1. A+ Guide to Software Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting THIRD EDITION Chapter 3 Understanding the Boot Process and Command Line

2. 2A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition You Will Learn… How a computer boots up and about some useful tools for troubleshooting a failed boot How Windows manages floppy disks and hard drives To use many commands at the command prompt

3. 3A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Booting Up Your Computer Refers to the computer bringing itself up to an operable state without user intervention Soft (warm) boot  Uses OS to reboot Hard (cold) boot  Uses on/off switch  More stressful on your machine

4. 4A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Startup BIOS Controls the Beginning of the Boot A successful boot depends on the hardware, the BIOS, and the operating system all performing without errors Errors are communicated as beeps or as screen messages

5. 5A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Overview of Boot Steps Step 1: POST (power-on self test) and assignment of system resources Step 2: ROM BIOS startup program searches for and loads an OS Step 3: OS configures the system and completes its own loading Step 4: Application software is loaded and executed

6. 6A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Boot Step 1

7. 7A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How the BIOS Finds and Loads the OS Startup BIOS looks to the CMOS setup to find the drive set to be the boot device Most often OS is loaded from logical drive C on the hard drive

8. 8A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Information Required on a Hard Drive to Load an OS

9. 9A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Information Required on a Hard Drive to Load an OS (continued) Startup BIOS Master Boot Record (MBR)  Master Boot Program  Partition Table OS Boot Record (Boot Sector)  Loads the first program file of the OS Boot Loader Program  Begins process of loading OS into memory

10. 10A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Boot Step 2

11. 11A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Loading the MS-DOS Core of Windows 9x OS Boot record loads Io.sys Io.sys  DOS core (Real mode I/O software)  A hidden file Msdos.sys  A text file  Contains parameters that affect the way the OS boots

12. 12A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Config.sys  How many files and buffers  Loads device drivers  Sometimes creates a RAM drive Command.com  Code to manage I/O  Internal DOS commands  Program to locate Autoexec.bat Loading the MS-DOS Core of Windows 9x (continued)

13. 13A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Loading the MS-DOS Core of Windows 9x (continued) Autoexec.bat  Contains series of commands that are executed each time OS is loaded  PATH command is used to locate program files  SET command creates and assigns a value to environmental variables  RESTART command causes system to reboot  TEMP command indicates temporary storage location

14. 14A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Boot Step 3

15. 15A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Emergency Startup Disks Bootable or system disk  Contains enough software to load an OS Rescue disk, Emergency Startup Disk (ESD) or startup disk  A bootable disk with troubleshooting utility programs

16. 16A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Windows 9x Startup Disks 1. Click Start on taskbar, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel 2. In the Control Panel window, double- click the Add/Remove Programs icon 3. Click the Startup Disk tab, and then click the Create Disk button

17. 17A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Windows 9x Startup Disks (continued)

18. 18A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using a Windows 9x Startup Disk with Another OS It is sometimes appropriate to use a startup disk created by one OS to boot a failed system with a different OS Can be used to demonstrate whether the hard drive or file stores on it are the source of the problem

19. 19A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Managing Floppy Disks and Hard Drives OS must prepare a floppy disk for use by putting track markings on it OS must put a file system on both floppy disks and hard disk drives (HDDs) OS manages the file system  Files and directories can be created, deleted, copied, and moved

20. 20A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How Data Is Logically Stored on a Floppy Disk All floppy and hard disk drives are divided into tracks and sectors Tracks are concentric circles on a disk

21. 21A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How Data Is Logically Stored on a Floppy Disk (continued) Sector  Always 512 bytes  Physical organization of a disk  BIOS manages disk as sectors Cluster (file allocation unit)  Group of sectors  Logical organization of a disk  OS views disk as a list of clusters

22. 22A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Clusters and Sectors

23. 23A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Formatting a Floppy Disk Tracks are created and the beginning of first sector on each track is marked Boot record is created Two copies of the FAT are created Root directory is created

24. 24A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition The Boot Record Track 0, sector 1 of a floppy disk Contains basic information about how the disk is organized Includes bootstrap loader, which can be used to boot from the disk Uniform layout and content of boot record allows any version of DOS or Windows to read any DOS or Windows disk

25. 25A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition The File Allocation Table (FAT) Lists the location of files on disk in a one- column table Floppy disk FAT is 12 bits wide, called FAT12 Each entry describes how a cluster on the disk is used A bad cluster on the disk will be marked in the FAT as unusable

26. 26A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition The Root Directory Lists all the files assigned to this table Contains a fixed number of entries Some items included are:  Filename and extension  Time and date of creation or last update  File attributes

27. 27A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How a Hard Drive is Logically Organized to Hold Data Low-level format  Creates tracks and sectors, done at factory Partition the hard drive  Creates partition table at the beginning of drive High-level format  Done by OS for each logical drive

28. 28A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How a Hard Drive is Logically Organized to Hold Data (continued) Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first 512 bytes of a hard drive  Master boot program (446 bytes) calls boot program to load OS  Partition table Description Location Size

29. 29A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Partitions and Logical Drives

30. 30A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How Many and What Kind of Logical Drives?

