boot : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

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©1997-2017 2008-01-22 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products

boot
To start or restart a computer. In years past, computers had no permanent computer program in them. They started up totally empty, so they had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Now computers have a permanent program in firmware called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) to get them started.

You can create a floppy disk with a small piece of the operating system on it, sufficient to get you started if something is wrong with the boot mechanism on hard disk. See these instructions how to do it for various operating systems. It is nice to have such a floppy around just in case, even if you don’t know how to use it personally.

W2K, XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32 and W10-64 are really too big to boot easily boot from floppy, so instead you can create a bootable CD (Compact Disc) or bootable DVD (Digital Video Disc). Here are someinstructions on how to do that. You will also find that partition managers such as Acronis Disk Director and image backup programs will produce a bootable CD as part of their operation.

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