take up large
amounts of memory!
A more flexible and efficient management system is provided by segmentation – but
this is also significantly more complex, and we won’t examine it in detail here.
Basically, it allows memory to be divided up into variable-sized blocks; programmers
define the amount of memory required by a process when it is written, and this is the
size of the segment which will be allocated to the process by the MMU when it runs.
Segments are also used to implement protection schemes.

The function of the kernel

The kernel, being the deepest, most protected and privileged layer of our operating
system model, acts as timekeeper and regulator for the system, controlling any time
slicing for multi-user or multi-tasking functions, ensuring fairness in the way resources
are allocated and used, and dealing with interrupts having different priorities, which
arrive to signal external and internal events.
Processes
In all but the most primitive operating systems, some form of multi-tasking is
supported, where the computer is able to run more than one program, or support more
than a single user, at the same time. We call each program or subprogram, capable of
simultaneous execution, a process.
The kernel is responsible for sharing resources and time between all the different
processes competing for attention, and for enabling them to communicate with each
other.
Scheduling
In an ideal world, every process would be created equal and would have the same
length of time slices in which to use the processor. In reality, of course, things are
never that simple! Different processes may have different needs, or one may be more
urgent or important than another. Some processes may be eligible to run but might not
be able to do anything because they are waiting on another process completing or on a
device to become available – surely we should not let them waste their time slices
doing nothing?
To ensure the processor is used efficiently and that processes are given the facilities
they require, the kernel allocates each a priority. This may be assigned by a user, or
may be set or varied by the system depending on what the process is doing. The
overall amount of time a process gets to execute on the processor, or how frequently it
is given a time slice, is determined by its priority – the higher the priority, the faster it
will execute.
The kernel also groups processes into one of three states. A process is running if it is
currently executing on the processor. When its time slice ends, it rejoins all the other
active processes in the process queue and is classed as waiting or ready. If a
process is stuck, waiting for a specific event to occur (another process to send it a
signal or a device to become free) it is removed from the active process queue and
classed as blocked or suspended. It will not be given any time on the processor until
the event it is waiting for occurs. See the diagram that follows.

running
1 Process waits for signal
2 Scheduler picks another
1 3
process
2
3 Scheduler picks this process
blocked ready 4 Signal arrives; process ready to
proceed
4
Communication between processes

It is often necessary for one process to send information to another. Most commonly,
this is simply of the form ‘I have reached point X in my program’, or ‘The answer for Y
has been calculated’, and is used to synchronise different processes which are
dependent on each other. For example, process A might need to use the answer to a
calculation carried out by process B. When process A reaches that point in its program,
it will be suspended until process B performs the calculation and informs process A that
it is clear to proceed. These special communications are called signals or
semaphores, and are provided, controlled and synchronised by the kernel.
Interrupts
Whenever the processor receives an interrupt, a special process within the kernel,
called an interrupt handler, is executed. This is responsible for determining what
external condition caused the interrupt signal, turning it off, and ensuring that an
appropriate process, usually from a higher operating system layer, is called in to deal
with the event in detail. The processor is then made ready to receive another interrupt.
Error handling
Sometimes an interrupt will be generated not by an external device but by the
processor or the MMU when something goes wrong with a program. Alternatively, if a
program realises that a serious problem has arisen, it can ask the operating system for
help in closing itself down safely.
When an error occurs, it is the kernel’s responsibility to terminate the process which
produced it and to ‘clear up’ after it by telling the other higher layers to release any
resources in use by the process.
The function of utility programs

As with more general applications programs, there is a huge range of possible utility
software. It can be broadly categorised into two classes – programs which are supplied
with the operating system, and those which are produced by third parties.

The distinction between third-party utility software and applications is becoming

increasingly blurred, as these ‘utilities’ increase in size and complexity and offer ever-
longer lists of features to their users. They are usually written to the same application
program interface (API) as normal applications and therefore have no additional
privileges. Their categorisation as utility programs is now due much more to their
function rather than their nature – they are specific tools to extend or enhance the
operating system, or to enable users to access operating system facilities, rather than
to provide some general-purpose function such as word processing.
A source for third-party utilities is: http://www.downloadfreetrial.com/utilities.
This is only one example site. Many more are available and a simple search on the
WWW will return many other sources.
A 1.5
Using the WWW carry out a search to find other sources of third-party utility programs.
URL Description of site
Utility programs exist to provide the user with access to operating system functions or
to extend or enhance those functions. Consequently, there are a great many types of
such programs, which are supplied either by the manufacturer together with the
operating system, or by third-party developers.
Most such programs can be categorised into one of a number of broad groups and we
will look at some of these in more detail.
The first, and largest, group is concerned directly with giving the user control over
operating system functions, or with optimising the way the system operates.

File management
One of the most important types of utility program allows the user to organise and
control their file system.
This is implemented by system utility programs, such as Windows Explorer in Windows
systems and an Explorer lookalike in Linux-based systems. These programs display a
visual representation of the disk and file system, showing folders and files graphically
and allowing the user to operate more intuitively, for example by using ‘drag and drop’
to copy or move a file with the mouse. Alternative third-party file management utilities
are also available.
A 1.6
In the following table enter the operating system you are using for this course. Enter
the name/location of the supplied file management utility and then find a third-party
utility that does a similar job.
If you are allowed, install the utility and try it out. Make some comment about how it
differs from the supplied utility.
O/S Supplied utility Third-party utility
Comments:

Disk fragmentation
When we looked at the physical structure of a file system earlier, we saw that most
operating systems store files in numbered blocks, or clusters, which need not be
contiguous. When a disk is empty, a file which is stored on it is in fact likely to be stored
contiguously, as there is no difficulty in doing that. But what happens once we start
deleting files and storing new ones in their place? The space freed by deleted files
could be anywhere on the disk, and any file we save now is likely to have its clusters
spread all over the disk.
Although this is not a problem for the file system to manage, and is quite transparent to
the user, it does pose something of a problem for the I/O system. It is a lot faster to
read or write a file which is stored contiguously than one split up in areas of the disk
which may be a long way apart. When files become badly fragmented in this way, the
I/O system spends significantly more (wasted) time just moving the read/write heads
across the disk to go from one file block to the next than it spends actually transferring
data. Eventually, disk performance degrades to an appreciable extent and the user will
notice that programs are taking much longer to load and it is taking very much longer to
load and save files, especially large ones.
To fix the problem, it is necessary to run a utility program designed to defragment the
disk. This operation will take a significant length of time (up to several hours for a large,
badly fragmented disk), and swaps individual clusters all over the disk so that when it is
finished all files are stored contiguously. Defragmentation programs will usually provide
a choice between a long, thorough operation and a faster, less effective one.
A 1.7
the name/location of the supplied defragmentation utility. Search the WWW for a few
third-party utilities that do a similar job.
List the name of the utility and a location (URL) where it can be found.
O/S Supplied utility
Third-party utilities URL

Disk compression
There seems to be a basic law in computing that however unimaginably vast your hard
disk may seem when you first buy it, within a relatively short time it will be full! Like
RAM, it seems that you can never have too much hard disk space. The obvious,
though expensive, answer is to simply add another disk drive. An alternative solution is
to use some fancy software to compress the data on your disk so that it takes up less
space – and now you have tens or hundreds of megabytes free again, just like magic!
So what’s the catch? Well, compression is essentially a complex mathematical process
and every time you load or save a file the processor has to do a lot of calculations to
expand or compress the data stream. The reason that disk compression software is a
relatively recent development is that until processors got fast and powerful enough, it
simply wasn’t worth doing. With a slow processor, the delays introduced by the
compression calculations would be unacceptable.
The amount of space available on a compressed drive is never certain! The exact
degree of compression which is achieved is entirely dependent on the type of data the
files on the disk contain. Files containing regular, repeating data such as bit-mapped
graphics and text files compress very well; files containing more randomised data such
as programs often do not. Always treat figures for free space on a compressed drive as
an estimate only!

A 1.8
the name/location of the supplied disk compression utility and then find a third-party
Comments:

File compression
As an alternative to compressing your whole disk, it is possible to select a group of files
and compress them into a single archive file. This is particularly useful when you want
to transfer data over the internet.
As with disk compression, the amount of space saved depends entirely on the type of
data in the file.
A 1.9
the name/location of the supplied file compression utility and then find a third-party
Comments:

Diagnostic
Diagnostic utilities are designed to monitor and/or test your computer’s hardware as
thoroughly as possible without specialist hardware test equipment. Some are limited to
one specific function or component of your computer, while others are written to
perform exhaustive tests on all areas of the machine, including the disk drives, RAM
video capabilities and the serial and parallel ports.
If a diagnostic program finds a fault, this will be reported to you and a solution
proposed. Where the problem can be resolved by software changes, the program may
offer to make any necessary modifications for you.
A 1.10
An example of shareware diagnostic software is PC Surgeon by Dean Software

Design. Search the WWW and have a look at what features and functions it offers the
user. Make a list of some of them in the table that follows. If you are allowed, and have
a suitable operating system, install a copy on to your computer. You can try out the
software but do not delete or change any settings unless you are confident you know
what you are doing or are instructed by your tutor. If PC Surgeon is not suitable for
your system, search for another that is designed for your operating system.
Operating system
Features and functions available

Using the internet

With the increase in access to the internet, a whole new range of programs have
appeared that can be termed utilities. The first and most common was antivirus
software; this was followed by firewall software, spyware scanners and pop-up
blockers. These utilities protect the operating system, help maintain the performance
level of the system and stop rogue software from running on the system.
Antivirus software
Whether this type of software is a utility or a free-standing application is perhaps
slightly unclear. If the distinction is to be made on the size of the program, then
antivirus software could be designated as an application. However, the definition of
utility software includes the phrase ‘extend and/or enhance the functionality of the
operating system’ and because of this, antivirus software could be considered a utility.
Virus detection and protection
While viruses have been around almost as long as the PC, they have only recently,
within the last few years, changed from a minor inconvenience to a serious menace.
There are several reasons why they are now much more of a problem: many more
computers are in use, and there are many more ways of sharing information between
them. Advances such as the internet have made it possible for computer viruses to
spread much more quickly than ever before, and more computer users in general –
especially those who don't understand what viruses are – have given virus writers a
much richer set of targets.
Infection via the internet
Virus infection via files downloaded from the internet is probably the fastest growing
area of infection, paralleling the fast growth of internet use itself. More and more
companies are making software available over the internet and for the most part getting
a new driver or a software patch from reputable companies is safe, as long as you are
sure that you are getting the file from an official source. However, the internet is also
filled with ‘unofficial’ software, pirated programs and low-budget software from
questionable sources that may be intentionally or unintentionally infected with viruses.
Virus definition files
Conventional virus scanners rely on virus definition files to perform their work. These
files (there may be only a single file for some scanners) contain the patterns that they
use to identify viruses. The definition files tell the scanner what to look for to spot
viruses in infected files. Most scanners use separate files in this manner, instead of
encoding the virus patterns into the software, to enable easy updating.
Most commercial virus scanners update their virus definition files on a regular basis as
new viruses are found ‘in the wild’ and definitions created for them by the programmers
that write the antivirus software. These updates are normally made available for
download at the software company’s website. It is critical that you update your
scanner's virus definition files on a regular basis, preferably daily. A scanner that is out
of date will still find older viruses (and to be fair, many of them have been around for
ages) but will leave you unprotected against newer menaces.

