Short Notes on Booting Process

Now a days in every competitive exam which is having computer knowledge section they are asking a question on Booting. So we felt it will be useful if we give brief description of booting. Friends, in simple words we can say that the operation the computer performs to make itself ready for the usage is called booting.

In booting, the system checks whether all the hardware and software devices are working properly or not (almost similar to a person who checks whether all of his body parts working properly or not when he woke up in the morning). Whenever Power Switch (the button of the CPU you press when you want to switch on the system) is on, then automatically the program Power On Self Test (we can simply call this as POST) activates. This is available with ROM (Read Only Memory). This first checks all the cables and computer resources like Keyboard, Mouse, VDU, Printer etc., are connected in a right manner or not. Then it puts all zero in RAM (Random Access Memory). That is why RAM is called volatile memory (the computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information). Then it automatically loads Operating System.

If the operating system is DOS Operating System, then first it loads 3 Files. Those are

1. MS DOS. Sys
   
2. IO.Sys
3. COMMAND.COM

Here .sys indicates system files and .com indicates the internal commands.

Booting process is also know as initialization process. During the process, the Hardware checks for any new hardware attached to the system. If so, it automatically loads the driver program for it.

That's all for now friends. Read more computer awareness topics from here