31. 31A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition FAT16 Supported by DOS and all versions of Windows Uses 16 bits for each cluster entry As the size of the logical drive increases, FAT16 cluster size increases dramatically

32. 32A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Virtual File Allocation Table (VFAT) (continued) Enables 32-bit, protected mode hard disk access In Windows for Workgroups, VFAT is called 32-bit file access In Windows 95, VFAT enables filenames of up to 255 characters (long filenames)

33. 33A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition FAT32 Became available with Windows 95 OSR2 Used 32 bits per FAT entry, although only 28 bits were used to hold cluster numbers More efficient than FAT16 in terms of cluster size

34. 34A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition NTFS Supported by Windows NT/2000/XP Provides greater security Used a database called the master file table (MFT) to locate files and directories Supports large hard drives

35. 35A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Comparing FAT16, FAT32, NTFS

36. 36A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How Many Logical Drives? For DOS and Windows 9x, the largest volume (logical drive) supported by FAT16 is 2.1 GB FAT16 cannot be used on hard drives (including all volumes) that exceed 8.4 GB For Windows NT/2000/XP, the largest volume that FAT16 supports is 4 GB

37. 37A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition How Many Logical Drives? (continued) Windows 2000/XP does not support a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB Windows 9x FAT32 does not support hard drives larger than 137 GB Windows 2000 supports hard drives larger than 137 GB if SP 3 or greater is applied Windows XP supports hard drives larger than 137 GB if SP 1 or greater is applied

38. 38A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition When to Partition a Drive First installation of new hard drive Existing hard drive giving errors Suspect that a virus has attacked the drive Want to wipe a hard drive clean and install a new OS

39. 39A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using Fdisk to Partition a Drive Used by Windows 9x and DOS Do not use Fdisk if the drive has already been partitioned by third-party software

40. 40A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using Fdisk to Partition a Drive (continued)

41. 41A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using Fdisk to Partition a Drive (continued)

42. 42A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using Fdisk to Partition a Drive (continued)

43. 43A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using the Command Prompt Most commands in this section work under Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 9x Using Windows 2000/XP, you can get to the command prompt from the Windows desktop Recovery Console provides a command prompt but no Windows desktop

44. 44A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Accessing the Command Prompt Each version of Windows has a command window accessible from Windows desktop All versions of Windows permit an alternate method involving Start, Run Using Windows 2000, boot with the four Windows 2000 boot disks Using Windows XP, boot with the installation CD and load Recovery Console

45. 45A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Accessing the Command Prompt (continued) Using Windows 9x, boot from a bootable disk or a Windows 9x startup disk Using Windows 95 or Windows 98, shut down and restart in MS-DOS mode Using Windows 9x, hold down the Ctrl key or the F8 key while booting, from the startup menu, select Command prompt only

46. 46A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Command Prompt Window

47. 47A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Launching a Program Using a Command Prompt OS assumes that a group of letters typed with no spaces is a program to be executed OS attempts to locate the file, load it into RAM, and execute it OS checks the current directory first Changing default drive and directory can help the OS locate the program file

48. 48A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Output of the Mem Command

49. 49A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition File and Directory Naming Conventions Under DOS, filenames must comply with the 8.3 format  Filename up to 8 characters  A separating period  File extension up to 3 characters  A through Z, 0 through 9  _^$~#%&-{}()@’`

50. 50A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition File and Directory Naming Conventions (continued) Under Windows, filenames and directories can be up to 255 characters Can contain spaces The DOS portion of Windows 9x can understand only 8.3 filenames  Creates an alias for long filenames using the tilde (~) character

51. 51A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Wildcards ? Is the wildcard for one character * is the wildcard for more than one character

52. 52A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Commands to Manage Disks, Hard Drives, Files and Directories Dir Type Del or Erase Rename or Ren Copy Xcopy Deltree Mkdir (MD) Chdir (CD) Rmdir (RD) Attrib Sys Chkdisk Scandisk Scanreg Defrag Ver Setver Extract Debug Edit Fdisk Format Unformat

53. 53A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Dir Lists files and directories  DIR /P lists one screen at a time  DIR /W uses wide format and omits details  DIR *.txt uses a wildcard character  DIR Myfile.txt checks that a single file is present

54. 54A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Type Displays the contents of a text file on the screen  Type Myfile.txt displays file contents  Type Myfile.txt>PRN redirects output to the printer  Type Myfile.txt |More displays output one screen at a time

55. 55A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Del or Erase Erases files or groups of files If drive and directory are not included, OS uses default drive and directory  ERASE A:\DOCS\*.* erases all files in the A:\DOCS directory  DEL *.* erases all files in the default directory  DEL MYFILE.TXT erases Myfile.txt

