Do you know the role of Boot.ini that resides on your Windows XP root drive ? What happens in the case when boot.ini is missing ? What roles do IO.SYS and NTDETECT.COM play during the XP Startup process ?
Do you really need to know all this ? Well, it may sometimes help if you know these little things. DotNetJunkies has a great explaination of the complete XP Boot process right from the time you switch on your computer.
ExtremeTech has a more detailed guide that explains What Goes on Inside a PC. It is useful when you're planning to buy individual PC components and assemble the computer yourself.
I learned one interesting fact from these guides - The XP boot process is not considered complete until a user has successfully logged onto the system.
Do you really need to know all this ? Well, it may sometimes help if you know these little things. DotNetJunkies has a great explaination of the complete XP Boot process right from the time you switch on your computer.
ExtremeTech has a more detailed guide that explains What Goes on Inside a PC. It is useful when you're planning to buy individual PC components and assemble the computer yourself.
I learned one interesting fact from these guides - The XP boot process is not considered complete until a user has successfully logged onto the system.