Some programs actually update not only the virus definition files but also parts of the
scanner program itself (a program patch) when you update the virus definitions. This is
sometimes required when a new virus type necessitates a change in how scanning is
done by the software.
Always remember: no matter how good your antivirus program may be, it can only be
effective if it is used.
A 1.11
Using the WWW to find the latest virus threats, check the following sites:
http://www.grisoft.com
http://www.symantec.com
http://uk.mcafee.com/uk
http://uk.trendmicro-europe.com
List the names of the threats, the types of virus and the systems affected.
Name of threat Type of virus Systems affected
If you want to find out more about viruses and the software used to protect systems,
spend a bit more time looking at the sites listed earlier.

The function of an application program interface (API)
What is an API?
The abbreviation API stands for application program interface. A PC system can be
described as a series of layers – some hardware and some software – which interface
with each other. In the most basic sense you can break a PC down into four primary
layers, each of which can be broken down further into subsets. These four layers in a
typical PC are:
• Hardware
• ROM BIOS and device drivers
• Operating system
• Application programs
The purpose of the layered design is to allow a given OS and applications to run on
different hardware. Imagine two different machines with different hardware (e.g.
processor, HDD, RAM, VDU) each using a custom BIOS to interface this different
hardware with a common OS and applications. Thus two machines with different
processors, storage media, VDUs, etc. can run the same software. How is this
achieved?
In this layered architecture, the application programs talk to the OS via the API. The
API varies according to the OS being used, and consists of different commands and
functions which the OS can perform for an application. For example, an application can
call on the OS to save a file. This prevents the application itself from knowing how to
find the relevant area on the HDD, read the file from memory and write it to the HDD.
Instead it tells the OS to write a specified amount of data to a certain file, and the OS
performs the complex tasks required.
It is important to remember that APIs are specific to only one OS. This is why an
application designed to run under the Macintosh OS will not run under Windows.
(Unless of course you use an emulator which converts the API calls of one program
into the API calls of the OS running it.)
What does the Windows API do?

The Windows API handles everything that makes Windows what it is. This includes
tasks like drawing on the monitor, disk access, printer interface etc. It also provides
most of the features common to all Windows-based software, e.g. dialogue boxes
(open, save as, print, to name but three), list boxes, operating system settings and
windows.

Where is the Windows API?

Almost every function in the Windows API is located in one of the direct linked library
(DLL) files, which can be found in the C:\Windows\System directory. These DLL files
allow external programs to use their functions. A single DLL file could well be required
by more than one application and this is why it is important to be very careful when
uninstalling applications which use DLLs. If you delete a DLL it may well impact on one
or several other applications, rendering them unusable.

The function of operating system configuration files

You will, by now, realise that there are two types of interface in use to allow the user to
interact with their computer. Each of these is controlled by an OS and the OS must
receive information at start-up which will enable it to load the device handlers, country
settings, language settings and keyboard type as well as other files to ensure the
computer starts in a usable condition.
When a computer is powered up, a series of tests is performed to check the system.
What is tested and how any errors are handled is beyond the scope of this unit, but you
should be aware that this sequence of tests is known as power on self test (POST).
When POST has been passed (usually signified by a single beep from the PC
speaker), more information is received from the ROM BIOS chip. This is about the type
and size of HDD, FDD, Interrupt ReQuest (IRQ) numbers and much more. Once this
information is received and processed, the boot sequence then passes control to the
OS, which will read files for further information about what programs to load, where
they are stored on the hard disk, and to which memory addresses they should be
allocated. It is at this stage that devices such as the video adapter, sound card and
modem are loaded, and the controls for these are determined by the installation
programs for the devices.
We will now have a look at what these files are and what they do.
Command line environment

To allow you, the user, to configure your computer to your own requirements, or the
requirements of your organisation, there are two files the system reads each time it
starts. These are config.sys and autoexec.bat. By using edit and altering, adding
lines to, or deleting lines from these files you can customise what your machine does
on start-up.
Config.sys is a text file containing DOS (disk operating system) commands that tell the
OS how the computer is initially set up. More specifically, config.sys commands specify
memory device drivers and programs that control hardware devices; enable or disable
system features; and set limits on system resources. Config.sys loads at start-up
before the autoexec.bat file. Because config.sys is a text file, it is editable in any text-
editing program. The following are common commands in a config.sys file:
FILES=: This command tells the OS how many files can be open at a time. By default,
the setting is eight but most people change it to between 20 and 40.
BUFFERS=: The buffers are 528-byte areas in the RAM used for reading and writing to
the hard drive. By default, the setting is 15. If you increase the buffer value, reading
and writing to the hard drive is faster. If it is too low, reading and writing to the hard
drive is slower and may cause problems when the computer needs to execute tasks
that require a lot of memory. It is common to set the buffers between 20 and 30.
DEVICE=: This command loads drivers, commonly for the mouse and CD-ROM drive.
Usually a command is automatically added to config.sys when a device driver is
installed.

SHELL=: This command tells DOS where to look for its command interpreter, or
command.com file, and how much memory to set aside for DOS to use to execute
commands.
LASTDRIVE=: This command tells DOS the last drive letter that has been assigned.
Beginning with Windows 95, the commands in config.sys are performed by the io.sys
(input/output system configuration) file instead. Because older hardware devices need
the config.sys file, a blank version is still installed on computers that use Windows
95/98.
Any changes made to the config.sys file may cause your operating system to fail
when you boot it up. It is recommended that you do not change or add commands
unless you are given explicit instructions about what commands to add and how to type
them. Even then it is wise to have a backup copy of config.sys on a boot disk. All
changes come into effect after your computer is rebooted.
Autoexec.bat is a file containing DOS commands that are executed when the
computer is booted (started). The commands in autoexec.bat tell the OS which
application programs are to be automatically started, how memory is to be managed,
and initialise other settings. Each command in autoexec.bat could be typed in manually
after the computer is started, but that would take too long. The autoexec.bat file is, in
fact, a command script that is written beforehand so that it can be automatically
executed when the OS is started. The BAT suffix stands for batch, indicating that this is
a file containing a sequence of commands entered from a file rather than interactively
by a user.
Common commands in an autoexec.bat file include:
@ECHO OFF: This command tells DOS not to display on the screen the commands
that are being executed in autoexec.bat.
PATH=: This command tells DOS the path of a command that might be typed at the C
prompt. DOS looks in the path for the command and then executes it. If DOS does not
find the command in the path referred to in autoexec.bat, an error message is
displayed, stating, ‘Bad command or file name’.
PROMPT $P$G: This command tells DOS how the C prompt is to appear.
C:\MOUSE\MOUSE: This loads the mouse software into memory so that the mouse
works in DOS.
C:\PROGRA~1\NORTON~1\NAVDX.EXE /Start up: This command tells the antivirus
program to scan for viruses in the memory and master boot record (MBR) when the
computer is started. Antivirus software usually puts a command like this in
autoexec.bat when installed. This command is different according to each antivirus
software package.
The commands in the autoexec.bat file differ on each computer system and are
determined by the software applications and OS installed. Starting with Windows 95,
the commands in autoexec.bat were given to the io.sys file. Today, most autoexec.bat
files are blank unless an installed application expects a command to be present in the
autoexec.bat file.
You can view the commands in your autoexec.bat file by opening it in any text editor.
Remember that any changes made might cause your computer to fail when you boot it.

It is recommended that you do not change or add commands unless you are given
explicit instructions on what commands to add and how to type them. Even then it is
wise to have a backup copy on a boot disk. All changes come into effect after your
computer is rebooted. The autoexec.bat file is always stored in the root directory.
Graphical user interface

As the functionality of operating systems became more complex, the files mentioned
above became increasingly redundant, and Windows used a different set of files for
configuration options. The earlier Windows operating systems used files named win.ini
and system.ini to control the operation of the desktop, applications and hardware.
Originally, system.ini and win.ini controlled all Windows and application features and
access. It worked well when average users used only a few applications. As the
number and complexity of applications grew, so did the number of entries to the .INI
files. The downside of this approach, in a growing environment, is that everyone would
make changes to the .INI files when applications were added to the system. However,
no one ever removed references from their .INI files when they removed applications,
so system.ini and win.ini continued to get larger and larger. Each incremental size
increase meant slower performance. Even upgrading applications presented its
challenges. The upgrade would add entries but never take the old ones away,
presumably to ensure compatibility if another program accessed the settings.
Because the maximum size of an .INI file is 64KB, an obvious problem arose. To
counter the problem, vendors started supplying .INI files of their own, with just pointers
to the specific .INI files in win.ini and system.ini. The downside of this approach was
the proliferation of .INI files throughout the system and the hierarchical nature of
access. If win.ini made a particular setting, and an application's .INI file overrode that
setting, who was responsible and where should, or could, a system-wide setting that
had priority be made?
As this problem became bigger, it was obvious that some method of overcoming the
problem was necessary, and Microsoft’s solution was the registry.
What is the registry?

The Windows registry is a set of data files used to help Windows control hardware,
software, the user's environment, and the look and feel of the Windows interface. The
registry is contained in two files in the Windows directory, system.dat and user.dat,
with backup copies system.da0 and user.da0. The registry database is accessed with
regedit.exe which is in the Windows directory. Formerly, in older version of Windows
(before Windows 9x) these functions were performed by win.ini, system.ini, and other
.INI files that are associated with applications.
The registry is a set of files that control all aspects of the OS and how it works with
outside events. These events range from accessing a hardware device directly to how
the interface will react to a specific user, how an application will be run and much more.
It was designed to work exclusively with 32-bit applications and file size is limited to
about 40MB.

