The Boot Process

BIOS VS UEFI
Objectives

To be able to perform the boot process

Identify and differentiate BIOS from UEFI.
Vocabulary

Basic Input Output System BIOS

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface UEFI
Power On Self Test POST
Boot Record (aka MBR) BR
Globally Unique Identifier GUID
GUID Partition Table GPT
BIOS

Instructions used to start the computer from a cold
start. (power off to power on).

The BIOS instructions are written on non-volatile
RAM.

EEP-ROM is the common media choice for the
BIOS, installed on the motherboard.

The BIOS instructions are based on the chipset
installed on the motherboard
BIOS

The BIOS primary functions are

Issue the instructions for starting the
hardware at boot time.

Load the OS from the boot device.
Hardware Boot Sequence

Turn on the power switch

All memory and cache is empty at startup.

A reset signal is generated by the chipset to the
CPU until the power is ready.

The CPU powers up and reads address xFFFF0
from the ROM. This contains a jump instruction to
the start of the BIOS instructions.
POST

The POST (Power On Self Test)

Provide power to the motherboard-speaker

This allows error-code signals to be broadcast by
the mobo-speaker when errors are detected

Test if components on the motherboard are
receiving power and functioning as intended.
Hardware Boot Sequence

Video and keyboard are activated early in the boot
sequence. (video start instruction in ROM address
is xC000)

Other devices are activated like the disk drives,
optical drives, sound-card, NIC, USB bus, etc.

BIOS setup becomes available for the user.
BIOS: User Interface

There is a curser based user interface that allows:
a) Selection of a boot device
b) Setting the system clock
c) Configuring hardware (includes enabling or disabling
some devices)
d) Setting passwords for booting, & the UI, etc.
e) Also shows access to some system config information:
memory size, disk size, etc.
BIOS Completion

Memory count

Search for the OS Boot device

Optical drive

USB device

Network device

HDD
Partition Table

The PT contains information about 4 primary partitions.

Only one of the 4 primary partitions is designated as the
active partition

The active partition contains the OS for booting.

One of the 4 primary partitions can be designated as the
extended partition.

The extended partition can be divided into additional
logical partitions.
BIOS/UEFI

In the beginning there was the BIOS

Intel creates the Extensible Firmware
Interface in 1998

UEFI now supersedes EFI
– UEFI can run on-top-of the traditional BIOS
or in place of the BIOS.
BIOS/UEFI

BIOS is often used to describe UEFI

Modern OSes allow backward compatibility
between the traditional BIOS boot record and
the UEFI GPT.
GPT

Globally Unique Identifier – This is required
to allow a file system to exceed 2TB.

The 2TB limit is a result of limitations of the
original BR partition table