Computer multi-buttons booting system and method
Contents
1. 0032 FIG 1 is a flowchart of the conventional booting process of the operating system Win9x DOS 0033 FIG 2 is a block diagram of a computer multi buttons booting system for activating a different operating system according to an embodiment of the invention US 2006 0047940 Al 0034 FIG 3 is a flowchart of a computer multi buttons booting method according to an embodiment of the inven tion 0035 FIG 4 is a schematic view of a MBR loading process according to an embodiment of the invention and 0036 FIG 5 is a flowchart of the operation of an embodiment of the invention DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 0037 Once the computer is switched on control is handed to the computer CPU The CPU then executes commands stored in the BIOS of the motherboard A final portion of the BIOS commands includes a booting program This booting program accesses to the MBR of the first sector of the first hard disk The MBR includes a main booting program and a disk partition table indicating the partition status of the disk The BIOS executes the main booting program to terminate the booting process The main booting program accesses the disk partition table to obtain the active partition s If there is only one main partition the operating system installed therein is activated 0038 If one hard disk contains a plurality of main partitions each partition may include one operating system In this case the first sector of e2. boot strap process or more simply designated a booting process The activating process usually differs according to the specific operating system used FIG 1 is a flowchart of the conventional activating process of the operating system Win9x DOS In a first stage the system performs a power on self testing POST process step 101 The micropro cessor executes the program stored at the address FFFFOH where is fixed a ROM program This program performs a checkup of the system hardware including its memory 0005 In a second stage the partition records and the boot records are accessed step 102 Once the microprocessor has found that the hardware is normal and is compatible to the CMOS settings the activation is performed from the device for example the hard drive corresponding to the CMOS settings The microprocessor then typically accesses to the disk partition record DPT and the main boot record 0006 Ina third stage the microprocessor accesses to the DOS boot record step 103 If the main boot record and the partition table are tested correctly the microprocessor executes the main boot record and further accesses to the DOS main boot record being located in the first sector of each main partition Subsequently the microprocessor executes the DOS boot record 0007 In a fourth stage the microprocessor installs the system implicit documents step 104 The implicit docu ment IO SYS of the DOS system i
3. 2006 if the main boot record is found loading a disk partition table after the main boot record to boot the correspond ing operating system 10 The method of claim 5 wherein loading a main boot record according to the result of the searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value further com prises if the main boot record corresponding to the indicator is not found loading main boot sector data
4. therein this known string then is looked up to determine whether the MBR exists 0048 In the embodiment of the invention the on switch button signals are coupled to the corresponding EC GPI so that the EC can receive on switch signals 0049 In the interruption service program of the EC firmware indicator values are written in the EC RAM specific to the different on switch buttons The indicator values can be predefined by the programmer each indicator value corresponds to one on switch button 0050 In the BIOS program after the POST has been completed a main boot record is loaded according to the indicator value stored in the EC RAM which corresponds to the pushed on switch button The main boot record loaded from a non MBR area is evaluated If the main boot record effectively exists the disk partition table data of the MBR is added after the main boot record to boot the corresponding operating system otherwise an MBR and DPT are loaded to conduct a user selection of an operating system which constitutes a protection measure against OS failure 0051 In addition the MBR has to be set at a specific location of the hard disk for example an OS undefined portion of the first cylinder The size of one main boot record specific to one operating system is 446 bytes the partition table data are commonly shared and do not need to be rewritten 0052 The core and modules of the operating system and the upper level applicat
5. wait until the installation of the whole operating system has been completed This usually takes a long time and loads a lot of functionality that is not needed for the user s utilization 0024 To overcome the foregoing disadvantages an approach known in the art consists of using a boot instal lation program that can boot a plurality of operating systems When the on switch button is pushed on to power on the computer the boot installation program is executed During its execution a selection interface showing a plurality of operating systems is displayed to allow the user to choose a specific operating system that are provided with adequate function characteristics more adapted to the user s demands 0025 However the user conventionally has to wait a certain time before the selection interface is displayed and the wanted operating system cannot be directly run A disadvantage of this technique is that it needs a manual intervention in the booting process which decreases the system activation performance renders it more difficult to use and increases failure SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 0026 It is therefore an objective of the invention to provide a computer multi buttons booting system and method that can overcome the prior problems In the system according to the invention the push of one specific on switch button activates one specific operating system so that Mar 2 2006 the system resource occupation can be
6. H disk partition table and 0019 1FEH 1FFH end indicator 55AA 0020 The DPT occupies 64 bytes 01BE 01FD each partition occupies 16 bytes so four partitions can be repre sented This is the reason that each hard disk totally can include only four partitions including main and extension partitions The structure of each partition is defined as follows Length Offset bytes Description 0H A Partition type 00 means inactive partition 80 means active partition other means invalid partition th 3 Partition start address side sector cylinder conventionally the start address is side 1 sector 0 cylinder 1 and the corresponding combines to form the address 010100 4h 1 Operating system type of the partition Sh 3 Partition end address 8h 4 Partition start logic sector Ch 4 Partition occupation in number of sectors 0021 The operating system boot record OBR is con ventionally located at cylinder 9 side 1 sector 1 which is US 2006 0047940 Al the case for DOS For operating systems activated via multi booting modes the OBR is located at the first sector of the corresponding main extended partition The OBR is the first sector the operating system can address to and also includes a booting program and a BIOS parameter block BPB Each logic partition has an OBR and its parameter differs depending upon the partition size and the type of operating system The booting program is executable to de