What the registry does

The registry is the data file for all 32-bit hardware/driver combinations and 32-bit
applications in both Windows NT and Windows 9x. As 16-bit drivers do not work in NT,
all devices are controlled through the registry, even those normally controlled by the
BIOS. In Windows 9x, 16-bit drivers will continue to work as real-mode devices, and
they use system.ini for control.
Since 16-bit applications will work in either NT or 9x, the applications still refer to win.ini
and system.ini files for information and control.
Without the registry, the OS would not have the necessary information to run, to control
attached devices, to launch and control applications, and to respond correctly to user
input.
Data file for OS to hardware/drivers

The registry is a database of all the settings and locations of 32-bit drivers in the
system. When the OS needs to access hardware devices, it uses drivers, even if the
device is a BIOS-supported device.
Non-BIOS-supported devices that are installed must also have a driver. The drivers are
independent of the OS, but the OS needs to know where to find them, the filename, the
version, and other settings and information. Without registry entries for each of the
devices, they would not be usable.
Data file for OS to applications

When a user attempts to launch an application, the registry supplies application
information to the OS so the application can be found, the correct data file locations are
set, and other settings are available.
The registry holds information about default data and auxiliary file locations, menus,
button bars, window status, and other options. It also holds installation information such
as the date of installation, the user who installed the software, the version number and
date, and sometimes the serial number. Depending on the actual software installed, it
may contain other application-specific information.
Two types of control

Although, in general, the registry controls all 32-bit applications and drivers, the type of
control it exercises is based on users and computers, not on applications or drivers.
Every registry entry controls a user function or a computer function. User functions
would include the desktop appearance and home directory, for example. Computer
functions are related to installed hardware and software, items that are common to all
users.
Some application functions affect users, and others affect the computer and are not
specifically set for an individual. Similarly, drivers may be user specific but, most of the
time, they are for general use by the computer. All of the settings discussed in the rest
of the book are separated by user and computer.
Some examples of user-type functions controlled by the registry are:

• Control panel functions

• Desktop appearance and icons
• Network preferences
• Explorer functionality and features
Some of these functions are the same regardless of user; others are user specific.
Computer-related control items are based on the computer name, irrespective of the
logged-in user. An example of this type of control would be installing an application.
The availability and access to the application is constant, regardless of the user;
however icons to launch the application are dependent on the user logging in to the
network. Network protocol availability and priority is based on the computer but current
connections are based on user information.
Here are some examples of computer-based control items in the registry:
• Access control
• Log in validation
• File and print sharing
• Network card settings and protocols
• System performance and virtual memory settings
Without the registry, Windows 9x and Windows NT would not be possible. They are too
complex to be controlled by the older .INI files, and their expansion capabilities allow
almost unlimited installation and use of applications. The registry is, however, much
more complex than the .INI files, and understanding how it works, what it does, and
how to work with it is critical for effective system administration.
The registry controls all 32-bit applications and their functions on the system, plus the
interaction between multiple applications, such as copying and pasting. It also controls
all the hardware and drivers. Though most of the settings are made during installation
and through the control panel, understanding the registry is fundamental to reliable
and capable management of Windows NT and Windows 9x systems.

? 1.1
1. What are the main types of OS?

2. An OS can be said to consist of several ‘layers’. How many layers make up an OS,
and what are they?
3. Name the types of user interface.
4. How does a user control a computer using a CLI?
5. To navigate through a GUI, a user has WIMP. Explain WIMP.
6. What is the most common medium for storing data?
7. Give a brief explanation of the FAT.
8. If an OS needs more memory than is physically available, how does it acquire the
additional memory?
9. A process can be in one of three states; what are the three states?
10. Where are Windows’ API functions stored?
Check your answers with those given at the end of this section.

Summary of this section

In this section the student should have gained an understanding of, and an ability to
describe, each of the subcategories explained in the section.
The subcategories were:
• The main functional elements of a computer operating system.
• The function of the user interface.
• The function of the file system.
• The function of device drivers.
• The function of memory management.
• The function of the operating system kernel.
• The function of utility programs.
• The function of an application program interface.
• The function of operating system configuration files.

Answers to SAQ
SAQ 1.1
1. Single user, single task
Single user, multi-tasking
Multi-user, multi-tasking
2. There are five layers:
• The user interface
• The file management system
• The input/output (I/O) system
• Memory management
• The kernel
3. Command line interface and graphical user interface.
4. Commands, parameters and switches.
5. Windows, icons, menus and pointers.
6. Hard disk.
7. The file allocation table (FAT) is an index of each sector on a disk and contains
information about where a file is stored on a disk. A file’s directory entry holds the
start cluster number, which identifies the table entry, which in turn points to the next
cluster occupied by the file. The last cluster holds a special value indicating it is the
last. An empty cluster is allocated a different special value in its entry in the table,
so free clusters for allocation can be easily found.
8. The operating system allocates an area of the hard disk as a swap file and uses
this as a temporary storage area for data not currently required by applications.
9. The three states are running, blocked and ready.
10. In the DLL files located in the Windows system directory.

Answers to activities
Activity 1.10
• Disk cleanup
• Backup
• File/disk recovery
• Software uninstaller
• Registry tools

Section 2: Using a graphical environment to

operate a computer



This section is about mastering the use of a graphical interface to control the functions
of a personal computer system. For the purposes of this section the graphical operating
environment we shall use will be Windows XP.

On completion of this section you should be competent in the following areas of
operation.
• Starting up and shutting down the computer system.
• Exploring and creating hierarchical file storage structures.
• Copying, moving and renaming files and folders.
• Using file and folder attributes to protect files.
• Starting and stopping programs.
• Controlling printing.
• Using online help facilities.

This section should be undertaken in a maximum of 7 hours. This figure includes the
time required for assessment purposes.

A stand-alone personal computer with a graphical operating environment (Windows
XP) installed.
A supply of work log sheets, either supplied by the tutor or copied from the end of this
unit.


Assessment will be in the form of an observation checklist produced by the assessor.
Assessment must be under controlled conditions and you must successfully complete
each assessment task on at least two different occasions.

The assessment should take place at the centre which is offering tuition for the unit. It
may be possible to arrange assessment at an alternative venue, but this will be at the
discretion of the centre. Ideally the assessment should take place at the same time as
the centre’s full-time students are undertaking it, but it may be possible to make local
arrangements for ‘assessment on demand’.

To achieve a pass for the assessment of this section, you will be required to provide
evidence that you can satisfactorily demonstrate the ability to:
• start up a graphical environment and log in correctly;
• properly close open files and applications, before correctly and safely shutting down
a graphical environment;
• navigate effectively within a hierarchical file structure and create folders as
required;
• copy, move and rename individually specified files, groups of files and folders;
• locate and start programs as specified, effectively open files within programs, and
stop programs;
• effectively control printing by starting then cancelling, pausing and reordering jobs
within the print queue;
• effectively use the online help facility in order to accomplish a task not previously
taught.
You will submit evidence to satisfy this outcome in the form of a handwritten log of all
the work done in response to each assessment task. Each log must be approved as
satisfactory and certified by the assessor as your own work.
Each log, as a minimum, must be properly titled with your name, the date and task, and
include:
• a brief outline of the task;
• a note of the work carried out, commands and/or actions used and any
installation/configuration options selected;
• a note of any problems encountered, and their solution(s).


Assessments will be undertaken to allow sufficient time, in the event of non-
achievement of any outcome, for reassessment of that outcome using a different set of
questions, which will be arranged with the centre at a time to suit the centre’s
timetabling requirements.

T
Your tutor will make available to you a blank work log which you should complete while
working through this section.
The completed logs should be sent to your tutor, who will use their content to decide
whether you have demonstrated sufficient knowledge to undertake the summative
assessment.
The log may be in either hard copy or supplied as a Microsoft Word document. You
may photocopy the hard copy or print copies of the electronic version. Alternatively you
may load the file to a word processor and type your information.

Starting up and shutting down the system
Starting up the system

The procedure for starting up a PC is simplicity itself, and there are two methods of
doing so, depending on whether you are accessing a stand-alone computer or logging
onto a network machine.
If you are starting a stand-alone PC, follow these steps.
• Ensure there is power going to both the PC and the monitor. (Check that the power
cords are attached to each and that the power is switched on at the socket.)
• Press the on/off button on the front of the computer.
• At this stage you will in all probability hear a single beep from the PC speaker; this
is good. Any more than one beep is not good and an explanation will be given at a
later stage in the course.
• You should now see some lines of white text appearing on a black screen, prior to
the Windows start-up screen appearing. These lines of text relate to the system
configuration files we learned about in section one.
• The Windows start-up screen will be replaced by the familiar Windows XP desktop,
complete with its icons and taskbar.
If you are logging on to a networked machine the start-up procedure is similar but in
order to load your own profile, the operating system needs to know who you are. This
information is passed to the system via the Windows log in dialogue box, which
requires you to enter your username and password in the correct boxes.
Your network administrator will have set up a series of permissions (which folders and
files you will be able to open and edit, or open and read) and these may well be
different for different types of user.
Once you have entered your username and password you will be presented with the
Windows XP desktop.
It is important to remember that passwords should be chosen with care and not given
to anyone else. Passwords are case sensitive whereas usernames are not. Case
sensitive means that capital letters e.g. ABCDE, and lower case letters e.g. abcde, are
not the same. Your password should contain a mixture of capital and lower case letters
and numbers, thus making it almost impossible to guess the password. You should
avoid passwords which are names of family members, dates of birth, national
insurance numbers and any other personal information which could be guessed by
some unauthorised person trying to access your network.

Shutting down the system

Before shutting down the machine it is always advisable to:
• save and close any files you have active;
• close the application(s) you are using to edit the files.
Once all your files and applications have been closed, there are a couple of methods of
bringing up the shut down dialogue box; one is to place the mouse pointer over the
Start button on the taskbar and click the left mouse button.
From the pop-up which appears click on Turn Off Computer option.

The shut down dialogue box will appear.

Confirm your choice to shut down the computer.
The other method is to press the Windows key on the keyboard, which displays the
start menu box, and proceed as above.
As you become more familiar with Windows you will discover there is invariably more
than one way to perform the various operations.
You will have nothing else to do as the system will run through its shut down routine,
and automatically switch off the computer.

Creating and exploring hierarchical file storage structures

In this subsection we are going to look in detail at how to create a hierarchical file
storage structure and how to explore that structure (find what is within, and where
within the structure our folders and files are, and why they are there).
To do this we shall use the logical file structure described in section one, but instead of
using the root directory as the base point for our files we shall create a folder called
‘Example’, and our other three folders (Letters, Book and Programs) will be subfolders
of Example.
N.B. The terms ‘folder’ and ‘directory’ mean the same and either can be used. Directory
was the term used for DOS, and folder was introduced when Windows 95 was
released.
The structure we are going to create is represented by the following diagram.


Letters

Chapter 1

Root Book Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Programs
Miscellaneous files

Our first task is to create a new folder called Example. This folder will be situated in the
root directory of the C: drive.
To do this, perform the following steps.
• Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop, or right-click the Start button.
• Left-click the Explore option. (Slide the mouse pointer on the word Explore and
press the left button.)
• Right-click the icon representing your C: drive.
• Left-click the Explore option
• Move the mouse pointer over to the right-hand window (where the contents of your
C: drive are listed) and press the right-hand mouse button.
• Select New (second last option) from the menu which appears.
• Select Folder from the fly-out list.
• When the New Folder icon appears in the window, type the word Example and
then press the enter key or the left mouse button. The highlighted words New
Folder will be deleted as you begin to type.
• Click the View option on the menu bar at the top of the page and then click
Arrange Icons By in the fly-out list and select Name. You will now see the new
folder appear in its correct position.
Congratulations, you have now created a new folder called Example in the root
directory of your C: drive.
Now you can create the other required directories within this by right-clicking the
Example icon, selecting the Explore option and following the above steps to create
folders labelled Book, Letters and Programs.
The next step is to create the three folders inside the Book folder. Try it. If you make a
mistake, right-click the folder icon, click delete from the resultant menu, and then
confirm deletion by clicking Yes in the Are you sure dialogue box.
Your directory structure, in the left-hand section of Explorer, should now look like one
of the following:

The ‘+’ symbol tells you that there are subfolders in the folder. To view these folders
click on the ‘+’ symbol. To hide the subfolders click on the ‘ –‘ symbol.
Try this now.

