A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC

Fifth Edition

Chapter 3

Understanding the Boot Process and Command Line You Will Learn…

About the boot process and some tools for troubleshooting a failed boot

To use many commands at the command prompt

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 2 Boot Step 1: POST

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 3 Booting Up Your Computer

Hard (cold) boot versus soft (warm) boot

Startup BIOS is in control when boot process begins

Turns control over to the OS

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 4 Steps in the Boot Process

1. Startup BIOS runs power-on self test (POST) and assigns resources 2. ROM BIOS startup program searches for and loads an OS 3. OS configures the system and completes its own loading 4. Application software is loaded and executed

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 5 How the BIOS Finds and Loads the OS

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 6 How the BIOS Finds and Loads the OS (continued) BIOS executes MBR program

Turns to partition table to find OS boot record

Program in OS boot record attempts to find a boot loader program for OS

Ntldr (Windows NT/2000/XP)

Io.sys (Windows 9x)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 7 Boot Step 2: Loading the OS

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 8 Loading the MS-DOS Core of Windows 9x

Brings OS to real-mode command prompt

Relevance: Real-mode DOS core often used as a troubleshooting tool

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 9 Loading the MS-DOS Core of Windows 9x (continued) Files necessary to boot to command prompt Io.sys Msdos.sys Command.com To customize 16-bit portion of load process Autoexec.bat Config.sys

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 10 Boot Step 3: OS Initializes Itself

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 11 Emergency Startup Disks

Bootable disks with some utility programs to troubleshoot a failed hard drive

Each OS provides automated method to create a rescue disk (Windows 9x) or set of disks (Windows 2000)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 12 Emergency Startup Disks (continued)

Creating a Windows 9x startup disk

Add/Remove Programs icon in Control Panel

Using a Windows 9x startup disk with another OS

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 13 Windows 9x Startup Disks

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 14 Using the Command Prompt

Multiple ways of accessing a command prompt

Launching a program using the command prompt

Using commands to manage files and folders and perform utility tasks when troubleshooting a failed system

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 15 How to Access a Command Prompt in Windows

Command window from Windows All versions desktop

Start, Run, Command.com in Run All versions dialog box Startup disks (Windows 2000) or Windows 2000 installation CD (Windows XP) to boot or Windows XP PC and load Recovery Console

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 16 How to Access a Command Prompt in Windows (continued)

Boot from a bootable disk Windows 9x

Start, Shutdown, Restart in MS-DOS Windows 95/98 mode

Ctrl + F8 while booting Windows 9x

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 17 Launching a Program Using the Command Prompt (continued)

Type filename of program file at command prompt

OS

Attempts to find program file by name,

Copies file into RAM, and

Executes program

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 18 Launching a Program Using the Command Prompt (continued)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 19 DOS File and Directory Naming Conventions 8.3 format Up to 8 characters, separating period, and file extension of up to 3 characters (eg, filename.ext) Acceptable characters Letters a through z Numbers 0 through 9 _ ^ $ ! # % & - { } ( ) @ ‘ ` Do not use space, period, *, ? or \ Acceptable extensions: .com, .sys, .bat, .exe

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 20 Windows File and Directory Naming Conventions Up to 255 characters

Can contain spaces

When DOS part of system is operating, it

Truncates long filenames

Assigns new 8-character names (eg, Mydocu~1.doc)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 21 Wildcards

Question mark (?)

Wildcard for one character

Asterisk (*)

Wildcard for more than one character

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 22 Binary Numbering Systems

2 values 1,0 in programming +5v, 0v Logic level on IC Pin All 1,0 ‘s eventually Hardware represented as software in HEX code Hard Drives (N/S or S/N alignment) CD’s pits (Hole, No Hole) Laser jumps, No Jump

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 23 Hex Numbering System

0-15 Decimal - Binary – Hex Table Addresses using 32 bits, 16 bits, 8 bits Machine Code, HEX code, HEX file 1KB, 1MB, 1GB in binary vs. analog Digital processing, noise 2 values vs. 10 Base 2: Binary Base 10: Decimal Digital Analog

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 24 OS – Operating System

Responsible for processing, managing and storing files. File Systems Sectors, Clusters, Tracks, Cylinders FAT NTFS

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 25 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories

Command Function Dir Lists files and directories

Rename or Ren Renames a file or folder

Type Displays contents of text file on screen Del or Erase Deletes files or groups of files

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 26 Result of Dir Command

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 27 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories Command Function Copy Copies single file or group of files Does not alter original files Xcopy /C /S /Y /D: Same general command-source- destination format as Copy Offers several more options Deltree [drive:]path Deletes directory tree beginning with specified subdirectory Use with caution!

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 28 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories

Command Function Mkdir [drive:]path or Creates a subdirectory under a MD [drive:]path directory

Chdir [drive:]path or Changes current default CD [drive:]path or CD.. directory

Rmdir [drive:]path or Removes a subdirectory RD [drive:]path

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 29 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories

Command Function Attrib Displays or changes read-only, archive, system, and hidden attributes assigned to files Sys Drive: Copies system files needed to boot to a disk or drive Chkdsk [drive:] /F /V Reports information about a disk

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 30 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories

Command Function Scandisk Drive: Scans hard drive for errors and /A /N /P repairs them Scanreg /Restore Restores or repairs Windows 98 /Fix /Backup registry Defrag Drive: /S Rewrites files on hard drive in contiguous clusters to improve hard drive performance

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 31 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories Command Function Ver Displays version of OS in use Extract filename.cab Extracts files from a cabinet file file1.ext /D Debug Views/manipulates components of a file system on disks and drives (FAT, directories, boot records) Views contents of memory and hexadecimal addresses

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 32 Commands to Manage Disks, Drives, Files, and Directories

Command Function Edit [path][filename] Enables editing text files while working at command prompt Fdisk Partitions hard drive for first use

Format Drive Formats disk or hard drive /S option makes drive bootable Unformat Attempts to reverse effects of accidental format

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 33 Editing Autoexec.bat and Config.sys

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 34 Options for Fdisk Command

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 35 Options for Format Command (continued)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 36 Options for Format Command (continued)

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 37 Using Batch Files

To execute group of commands using single command

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition 38