Greg KH wrote:
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 04:07:28PM -0800, Linda Walsh wrote:
Perhaps someone can explain to me why Windows doesn't need a pre-boot ramdisk in order to boot, while Linux does?
It does need one, and it has one, why do you think it doesn't?
The boot procedure for Windows is documented in the Windows NT internals book. There is no ramdisk that it uses.
Note, this is _way_ off-topic here.
--- Where do you think it would be "on-topic", considering _you_ don't want to hear it in any venue? You know the requirement of an initrd is bull, Claiming windows has one is even worse bullshit than I'd ever give you credit for. You can trace a windows boot -- there is no preload of a memory-resident copy of windows, that then loads windows. The drivers for the hardware are on the disk in /windows/system32/drivers. On Windows, it reads their boot managager, which then loads 'winload' which *demand*-loads drivers and services from disk -- they aren't all bound in to the kernel in order for it too boot. Please read Chapter 13 on Startup and Shutdown of the 5th edition of the Windows Internals book to get straightened out. The only time Windows needs a ramdisk during boot is when the boot-image needs to be downloaded from the net (i.e. a diskless boot). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org