In the next part of this section you will learn how to copy, move and rename files and
groups of files, but we don’t have any files to work with, so let’s create some now.
From the diagram of the structure, on the preceding page, you will see there are four
files in the ‘Example’ directory. You can create these files in a way similar to the
creation of the folders. Open the ‘Example’ folder, either in an Explorer or My Computer
window, and follow these instructions.
• Right-click in the space below the three folders listed.
• Select New from the menu.
• Select Text Document from the fly-out menu.
• Name the file Text Document 1.
Repeat this process for the remaining three files, but remember to give each a different
name. Use the names shown below. Windows will not allow you to apply the same
name to more than one file in any directory.
To change the look of the right-hand window click on the View option on the menu bar
at the top of the page then click Details.
The contents of the Example directory should now look like this.
Repeat this process to create files in the other folders. The files in the Letters folder
should be named ‘letter1’, ‘letter2’, . . . . ‘letter9’, and in the Book\Chapter folders, you
could call the files ‘1stfile’ etc.
The Letters folder should contain:
The Book\Chapter1 folder will hold:

©Microsoft Corporation
The Programs folder will hold:
Once you have done this, take a little while and become confident and competent in
getting about your newly created structure.
What happens if you right-click on a file name or folder?
Use the View option on the menu bar at the top of the page and try different ways of
viewing the folders and files.

Copying, renaming and moving files and folders

Why would we want to copy, move or rename a file or folder? What is the difference
between copying and moving?
It is always a good idea to have more than one copy of a file, especially if it contains
critical data. If it was a spreadsheet file with calculations of wages or invoices due and
it became damaged, how would that affect a business? If there was a copy of the file in
another location it could be accessed and the information retrieved.
Copy – as the name implies, makes an identical copy of a file in a different location
from the original, and leaves the original file where it is, so there are now two instances
of the same file in different locations.
Move – does not make a copy of the file, but places the file in a different location. i.e.
the file is taken from one directory and relocated in another, so there is still only one
instance of the file.
There are a number of methods that can be used to copy or move files and folders.
There are two methods using the menu bar at the top of the page and also ‘drag and
drop’ to carry out the task.
To copy a file or folder using the menu bar (1)

1. In Explorer, click the file or folder you want to copy. Do this in the right pane i.e.
right-hand window.
2. On the Edit menu, click Copy.
3. Open the folder or disk where you want to put the copy.
4. On the Edit menu, click Paste.
To copy a file or folder using the menu bar (2)

right-hand window.
2. On the Edit menu, click Copy To Folder ….
3. Navigate to the required destination in the pop-up window.
4. Click Copy to complete the task.
To copy a file or folder using ‘drag and drop

1. In Explorer, click the file or folder you want to copy
2. Hold down the Ctrl key then hold down the left mouse key while pointing at the file
or folder being copied.
3. Now move the mouse pointer to the destination folder in the left pane.
4. When the destination folder is highlighted let go of the mouse button.

Notes:
• To select more than one file or folder to copy, hold down the Ctrl key, and then click
the items you want.
• If you want to copy a group of files which are listed together, select the first in the
list, hold down the shift key, and then click on the last file in the list. All the files
between these will be highlighted and can be copied in one operation.
• To select a folder in the left pane of Windows Explorer, click the folder.
To move a file or folder using the menu bar (1)

right-hand window.
2. On the Edit menu, click Cut.
3. Open the folder or disk where you want to put the copy.
4. On the Edit menu, click Paste.
To move a file or folder using the menu bar (2)

right-hand window.
2. On the Edit menu, click Move To Folder ….
3. Navigate to the required destination in the pop-up window.
4. Click Move to complete the task.
To move a file or folder using ‘drag and drop

1. In Explorer, click the file or folder you want to move.
2. Hold down the left mouse key while pointing at the file or folder being moved.
3. Now move the mouse pointer to the destination folder in the left pane.
4. When the destination folder is highlighted let go of the mouse button.
Notes:
• To select more than one file or folder to move, hold down the Ctrl key, and then
click the items you want.
• If you want to move a group of files which are listed together, select the first in the
list, hold down the shift key, and then click on the last file in the list. All the files
between these will be highlighted and can be moved in one operation.
• To select a folder in the left pane of Windows Explorer, click the folder.
Using the Example folder created earlier, spend some time moving and copying files
and folders.
Make sure you are comfortable copying and moving files and folders within the
Example folder.

Renaming files
Within the naming convention used by Windows XP there is plenty of scope for
assigning unique names to files but you will come across occasions when you decide
the name you have given to a file is not suitable and you want to rename the file.
Using Windows this is a very simple procedure.
Use the Help menu from Explorer to find out how you would rename a file.
To access the help menu, open Explorer, click Help on the Menu Bar and then select
Help and Support Center.
Select Index from the Menu Bar on the Help and Support Center window.
Type ‘renaming files’ in the search box.
When you have found the method, you will also see information about the maximum
size of a filename, and reserved characters which may not be used in the name. You
should pay attention to this information.
Use the information found in the Help and Support Center to rename some of the files
and folders you created earlier in the Example folder.
Using file and folder attributes to protect files

An attribute is a property or characteristic. When applied to files in a computer system
the properties or characteristics of these are referred to as the file attributes. Every file
can have a combination of up to four attributes applied to it, although few have all four.
These attributes are:
1. The archive attribute (a) is used to let you know that a file has not been backed up
since it was last edited or since it was created. When a file is created, the operating
system applies a ‘flag’ to the file, to inform the user that the file has not been
backed up. When the file has been backed up, the flag is reset (the attribute is
removed).
2. The read-only attribute (r) prevents a file from being edited and written to disk. You
may be able to alter the contents of the file but the system will not allow you to save
the file. It will however allow you to save the altered file with a different name,
thereby leaving the original file unaltered. (Not a lot of people know that!) DOS
prevented the file from being deleted, but Windows 98 will allow the file to be stored
in the Recycle Bin after prompting you to be sure you want to do this.
3. The hidden (h) attribute prevents the file from being displayed in Explorer or My
Computer. The file remains in the directory but cannot be seen, thus making it
unusable unless you know its name. This attribute is useful if you are working on
files of a confidential nature. This attribute can also be applied to directories.
4. The system (s) attribute designates a file as a system file. Files with this attribute
set are not shown in directory listings. The system attribute could be described as a
combination of read-only and hidden.
It should be pointed out that although the default settings of the folder view options
prevent hidden and system files from being shown, the options can be reset to enable

these to appear. If this is done they will appear in the window as greyed-out, and this is
the indication that they are either hidden or system files.
Should you wish to view the attributes of a particular file, locate the file in Explorer or
My Computer, right-click the filename and select Properties from the menu. Try this
with one of the files you created earlier. Make the file read-only and then try to delete it.
Don’t worry about this; it can always be restored to its original location from the
Recycle Bin. If you apply the hidden attribute to a file, how can you later remove the
attribute if you cannot see the file to click on it? It can be done; see if you can find out
how.

Starting and stopping programs

As with so many functions in Windows XP there are several ways of starting a program
(application).
You may find a shortcut icon to the application on the Desktop, and by double-clicking
this icon the program will launch. You could also click the Start button on the taskbar,
move the pointer to Programs, and from the fly-out menu select the program you wish
to start.
As an alternative, you could enable the Quick Launch toolbar by right-clicking an empty
area on the Taskbar, select Toolbars from the menu and click Quick Launch from the
fly-out which appears. To add an icon to the Quick Launch toolbar, click on the desktop
icon and drag it to the Quick Launch toolbar. If you drag using the right-hand button,
you will be presented with a menu giving the choice of copying or moving the icon to
the new location, or of cancelling the operation. The icons on the Quick Launch toolbar
are smaller, and it allows you to keep a neat desktop, making it easier to locate items
on it.
Opening files
Once again there are numerous ways of doing this. Once the application has started,
you could click on the ‘open file’ icon on the Standard toolbar; you could click File
on the Menu bar; or you could use My Computer or Explorer to locate the file, double-
click the filename and the application will launch and open the file.
Closing files and applications

It is always a good idea to get into the habit of regularly saving your current work.
Although most applications will offer you an autosave option, it is really much better to
name a new file when it is created and to regularly click the save icon every five
minutes or so. In the event of a system crash, you will never have to start a file from the
beginning. Imagine if you had spent hours working on a complex spreadsheet or
database, did not save it, and there was a power cut. All your work would have gone,
and you would not be happy. All because you did not click an icon.
Close your file by selecting Close from the File menu, remembering to save it, and
then close the application by selecting Exit from the file menu or by clicking the cross
in the top right-hand corner of the window.
Should you by any chance have forgotten to save your work, you will be prompted by
the system to do so at this stage, but do not rely on this as it is quite easy to click on
the wrong button and lose your work.

Controlling printing
In this part we shall learn how to send jobs to the printer, pause the printer, delete jobs
from the print queue, change the order of jobs in the print queue and delete all the jobs
in the queue.
To send a job to the default printer, using the settings selected at the time the printer
was installed, click the printer icon on the Standard toolbar. Should you wish to
alter any of these settings, e.g. the page or pages to printed or selected text, then click
File then Print on the menu bar and check the appropriate radio buttons on the
dialogue box which appears.
If you have access to more than one printer, (e.g. a colour and a monochrome printer
on a network or attached to different ports on a stand-alone PC), you can select the
required printer by clicking the down arrow next to the printer Name: box and clicking
the appropriate printer from the list which appears.
To increase or decrease the number of copies required, either use the arrows at the
side of the Number of copies box, or type in the number of copies required.
The following instructions about pausing the printer are taken from the printer help
menu. To access this facility, click Start on the taskbar, go to Settings then Printers
and double-click the icon for the printer attached to your computer.

To pause or cancel printing of a document

1. Click Start, point to Settings and then click Printers.
2. Click the icon for the printer you are using.
3. In the list, click the document you want to pause or cancel.
4. On the Document menu, click Pause Printing or Cancel Printing.
Note: you can pause or cancel the printing of all documents on a printer that is
attached to your computer. If you are using a network printer, you can pause or cancel
only your own documents, unless you have administrator rights.
Use the Printer Help facility to find out about cancelling all the jobs in the print queue.
If you have several jobs in the print queue, you may wish to alter the order in which
they are to be printed, e.g.
As you can see there are four jobs in the print queue, but let’s suppose that I think
there is a problem with the printer and I want to print the Test Page first, how would I
do this?
In the printer window click on the job to be moved and, holding the mouse button down,
drag the job to the required position in the queue. In this example you can see I have
moved the Test Page from third position to first position in the queue.