56. 56A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Rename or Ren Renames a file or folder Ren Myfile.txt Mybackup.txt changes the name of Myfile.txt to Mybackup.txt

57. 57A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Copy Copies a file or a group of files COPY MYFILE.TXT A: copies Myfile.txt from the default drive and default directory to drive A COPY C:\DOCS\*.* A: copies all in the C:\DOCS directory to drive A COPY SYSTEM.INI SYSTEM.BAK makes a backup of System.ini

58. 58A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Xcopy /C /S /Y /D: Xcopy is more powerful than Copy XCOPY C:\DOCS\*.* A: /S copies all files in the C:\DOCS directory, including subdirectories, to drive A /Y overwrites existing files without prompting /C keeps copying even after errors

59. 59A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Deltree [drive:] path Deletes directory tree beginning with subdirectory specified, including all files in all subdirectories in the tree DELTREE C:\Docs deletes the C:\Docs folder and all its contents

60. 60A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Mkdir [drive:]path or MD [drive:] path Creates a subdirectory under a directory MKDIR C:\GAME creates directory named \GAME on drive C MKDIR C:\GAME\CHESS creates directory named CHESS under \GAME directory

61. 61A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Dir Output Showing. and..

62. 62A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Chdir [drive:]path or CD [drive:]path or CD.. Changes the current default directory CD C:\GAME\CHESS makes the command prompt appear as C:\GAME\CHESS> C:\GAME\CHESS>CD.. Makes the command prompt appear as C:\GAME>

63. 63A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Rmdir [drive:]path or RD [drive:]path Removes a subdirectory  Directory must contain no files  Directory must contain no subdirectories  Directory must not be the current directory C:\>RMDIR C:\GAME\CHESS removes the CHESS directory

64. 64A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Attrib Displays or changes read-only, archive, system, and hidden attributes of a file ATTRIB MYFILE.TXT displays attributes of MYFILE.TXT ATTRIB +H MYFILE.TXT sets hidden attribute ATTRIB -H MYFILE.TXT resets hidden attribute

65. 65A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Sys Drive: Copies system files needed to boot to a disk or hard drive Can be used to repair a drive if system files become corrupt SYS C: copies system files to the hard drive

66. 66A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Chkdsk [drive:] /F /V Reports information about a disk and can fix errors it finds CHKDSK C: /F checks hard drive for errors and repairs them CHKDSK C: /V displays all path and filename information for all files

67. 67A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Scandisk Drive: /A /N /P Scans a hard drive for errors and repairs them if possible  FAT  Long filenames  Lost clusters  Cross-linked clusters  Directory tree structure  Bad sectors

68. 68A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Scanreg /Restore /Fix /Backup Restores or repairs the Windows 98 registry SCANREG /RESTORE restores the registry from a previous backup SCANREG /FIX repairs a corrupt registry SCANREG /BACKUP creates a backup of the registry

69. 69A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Defrag Drive: /S Examines a hard drive or disk for fragmented files (files written to a disk in noncontiguous clusters) and rewrites them in contiguous clusters Optimizes hard drive performance DEFRAG C: /S:D defragments the disk and sorts files on the disk in alphabetical order by filename

70. 70A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Ver Displays the version of the operating system in use Works under DOS, Windows 2000/XP and Windows 9x

71. 71A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Setver A command executed from Autoexec.bat  Tells DOS applications that the version of DOS they are looking for is the version they are using

72. 72A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Extract filename.cab file1.ext /D Extracts files from a cabinet file EXTRACT EBD.CAB /D lists the files contained in the cabinet file EXTRACT EBD.CAB DEBUG.EXE extracts the file Debug.exe from the Ebd.cab file

73. 73A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Debug An editor  Can view and manipulate components of a file system on floppy disks and hard drives, including the FAT, directories, and boot records

74. 74A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Edit [path] [filename] A handy way to edit text files while working at the command prompt If file does not exist, Edit creates it

75. 75A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Edit Autoexec.bat

76. 76A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Editing Autoexec.bat and Config.sys Before editing these files, always make a rescue disk Do not use word processing software to edit these files unless you save the file as a text (ASCII) file

77. 77A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Fdisk /Status /MBR

78. 78A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Format Drive: /S /V:Volumename /Q /U /Autotest

79. 79A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Format Drive: /S /V:Volumename /Q /U /Autotest (Cont.)

80. 80A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Unformat Might be able to reverse the effect of an accidental format UNFORMAT C: unformats the hard drive

81. 81A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Using Batch Files Contain a list of OS commands Requires an extension of.bat Executed like any other program file, by entering the filename, with or without the file extension

82. 82A+ Guide to Software: Managing, Maintaining and Troubleshooting, Third Edition Summary How a computer boots up Useful tools for troubleshooting a failed boot How Windows manages floppy disks and hard drives Commands used at command prompt