Using the online help facility

By this stage you should have used the online help facility more than once but to
reinforce your knowledge, take some time now and explore the help facility. Look for
information on points of which you are not too sure.
? 2.1
1. You are trying to log on to a computer on a network; you are sure you have entered
the correct username and password, but the system tells you ‘incorrect login’. What
are some of the causes of this?
2. What are the two methods of initiating the shut-down procedure in Windows 98?
3. What is meant by a ‘hierarchical’ file storage structure?
4. What options are presented if you right-click the ‘My Computer’ icon on the
Windows 98 desktop?
5. What is the maximum number of characters which can be used to name a file in
Windows 98?
6. Which characters can NOT be used in the Windows 98 file naming convention?
7. What attributes are associated with the files io.sys and msdos.sys?
8. What attributes are associated with the files win.ini and system.ini?
9. I want to print 10 copies of a document. How do I do this?
10. How can a print job be cancelled?
Check your answers with those given at the end of the section.


In this section you have learned how to:
• start up a graphical environment and log in correctly;
• properly close open files and applications, before correctly and safely shutting down
a graphical environment;
• navigate effectively within a hierarchical file structure and create folders as
required;
• copy, move and rename individually specified files, groups of files and folders;
• locate and start programs as specified, and effectively open files within programs,
and to stop programs;
• effectively control printing by starting then cancelling, pausing and reordering jobs
within the print queue;
• effectively use the online help facility in order to accomplish a task not previously
taught.

Answers to SAQ
SAQ 2.1
1. Although the username is not case sensitive, the password is. If you are sure the
correct password is being keyed in, check that the Caps Lock is not on; also make
sure, if you have a password made up of mixed-case characters, you are entering
the case correctly for each character.
2. Click on the Start button on the taskbar, or press the Windows key on the keyboard.
3. A hierarchical file storage structure is where the highest level directory is the ‘root’.
The root directory can contain subdirectories and files. These subdirectories can
also contain subdirectories and files. A hierarchical file storage structure is a
multilevel structure.
4. Open; Explore; Find; Map Network Drive; Disconnect Network Drive; Create
Shortcut; Rename; Properties.
5. 255.
6. File names cannot include any of the following characters: forward slash (/),
backslash (\), greater than sign (>), less than sign (<), asterisk (*), question mark
(?), quotation mark (‘, “), pipe symbol (|), colon (:), or semicolon (;).
7. System, hidden and read only.
8. Generally none, although you may come across instances where these files have
the archive attribute set.
9. From the File menu click Print, and when the print dialogue box appears, enter 10
in the Number of Copies box, then click ‘OK’.
10. On the Taskbar, click Start, then Settings and from the fly-out menu click Printers.
Select the active printer from the list and from the job list which appears, select the
job you want to cancel, and from the Document menu click Cancel.


Section 3: Install and configure operating

environments



In this section two types of OS will be installed and configured, namely a command
line OS then an OS which employs a graphical interface.

On completion of this section you will have a clear understanding of the steps required
for:
• preparing a HDD to accept data;
• installing a command line OS;
• configuring a command line OS to meet user and policy requirements;
• installing a graphical OS;
• configuring a graphical OS to meet user and policy requirements.

This section should be undertaken in a maximum of 12 hours. This figure includes the
time required for assessment purposes.

To complete parts one and two of this section you will need:
• access to a computer with no critical data or applications loaded (all the directories
and files stored in the computer will be removed);
• a set of MS-DOS version 6.22 installation disks (consisting of three 1.44MB double-
sided, high-density 3½ inch floppy disks);
• a working printer attached to the PC.
To complete parts three and four of this section you will need:
• access to a computer with no operating system installed (a HDD of at least 2GB
capacity and a minimum of 128MB of RAM is recommended);
• a Microsoft Windows XP installation CD, with EULA and CD key;
• a computer with the capability of booting from CD or a bootable 3½ inch floppy disk


Assessment for this section will be mainly practical, and you will be observed during
the assessment. As part of the assessment you will be required to keep a log of the
activities undertaken. This log should include the steps taken to install all the software
required, and a note of what problems (if any) were encountered, and what steps were
taken to overcome the problems.

may be possible to arrange assessment at an alternative venue but this will be at the
discretion of the centre. Ideally the assessment should take place at the same time as
the centre’s full-time students are undertaking it, but it may be possible to make local
arrangements for ‘assessment on demand’.

To achieve a pass for the assessment of this section you will be required to install and
configure either a command line OS or a graphical-based OS.
The evidence required for this section will be deemed satisfactory where it meets the
following requirements relevant to the environment used.
• It demonstrates the ability to correctly and efficiently install a command line OS on
a stand-alone PC. This procedure will include the manual preparation of a HDD by
partitioning and formatting to a given specification.
• It demonstrates the ability to configure a command line OS for effective use in
terms of a provided policy which defines user and institutional requirements. This
should include manual modifications to system start-up and configuration files, and
the appropriate use of any automatic configuration and optimisation tools.
It demonstrates the ability to correctly and efficiently install a graphical operating
environment to a stand-alone PC. This procedure will include the manual
preparation of a HDD by partitioning and formatting to a given specification. Basic
install-time configuration options should be correctly selected and implemented,
including support for all installed hardware devices. The installation should include
correct locale, language and keyboard options, and printer driver installation. A test
page printout should be attached to your log. It is not a requirement that a network
configuration should be undertaken by the candidate, but if a modem is fitted or
attached to the stand-alone PC, then support for this should be included in the
installation.
• It demonstrates the ability to configure a graphical interface for effective use in
terms of a provided policy which defines user and institutional requirements. This
should include customisation of specific items; the candidate will also demonstrate
ability to enforce system-wide configuration settings using whatever tools are
provided with the environment used.

You will submit evidence to satisfy this outcome in the form of a handwritten log of all
the work done in response to each assessment task. Each log must be approved as
satisfactory and certified by the assessor as your own work.
include:
• a note of any problems encountered and their solutions.

questions, which will be arranged with the centre at a time to suit the centre’s
timetabling requirements.

T
Your tutor will make available to you a blank work log which you should complete while
working through this section.
The completed logs should be sent to your tutor, who will use their content to decide
whether you have demonstrated sufficient knowledge to undertake the summative
assessment.

Installing a command line OS

This section specifically covers the installation of MS-DOS version 6.22.
It is recommended that an older computer with a fairly low specification and HDD of
about 500 Megabytes capacity is used to install the command line OS. You will not
require anything larger than this for installing DOS 6.22.
Before a new hard disk can accept any data it must undergo three operations, namely:
5. low-level (physical) formatting;
6. partitioning; and
7. high-level (logical) formatting.
Low-level formatting
When you buy a hard disk, the manufacturer has already performed the first of these
operations on the disk. During the low-level formatting, the tracks are laid down on the
disk and these are divided into a specific number of sectors. The formatting process
also creates the intersector and intertrack gaps, and records other sector information.
The process also fills each sector’s data area with a pattern of test values.
Virtually all new HDDs now use a technique call zoned bit recording, which writes a
variable number of sectors per track. Without zoned bit recording, the number of
sectors, and therefore the number of bits, on each track is constant. This means the
actual number of bits per inch will vary. There will be more bits per inch on the inner
tracks than on the outer tracks.
As you can see in this diagram the outer tracks

are physically longer than the inner tracks

A standard low-level format wastes capacity on the outer tracks because they are
longer but hold the same amount of data as the inner tracks. One way to increase the
capacity of a hard drive during low-level formatting is to create more sectors on the
outer tracks than on the inner tracks. Because they have a larger circumference, the
outer tracks are capable of holding more data. Drives without zoned bit recording store
the same amount of data on each track, even though the outer tracks may be twice as
long as the inner tracks. The result is wasted storage capacity. Drives which use zoned
bit recording split the tracks into groups called zones, with each successive zone
having more sectors per track as you move outward from the centre of the disk.
Low-level formatting therefore, lays down the number of tracks and sectors per track on
the hard disk.
Partitioning
Creating a partition on a hard disk enables it to support separate file systems, each in
its own partition.
Each file system can then use its own method to allocate file space in logical units,
called clusters or allocation units. Every hard disk must have at least one partition on it,
and can have up to four primary DOS partitions and one extended DOS partition. It
should be noted that there are alternatives to Microsoft operating systems, and that
these require their own partitions and file systems. It is possible to set up a computer
with more than one operating system, and to make the choice of which is required at
boot-up.
Partitioning is accomplished by running the Fdisk program which comes with your
operating system. Fdisk allows you to select the amount of space on the drive to use
for a partition, from a single megabyte or one per cent of the disk’s capacity, up to the
entire capacity of the disk, or as much as the file system will allow.
With today’s large capacity drives, many people have more than one operating system
installed on their PC. I know of several who have Windows 98, Windows 2000 and one
of the Linux distributions on one machine.
However, for our purposes we need only one partition and to create it we will need to
remove any existing partitions from the drive. To do this you should access a machine
which has Windows 98 and create a start-up disk by going to Start – Settings – Control
Panel – Add/Remove Programs, click the Startup Disk tab and follow the on-screen
instructions.
Make sure the computer you are going to use contains no data or applications which
may be needed by anyone, because you are going to completely remove all the files
and directories on the HDD.
Put the newly created disk in the A: (floppy) drive of the machine you are going to use
and switch on the computer.
When the computer has gone through the boot sequence, type ‘fdisk’ at the command
prompt, and if you are asked if you wish to enable large disk support, press the ‘N’ key
and then press enter.

The screen which appears should look like:
FDISK Options
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Choose one of the following:

1. Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive
2. Set active partition
3. Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive
4. Display partition information
Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to exit FDISK
When the FDISK screen appears choose option 4, press enter and the current partition
information will be displayed. If the system tells you “The extended DOS
partition contains Logical DOS drives”, press ‘Y’ to display the
information. This will show you how many logical drives are in the partition.
Fdisk will now show how many logical drives are in the extended partition and what
drive letters are assigned to them. If you are not prompted to view this, it will make your
task easier.
At this stage you should press the ‘Escape’ key until you arrive back at the original
FDISK screen as shown above.
If there is only one partition on your HDD then follow the instructions on the next page.
If, however, the system indicates you have an extended partition containing logical
drives, then these must be deleted before the primary partition. To do this skip ahead
to the section entitled Deleting logical drive(s) and extended partition, and when
completed, resume by following the instructions at the top of the next page.

Change the choice offered to [3] by pressing the ‘3’ key, and press enter. You should
now see the following screen:
Delete DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive

Current fixed disk drive: 1
Choose one of the following:
1. Delete Primary DOS Partition
2. Delete Extended DOS Partition
3. Delete Logical DOS Drive(s) in the Extended DOS Partition
4. Delete Non-DOS Partition
Enter choice: [ ]
Press Esc to return to FDISK Options
Choose option [1] by typing ‘1’ and press enter.

When you have done this, the next screen will give you information about the partition:
its status (‘A’ signifies the partition is active [bootable]), type, volume label (if any) and
size. Towards the bottom of the screen you will see a flashing warning, telling you all
data in the deleted partition will be lost, and asking which partition you want to delete.
[1] should be in the option box; press enter to accept this. You will now be asked by the
system if you are sure you want to proceed. Type ’y’ and press enter. You will now be
informed the partition has been deleted, and that you must restart the computer. Do
this with your start-up disk still in the A: drive, and when the computer reaches the A:\
prompt, run fdisk. Do not enable large disk support.
Choose option [1], say ‘y’ to use all the space available for the primary partition, and
make it active. You have now created a primary partition on your hard drive, and it is
ready for high-level formatting. Remove the start-up disk from the drive and switch off
the computer.

Deleting logical drive(s) and extended partition

Choose option 3 (Delete Partition or Logical DOS Drive) at the FDISK
screen and, when the screen changes, choose 3 (Delete Logical DOS
Drive(s)in the Extended Partition) again. If there is one drive in the
extended partition, enter its letter and press return. You will be prompted to type the
volume label between the square brackets on screen.
If you see a volume label under the heading on the second line on the screen, you
must type it exactly as it appears or the fdisk program will not delete the logical drive.
If there are more than one logical drives in the extended partition, you should follow the
above steps to delete them all.
The next step is to delete the extended DOS partition. Note that if there are any logical
drives remaining you will not be able to delete the extended partition. So making sure
you have deleted all the logical drives, follow the instructions to remove the extended
DOS partition.
High level formatting and DOS installation

For this exercise you will need the set of three DOS 6.22 installation floppy disks.
Insert DOS disk 1 of 3 into the floppy drive and switch on the computer. It will boot to a
blue screen. Press the F3 key twice and at the A:\ prompt, type the command which
will let you format the C: drive (format C:). A message will tell you that all data on
fixed disk C: will be lost if you continue, but as there is no data on
the disk as yet this message is irrelevant. Reply ‘Y’ to the ‘Are you sure you want
to continue’ question and the system will perform a high-level format on the C:
drive.
When this is completed, with DOS disk 1 of 3 still in the floppy drive, reboot the
machine and do the following.
1. Read the instruction screen which appears when the computer has booted.
2. Change date and time (if necessary); change Country and keyboard settings (use
arrow keys to select option which needs changing, press enter and use arrow key
to select United Kingdom, then press enter). Repeat this step for the second option,
and when satisfied the options are correct, press enter to continue.
3. Accept C:\DOS as the host directory.
4. Insert disks 2 and 3 when instructed.
5. When setup is complete, remove the floppy disk from the drive and press enter.
MS-DOS version 6.22 is now installed on your computer.

Configuring the command line environment

To allow you, the user, to configure your computer to your own requirements, or the
requirements of your organisation, there are two files the system reads each time it
starts. These are config.sys and autoexec.bat. By using edit and altering, adding
lines to, or deleting lines from these files, you can customise what your machine does
on start-up.
There are 15 commands you can include in your config.sys file but we are concerned
with only a few of these at present; these are:
BUFFERS sets the amount of RAM reserved for transferring information to and
from a disk.
COUNTRY sets the country language conventions for your system.
DEVICE loads an installable device driver to the system.
FILES sets the maximum number of files DOS allows to be open at one time.
LASTDRIVE sets the number of valid drive letters available.
REM indicates a line is a REMark (comment), not a command, and will not be
processed.
In general it is sufficient to accept the default settings for the config.sys file but if you
are going to install applications, these may require alterations to be made. e.g. if you
wish to use Turbo Pascal to learn programming, or write programs, you will need to
ensure there is a line in the config.sys file which sets the number of files that may be
opened at the same time to 30. This can be done by adding:
FILES=30
to the file. The default setting is 8, and the Turbo Pascal program often needs more
files than this to be open simultaneously. Use the command:
edit config.sys
and change the default settings to the required number.
If you want to use a mouse while running a DOS-based application, you will need to
load the appropriate mouse driver for the mouse. You will need to obtain a driver disk
(from your study centre). This will be on a floppy disk and the disk will contain a file
named install.exe or setup.exe. Run this command from the DOS prompt, and the
installation process will copy the required files to a directory on the C: drive. The
installation will create this directory and will call it ‘Mouse’ or something similar.

One of the files in this directory should be called mouse.sys or mouse.com. Some
installations will enable the mouse on start-up by creating a new config.sys (or
autoexec.bat) file. This can be achieved by using the copy command. Suppose on the
installation disk there is a file called mouse.cop and it contains only the line required to
install the mouse driver at start-up (DEVICE=C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.SYS); then to add
the line to the config.sys file, a batch program could be run and the instruction
(command) in the batch file would be:
COPY C:\CONFIG.SYS + A:\MOUSE.COP
If you use the copy command with the ‘+’ sign, and do not specify a destination, the
system will append the contents of the second named file to the first named file, and
save it with the same name.
This method is used only if the mouse.sys file is installed. If a mouse.com file is used
to install the driver at start-up, it can be called when the autoexec.bat file is run. This is
explained shortly.
It is possible to use a number of DOS utilities to optimise the performance of a PC
using DOS as the operating system, and we shall look at one of these. At the
command prompt, type ‘memmaker∧/?’ and see what the utility does.
To run the memmaker program, type its name at the prompt and follow the instructions,
and answer the questions asked. Make a note of the memory available both before and
after the program has run, and also note the size of the largest program able to run.
Suppose you have a CD-ROM drive fitted to your computer, and you want to access
data on a CD-ROM but you cannot, because the OS does not know there is a CD drive
fitted. To enable the OS to recognise the CD drive, you will need to install a driver for
the CD drive, and this can be done by adding a line to each of the config.sys and
autoexec.bat files. You will also need to install the CD-ROM driver file onto your HDD;
the file you need is called oakcdrom.sys.
There are many CD-ROM manufacturers, each of whom should issue their own driver
program. However, some drivers (known as generic drivers) cover a range of devices
by different manufacturers. If the oakcdrom.sys file does not work, then you should try
the btccdrom.sys file in its place. Between them these two files are reputed to enable
over 95% of CD-ROM drives. Should neither work, you will have to locate the driver for
your specific drive.

Having located the file (oakcdrom.sys can be found, for example, in the
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD folder on a Windows 98 second edition machine) and
copied it onto a floppy disk, you can use it to install the CD driver to the machine on
which you installed DOS by following these steps.
1. Make a directory on the C: drive and call it ‘CDROM’ (md cdrom).
2. Copy the oakcdrom.sys file from floppy to the newly created directory.
3. Use edit to open the config.sys file, and add the following lines (see the following
explanation).
• LASTDRIVE=Z
• DEVICE=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:CDROM1
4. Save and close file.
5. Edit autoexec.bat by adding: C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM1
6. Save and close file.
7. Restart the computer and hope you get all the correct messages.
8. Insert a CD into the drive and try to get a directory listing of the D: drive.
Explanations
LASTDRIVE command specifies the number of allowable drive letters. If this is not set
you may get an error message saying ‘insufficient drive letters
available’.
DEVICE=driver to install.
C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS is the path to, and name of driver to install.
/D:CDROM1 is the name given to the device (nothing to do with the drive letter).
C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM1 tells the system to apply the Microsoft CD
EXtensions to the named device.

Installing a graphical user environment

This section specifically covers the installation of Windows XP, Professional Edition.
You should have available a PC with a blank, formatted HDD (the procedure for
preparing the hard drive has already been outlined in part one of this section ‘Installing
a command line OS’).
Please note, however, that an existing hard drive can be overwritten or a new hard
drive prepared as part of the Windows XP installation procedure.
Newer PCs are able to boot from CD if configured within their BIOS setup. If a legacy
machine (with CD drive fitted) is all that is available, which cannot boot from a CD, then
it is essential you have access to a bootable 3½” floppy disk that provides a generic CD
driver (e.g. a Windows 98 Emergency Start-up Disk could be used).
As a preliminary, find out if the virus detection feature has been enabled in the
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) setup (tutor support may be
necessary here). If this feature is enabled, the installation will crash for no apparent
reason, and the only way to restart the program will be to reboot (either a ‘cold boot’ or
a ‘warm boot’) the machine. (A cold boot is when the computer is switched on after
having been powered down, a warm boot is a restart using ‘Ctrl-Alt-Del’ or by pressing
the reset button.)
The reason for this failure is that Windows will try to overwrite the master boot record,
so the virus detection facility will think the master boot record is under virus attack and
will not allow the overwrite, and installation will halt.
Prior to running Windows Setup you must therefore ensure that such virus detection
has been disabled.
If the PC will not boot from a CD and you have obtained a start-up disk, it would be a
good idea to test it to see if the computer will boot from it with the desired functionality.
Put the disk into the floppy disk drive and switch on. The choices at boot up will be to
start the computer with or without CD-ROM support. You should choose to start with
CD-ROM support, allow the boot process to complete and then test the CD drive by
putting the Windows XP CD in and typing D: at the A:\> prompt (assuming D: is the
drive letter assigned to the CD-drive, if not use the appropriate letter) and finally, using
the ‘dir’ command, obtain a listing of the files on the CD.
If all is well you are ready to proceed with the installation.
At the D:\> prompt, type ‘setup’.
Alternatively, if the machine is capable of booting from a CD, ignore the above and
simply ensure the correct boot sequence option is set in the BIOS setup menu.
Remember to disable the virus detection BIOS option. Insert the Windows XP CD into
the CD drive and switch the machine on.

The main stages of the Windows XP installation are:

• Setup will automatically inspect the computer’s hardware and configuration to
prepare for installation.
• You will be required to agree to Microsoft’s licence agreement.
• Select the partition for Windows XP to installed into (it is recommended that NTFS
is chosen to format the partition, although FAT32 is an option).
• Having formatted the partition, Setup will copy the files.
• Customise Region and Language options.
• Provide the 25 alphanumeric product key (CD key).
• Provide Date and Time settings.
• Perform network configuration options, if applicable.
Note that these steps are described in detail at http://www.windowsreinstall.com.

Configuring the graphical environment
User requirements
Windows allows users to customise their computers in many ways; the purpose of this
is to make the user feel comfortable at and with their machines. This section serves as
an introduction by considering a limited selection of the ways in which the Windows XP
interface can be customised to suit particular user requirements. It also introduces user
accounts and some security issues.
Mouse
Some users have more difficulty in double-clicking the mouse at the correct speed for
the system to recognise it as a double click and not as two single clicks. Other users
may have problems seeing the mouse pointer on the screen, perhaps because it
moves too quickly or because it is too faint.
How would we set up a system for users such as these?
Click ‘Start/Settings/Control Panel’ and when the control panel opens, double click the
mouse icon, indicated in the following illustration, to launch the mouse properties
dialogue box:

From this dialogue box, the function of the mouse buttons can be swapped with one
another. Some left-handed people find this very useful. The double-click speed can
also be altered and tested. The test facility lets you know if you have double-clicked at
a fast enough speed. Alter the setting and test the new setting. How do you know if you
clicked fast enough?
Now click the ‘Pointers’ tab and see what options are available.
Investigate these possibilities and make recommendations for those whose eyesight is
not quite as good as it used to be.

Now click the ‘Pointer Options’ tab:
What can be done here to improve the user environment for those who may have
problems following the cursor?
Experiment with the settings to find out.
Appearance
There are many ways in which you can customise the appearance of your user
interface. An obvious one is the desktop background colour or image.
It is also possible to change the window colour and the text colour when running
applications. Many users find the stark contrast between a white window and black text
too harsh for their eyes, especially if they are going to be sitting in front of a monitor for
many hours every day.
How are these customisations accomplished? There are two methods of accessing the
required dialogue box.

You may either click ‘Start/Settings/Control Panel’ and when the control panel opens,
double-click on the Display icon.
Alternatively you could right-click on a free area of the desktop and select ‘Properties’
from the resultant menu.
Whichever of the above options is chosen, the following dialogue will appear on your
screen.
By selecting the ‘Appearance’ tab and then the Advanced button, you may, by selecting
the various items, choose how they will be displayed.

The areas whose appearance can be altered include the Active Title Bar, the Inactive
Title Bar, the Desktop, the Window and what are known as 3D Objects. The 3D
Objects are the buttons which are pressed to accept or cancel the choices you have
made.
If you select the Active Title Bar item (the area which has ‘Active Window’ printed) from
the drop-down list, you will have the choice of altering the colour(s) displayed on the
bar, and the various font attributes (typeface, weight and style, size and colour).
Return from the Advanced Appearance dialogue to the Display Properties dialogue.
Try out the different colour schemes on offer.
Select the Screen Saver tab and try out a number of screen savers.
Take the time to experiment with the changes you can make to the settings, and to look
at some of the options offered by Windows. Experiment with the many preformatted
appearance configurations that Microsoft believe you might want to use.

How to create and configure user accounts in Windows XP

Visit:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;279783&sd=tech
Windows XP security issues (sharing resources, internet restrictions etc.)

Visit:
http://labmice.techtarget.com/articles/winxpsecuritychecklist.htm

? 3.1
1. What is the purpose of the FDISK program?

2. Give a brief explanation of zoned bit recording.
3. Why might it be desirable to have more than one partition on a hard disk dive?
4. What does ‘DOS’ stand for?
5. You are installing a CD drive and ‘insufficient drive letters’ is displayed
as an error message. How do you overcome this problem?
6. You need to share a particular folder either locally or with other users on your
network; how do you achieve this?
7. What are the settings most likely to need alteration during a Windows setup?
8. What was the original purpose of a screensaver?
9. I need to add a Windows XP component to my computer because I did not choose
it during the original installation. How do I access the Windows Components Wizard
dialogue box?
Check your answers with those given at the end of this section.


In this section you have learned how to install and configure two types of OS, MS-DOS
6.22 (command line OS) and Windows XP, Professional Edition (an OS which employs
a graphical interface).
More particularly, you should have attained the objectives of:
• preparing a HDD to accept data;
• installing a command line OS;
• configuring a command line OS to meet user requirements;
• installing a graphical OS;
• configuring a graphical OS to meet user requirements.

Answers to SAQ
SAQ3.1
1. FDISK allows you to select the amount of space on the drive to use for a partition,
from a single megabyte or one per cent of the disk’s capacity, up to the entire
capacity of the disk, or as much as the file system will allow.
2. HDDs without zoned bit recording store the same amount of data on each track,
even though the outer tracks may be twice as long as the inner tracks. The result is
wasted storage capacity. Drives which use zoned bit recording split the tracks into
groups called zones, with each successive zone having more sectors per track as
you move outward from the centre of the disk.
3. Having more than one partition on a drive would enable the computer to have more
than one operating system installed. Another reason for more than one partition is
that it could lead to more efficient use of the available space by reducing the size of
the clusters (allocation units).
4. Disk Operating System.
5. Add a line to the config.sys file. The line should read ‘LASTDRIVE=Z’.
6. Right click on the folder you wish to share and choose Properties. Within the
Properties dialogue box, select the Sharing tab.
7. Country, Keyboard and Time Zone.
8. To prevent images being burnt onto the back of the cathode ray tube during times
when the computer was idle.
9. Click Start/Settings/Control Panel then double-click on the Add or Remove
Programs icon and then click the Add/Remove Windows Components icon.


Section 4: Install and configure system and

application software



This section covers the installation of both system and application software in both
graphical and command line environments.

On completion of this section you will be competent in all aspects of installing:
• system software in a graphical environment;
• system software in a command line environment;
• application software in a graphical environment;
• application software in a command line environment.

The time required for the study and assessment of this section should not exceed 11
hours.

• A stand-alone PC with Windows XP installed as the OS.
• Use will be made of the Start/Run/cmd Windows option to launch an MS-DOS
session (also using the Alt + Return feature to switch to full screen mode).
• A supply of work log sheets (from your tutor).


Assessment for this section will comprise a set of exercises, undertaken in controlled
conditions. Candidates must perform the tasks unaided but may refer to notes and
online help facilities (i.e. Windows Help or application help). A detailed log of the steps
taken to accomplish the tasks and of any problems encountered, and the solution to
these, must be kept and submitted to the tutor.

may be possible to arrange assessment at an alternative venue, but this will be at the
discretion of the centre.

To achieve a pass for the assessment of this section you will be required to submit
evidence to demonstrate your ability to install and configure system and application
software in either a graphical or a command line environment. You will submit evidence
to satisfy this outcome in the form of a handwritten log of all the work done in response
to each assessment task. Each log must be approved as satisfactory and certified by
the assessor as your own work.
include:
• a note of any problems if encountered, and their solutions.
Your evidence may be judged to be satisfactory where it demonstrates the following
abilities relevant to the environment used.
• To install correctly within a graphical environment at least one additional or updated
device driver and any other associated software, and at least one utility program.
• To install correctly within a command line environment at least one utility program.
• To install correctly within a graphical environment at least one application package,
or suite of packages, and to select the correct options (country, currency etc.)
during the installation.
• To install correctly within a command line environment at least one application
package, and to configure it as necessary for basic operation.


conditions, and will be arranged with the centre at a time to suit the centre’s timetabling
requirements.

T
The tutor will make available a blank work log which the student should complete while
working through this section. The completed logs should be sent to your tutor, who will
use their content to decide whether you have demonstrated sufficient knowledge to
undertake the summative assessment.

Installing system software in a graphical environment

The most commonly used pieces of system software in any PC are device drivers. You
will have heard people talking about video drivers, sound drivers, modem drivers etc.
But what is a device driver and what does it do?
In theory, every hardware device needs its own device driver. This includes all I/O
devices. However, it is usually not necessary to write a separate device driver for every
single device as one device driver may embrace a whole class of devices. For
example, an enhanced integrated device electronics (EIDE) fixed-disk device driver
should support any model of EIDE fixed disk, and any number and combination of them
(subject to the limitations imposed by the motherboard design). This is possible
because the interface to these devices is fixed. For other devices, such as audio, this is
often not possible, as every different type of audio device has its own proprietary
interface.
Device drivers make up the part of an OS that interacts directly with the hardware. This
puts an extra level of device independence between the hardware and the OS, making
it easier for the OS to support new hardware.
It is not a frequently performed operation but on occasion, if a new piece of hardware is
to be added to a PC system, it will be necessary to load (install) the required software.
The following pages give examples of how to add a network interface card and a
modem to a PC, and how to change the graphics adapter.
After physically installing (fitting) a device to a PC (opening the case and inserting the
device to the correct expansion slot), the appropriate system software must be installed
to allow the device to be recognised by and work in conjunction with the OS.
Device driver installation:

The following screen shot shows the contents of the driver disk supplied with a Realtek
RTL 8019 Ethernet adapter. As you can see, the manufacturer has written drivers for
many operating systems including Windows, Linux, Unix and Novell Netware.

Windows drivers
Linux driver
The following text is taken from an installation guide which shows the manufacturer’s
instructions for setting up their Ethernet adapter using Windows as the OS.
As you will see, the translation from the native language of the manufacturer leaves a
bit of room for confusion, but in fact the installation is painless, and if the instructions
are followed, the NIC will be installed and configured with minimal user input.
As the years have progressed the act of installing Plug and Play devices has become
easier, and is now almost without exception, simply a matter of physically installing the
hardware, letting the OS detect it on boot up, and using either the disk supplied by the
manufacturer or the driver on the OS installation CD-ROM. As OSs have become more
sophisticated, the developers have included an ever-increasing number of drivers on
the installation CD-ROM, and it is very often a case now of inserting the CD when
prompted and letting the OS find the required file.

Realtek RTL8019 LAN adapter installation

Introduction:
This document describes the procedure to install driver for RTL8019 Plug&Play
Ethernet adapter.
Location of Driver: \WIN32\PNPNT.SYS
Installing driver procedure on Microsoft Windows XP/2000:
Windows XP/2000 is the operation system with Plug&Play feature. If you set the
adapter in Plug&Play mode, Windows XP/2000 will auto-detect your adapter
configuration and set it. The user doesn't need to do anything for the adapter
configuration or installing the driver. If you set the network card in jumpless mode, you
must set up your driver as following procedure by manual.
1. When you log into Windows XP/2000, click on the ‘Start’ icon, then move the
mouse to ‘Settings’ icon and click on the ‘Control Panel’.
2. In the Control Panel window, double click the ‘Add Hardware’ icon.
3. Within the ‘Add Hardware Wizard’ provided, click the Next button. The wizard will
search for any new hardware added.
4. Select the ‘Yes, I have already connected the hardware’ radio button then click the
Next button.
5. Select a New Hardware Device from the drop-down list as shown:
6. Select the ‘Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)’ radio
button.
7. Select Network Adapters from the ‘Common hardware types’ list provided.
8. Choose the ‘Realtek RTL8019 pnp LAN adapter or compatible’ from the list
presented.

Another example of the ease with which a device can be added to a PC which uses
Windows as the OS is the installation of an internal modem, and the manufacturer’s
instructions are as follows.
The installation of a new device and its driver is generally as easy as the above
instructions imply. It is important that you should have the appropriate driver as the files
are necessary to ensure the correct operation of the device.
There will be occasions when you do not wish to install a new device but may want to
upgrade an existing driver. An example could be that a new driver has been written for
your graphics adapter and you want to install this new driver.

The steps taken to do this are as follows.

1. Go to adapter manufacturer’s website and download the new driver.
2. Right-clicking the desktop and selecting ‘Properties’ will open the Display
Properties dialogue box, as shown:
Advanced
button

3. Clicking the ‘Advanced’ button within Settings will open a further dialogue box. Click
the Adapter tab, which will enable you to change the driver for your graphics card.
4. Click the ‘Properties’ button.
5. Click the Driver tab.
6. Then click the ‘Update Driver…’ button.
As this unit will be studied by many students at many different locations, the tutor will
have available a suitable choice of devices to be installed or drivers to upgrade. The
process is simple and involves the ability to follow on-screen instructions.

Another type of system software you will come across is utility software and we shall
look at what is available. A brief definition of utility software is software which enhances
the OS. There is a tremendous range of utility software available on the WWW, both as
shareware and freeware.
If you access your favourite search engine and insert ‘windows utilities’ in the search
box, you may well find in excess of 100,000 results. These will be websites which have
a store of utilities. Look at some of them, decide if you think any could be useful and,
after consultation with your tutor, download and install one of them. You will find the
process is completely simple and you could be pleasantly surprised by what you
download.
Customising your PC with Windows system software

You will have already experimented with Windows customisation possibilities in section
three.
This may well be something you have done on many occasions without realising you
have used system software. Each time you change the settings of your desktop in the
Windows environment you are making use of system software.
What types of customisation can be performed?

• Change the desktop background colour.
• Change the desktop background image.
• Change the screensaver.
• Modify templates used in Word or Excel (or any other application).
• Customise toolbars in Microsoft applications.

Installing system software in a command line environment

It is rare nowadays to come across an occasion where it is necessary to install system
software from a command line environment, but that occasion will arise at some point.
Perhaps the most common system software to be installed would be the device driver
for a CD-ROM drive. If you have occasion to install a new CD-ROM drive to a PC and
wish it to be available when the machine is in command prompt mode, it will be
necessary to install the driver and make sure the system loads it on boot up. Some CD-
ROM drives are available with a driver disk supplied by the manufacturer. If this is the
case, then the installation is a very simple matter.
On the floppy disk supplied with the drive there will be a file called install.exe or
setup.exe and to install the driver you should either start the computer in command
prompt mode or select MS-DOS Prompt from the Start/Programs menu, insert the
floppy into the floppy drive, change to the A: drive and type the appropriate command
(install or setup) at the prompt, and follow the on-screen instructions. The
installation will make the necessary alterations to the autoexec.bat and
config.sys files for you. Reboot your computer to command prompt mode and watch
the screen for messages indicating the drive has been found and a drive letter
assigned to it.
If the drive does not come with its own driver disk, you will still be able to load the driver
for about 99% of drives by adding the following lines to your config.sys file:
LASTDRIVE=Z
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:CDROM1
and adding:
C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM1
to your autoexec.bat file.
If these instructions are not familiar to you, you should take some time and revise the
material in Section 3.
Although the common perception is that there are few DOS users left today, the
number of DOS utilities to be found on the WWW gives rise to some doubt about this.
With your tutor’s permission, conduct a search for DOS utilities on the web and
download and install one which will let you run an enhanced version of the dir
command. The one I have in mind will display the listing in different colours for
directories and file types.

Installing application software in a graphical environment

In this section we will step through the procedures required to complete the installation
of an application package within the Windows XP operating environment. The
application package chosen for this example is Microsoft Works Version 3. All the
necessary files are held on CD, and the executable file (setup.exe) is in a directory
called MSWORKS. Make sure the installation CD is in the appropriate drive.
You can initiate the setup program by clicking the ‘Start’ button on the taskbar, then
click ‘Run’ and type ‘D:\MSWORKS\setup’ in the run box, (assuming that D: is the drive
letter assigned to your CD-ROM drive; if not type the letter which relates to that
device). Click the ‘OK’ button and the setup program will start.
Once the file has been accessed, the following box will appear in a new window.
As you will see from the above, setup will not function properly if there are any other
Windows programs running at the same time that may be using shared files which are
required by Works. If you have any applications running use the ‘Help’ button for
instructions on how to close them or if not, click ‘OK’ to continue with Setup.

The next dialogue box to be displayed will ask you for your name and the name of the
organisation for which you work. Make the relevant entries and click ’OK’.
After the Name and Organization Information box closes the next box to appear will
give you a product ID which you should use if you have occasion to contact Microsoft
technical support.
The next stage in the procedure is for you to decide onto which drive you wish to install
the application.

The setup program, by default, will install to the MSWORKS directory (folder) on the C:
drive. If this is not where you want the application to be, you should click the ‘Change
Directory’ button, and inform the program where you want the application to reside.

The previous example will install to a directory called MSWORKS on the D: drive. On
my PC I have multiple partitions, and the D: drive is where I install my applications.
Changing the target directory is simply a matter of typing the path to the directory in the
‘Path’ box. In the event of the destination directory not existing, the program will ask
you if you want to create it. You should answer ‘Yes’ to this question.
Next on the list of questions will be the type of installation you want to do. Under
normal circumstances, mainly because I now have a fair amount experience of
installations, I choose a Custom Installation because I don’t always need all the
features available.

In this case, however, you should choose ‘Complete Installation’ as the application is
not excessively large, and will not occupy too much disk space.

The ‘Choose Program Group’ screen may cause you slight confusion, as it was
designed to be used in conjunction with an earlier version of Windows (3.11), but if you
accept the default option, setup will add a ‘Microsoft Works for Windows’ icon to the
Start Programs menu, as the following illustration shows.

You will see the system creating the icons in the relevant windows, and when that
process has been completed you will be presented with a final setup screen which
should tell you the installation has been successful.
Click the ‘OK’ button to close the window, then to ensure the installation has indeed
been successful, start the application and create a word-processed document and a
spreadsheet.

Installing application software in a command line environment

The program to be installed in this example will be Turbo Pascal Version 6. This
application allows users to write and compile executable programs written in the Pascal
language. Version 6 is a DOS-based version, and the installation can be done in a
DOS window on a Windows 9x or 2000 computer.
You will need the two Turbo Pascal 3½” floppy installation disks and access to a
computer with permissions set to allow you to install programs.
The first step in the process is to access a DOS window and to do this you will click the
Start button, then Programs, then MS-DOS prompt. You should now insert disk 1 into
the floppy drive and at the command prompt type ‘A:’ then press enter. At the A:\>
prompt, type install, press enter and this will initiate the installation program. The
following screen will appear.
This is the welcome screen and you should press enter to continue with the installation.
Once you have done this the next screen you will see will look like this.

This ensures that you are accessing the correct source drive, i.e. the drive which
contains the installation disk, and the following screen checks that you want to install to
a hard disk drive.
Now you will have the choice to change the default target directory. If you have multiple
partitions on your HDD, and you do not want to install Turbo Pascal to the C: drive, this
is where you make the change.

Should you decide to change the destination drive, just press the enter key and edit the
box which appears to point the installation program to your chosen destination. It is
good practice to accept the default directory (TP) even if you change the destination
drive.
Change
destination
drive
Once you have decided which drive is to host the application, use the cursor (arrow)
keys to scroll to the Start Installation option and then press enter. The program will now
begin to copy the compressed files to the hard drive and explode them to the
destination drive.

After several files have been exploded and loaded to the correct drive and directory,
you will be prompted to insert the disk containing the utilities and help files needed for
the correct operation of the program.
Once all the necessary files have been decompressed and stored in the correct
location, the program will ask you to make a couple of checks to ensure the
configuration files are correctly edited.

When any key is pressed, after noting the message, the installation will end.
If you were going to make use of the Turbo Pascal program you would, using the ‘Edit’
command, open each of the config.sys and autoexec.bat files in turn and make the
alterations as indicated by the box in the last window.
Type ‘exit’ at the command prompt, and the system will close the DOS window and
return you to where you were prior to starting the installation.

? 4.1
1. What types of components would require a device driver?

2. Why is it necessary to install a device driver?
3. What is a good source for the latest drivers for a graphics adapter?
4. How would you change the default source directory for an installation of MS
Works?
5. What is meant by Plug and Play hardware?
Check your answers with those given at the end of the section.


Having completed this section you should be competent in all aspects of installing:
• system software in a graphical environment;
• system software in a command line environment;
• application software in a graphical environment;
• application software in a command line environment.

Answers to SAQ
SAQ 4.1
1. Any hardware device you add to your computer will require a device driver.
Examples of such devices are: graphics adapters, modems, soundcards, scanners
etc.
2. To allow the device to be recognised by, and work in conjunction with, the OS.
3. The device manufacturer’s website.
4. During the installation, the setup program will offer you its default location which is
usually a folder using the application name, and this will be in the root directory of
the C: drive. Clicking the ‘Change Directory’ button will let you specify another
directory for the program.
5. The term Plug and Play applies to hardware which will automatically be recognised
by an OS the first time that the computer is switched on after the physical fitting of
the device to the computer. The configuration of the device is done by the OS. It will
allocate the correct IRQ number and I/O addresses, and this should be
accomplished without conflicts with any existing devices.

Work Log
Attach additional notes or printouts as necessary.
This page may be photocopied if required, or it may be made available as a file and
you may word process your answers.
Candidate’s
name
Assessor Date
Task Procedure


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DH33 34

Computer Operating Systems 1

© SQA Version 1 2 Developed by COLEG

Introduction to the unit 7

What this unit is about 7

How to use these learning materials 9

Symbols used in this unit 9

Other resources required 11

How you will be assessed 13

When and where you will be assessed 13

What you have to achieve 13

Opportunities for reassessment 13

Section 1: The structure and function of an operating system 15

Introduction to this section 17

Assessment information for this section 18

The main functional elements of a computer operating system 19

The function of the user interface 25

The function of the file system 31

The function of device drivers 38

The function of memory management 41

The function of the kernel 45

The function of utility programs 46

© SQA Version 1 3 Developed by COLEG

Using the internet 54

The function of an application program interface (API) 56

The function of operating system configuration files 58

Graphical user interface 60

Summary of this section 64

Section 2: Using a graphical environment to operate a computer 67

Introduction to this section 69

Assessment information for this section 70

Opportunities for reassessment 71

Starting up and shutting down the system 73

Creating and exploring hierarchical file storage structures 76

Copying, renaming and moving files and folders 82

Starting and stopping programs 86

Using the online help facility 89

Summary of this section 90

Section 3: Install and configure operating environments 93

Introduction to this section 95

Assessment information for this section 96

Opportunities for reassessment 97

Installing a command line OS 99

Configuring the command line environment 104

Installing a graphical user environment 107

© SQA Version 1 4 Developed by COLEG

Configuring the graphical environment 109

Summary of this section 116

Answers to SAQ 117

Section 4: Install and configure system and application software 119

Introduction to this section 121

Assessment information for this section 122

Installing system software in a graphical environment 125

Installing system software in a command line environment 131

Installing application software in a graphical environment 132

Installing application software in a command line environment 139

Summary of this section 145

Answers to SAQ 146

Work Log 147

© SQA Version 1 5 Developed by COLEG

© SQA Version 1 6 Developed by COLEG

Introduction to the unit

© SQA Version 1 7 Developed by COLEG

Miscellaneous files