7. US 20060047940A1 a Patent Application Publication co Pub No US 2006 0047940 A1 as United States Chiu et al 43 Pub Date Mar 2 2006 54 COMPUTER MULTI BUTTONS BOOTING SYSTEM AND METHOD 76 Inventors Chaucer Chiu Taipei TW Amos Huang Shanghai CN Correspondence Address RABIN amp BERDO P C Suite 500 1101 14 Street N W Washington DC 20005 US 21 Appl No 10 923 881 22 Filed Aug 24 2004 Publication Classification 51 Int Cl GO6F 9 00 2006 01 Provide a plurality of buttons and connect to an EC chip according to the number of operating systems set the corresponding MBR detect a corresponding signal change from the EC chip According to the electric signal from the EC chip write a specific indicator value in the EC RAM According to the indicator value seek a specific MBR to be set according to the search status load the corresponding MBR According to the loaded MBR boot the corresponding operating system Go Sth unetente etna 713 2 57 ABSTRACT A multi buttons booting system comprises an on switch button logic unit an embedded chip EC and its RAM a lookup module and a loading module A plurality of on switch buttons are connected to the EC and corresponds to a plurality of operating systems In response to the push on a button the EC outputs a signal that writes an indicator value in the RAM According to the indicator value the correspon
8. according to the search status load the corresponding MBR 307 According to the loaded MBR boot the corresponding operating system FIG 3 Patent Application Publication Mar 2 2006 Sheet 4 of 5 MBR 1 US 2006 0047940 A1 according to the indicator value load MBR FIG 4 Patent Application Publication Mar 2 2006 Sheet 5 of 5 US 2006 0047940 A1 one on switch button is pressed 501 Modify the corresponding EC GPI pin signal trigger an interruption event The interruption service program of 502 the EC firmware attributes one specific indicator val e and stores it in the EC RAM 503 According to indicator value load the main boot record to be set we 504 z N pa a MBR and DPT data are accessed if the main boot record to be set is present the disk partition table of the main boot sector is loaded after the main boot record 507 OS is booted pa FIG S US 2006 0047940 Al COMPUTER MULTI BUTTONS BOOTING SYSTEM AND METHOD BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 0001 1 Field of Invention 0002 The present invention generally relates to computer booting systems and methods thereof More particularly the invention provides a multi buttons booting system and method thereof implemented to boot on different computer operating systems 0003 2 Related Art 0004 The activation of a computer and the load of an operating system usually are included in a so called
9. ach partition includes its boot record Each of these boot records includes a booting program that executes the operating system stored in the corresponding partition After the active partition has been found the main boot record executes the booting program of the active partition The booting program installs documents of the operating system and then runs the operating system 0039 Most of the conventionally known operating sys tems such as DOS Windows 3 x Windows 95 98 or Windows NT have to be booted from one active partition However different operating systems use different booting methods from the active partition For example the operat ing systems DOS Windows 3 x or Windows 95 98 must run from the active partition of the first hard disk Windows NT can run from a logic partition but its booting program must be put in an active partition of the first hard drive OS 2 can run from a logic partition but the extended partition includ ing the logic partition must be within the first 2 GB of the hard drive and Linux can run from a logic partition as well as a main partition 0040 It should be noted that the MBR is created via a partitioning program for example the program Fdisk exe of the operating system DOS The MBR sector may differ with different operating systems and the user can also freely modify the MBR as long as it is capable of achieving the aforementioned tasks In current techniques the MBR is usually modif
10. ding MBR is sought and loaded The loaded MBR then conducts the booting of a corresponding operating system The system resource occupation is thereby reduced the activation speed is increased and the user s manual intervention is reduced 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 Patent Application Publication Mar 2 2006 Sheet 1 of 5 US 2006 0047940 A1 the system performs a power on self 101 testing process 102 access the partition records and the boot records 103 access the DOS boot record 104 install the system implicit documents 105 the DOS is configured 106 load the command interpreter program 107 the file Autoexec bat is executed 108 Load Win com FIG 1 PRIOR ART Patent Application Publication Mar 2 2006 Sheet 2 of 5 US 2006 0047940 A1 201 202 203 system RAM 206 searching module embedded up on switch button logic unit loading Ss 2042 FIG 2 Patent Application Publication Mar 2 2006 Sheet 3 of 5 US 2006 0047940 A1 301 Provide a plurality of buttons and connect to an EC chip 302 according to the number of operating systems set the corresponding MBR 303 detect a corresponding signal change from the EC chip According to the electric signal from 304 the EC chip write a specific indicator value in the EC RAM 305 According to the indicator value seek a specific MRR to be set 306
11. g MBR 0044 The on switch button logic unit 207 includes a plurality of on switch buttons each on switch button cor responds to the activation of one operating system 0045 FIG 3 is a flowchart of a method of activating one system belonging to a plurality of operating systems via a plurality of buttons A plurality of buttons is provided and is respectively connected to an EC chip step 301 According to the number of operating systems the corresponding MBR are specifically set step 302 When one on switch button is pushed a corresponding signal change from the EC chip is detected step 303 According to the electric signal from the EC chip a specific indicator value is written in the EC RAM step 304 According to the indicator value a specific MBR to be set is sought step 305 According to the search status the corresponding MBR is loaded step 306 According to the loaded MBR the corresponding operating system is booted step 307 0046 A specific feature of the invention lies in the booting process in which different hardware signals are differentiated to boot the corresponding operating system Once the computer is switched on the firmware code of the EC in the 8051 core executes an initialization without activating the system The on switch buttons thereby can be distinguished from one another The EC includes a plurality of general purposes inputs outputs that can be set by the user The effective general purpo
12. ied to support multi booting processes There fore the user usually has to wait until the processing sequence reaches the load of the MBR to be able to select the desired operating system to run 0041 The invention provides a multi button booting method that uses a plurality of computer on switch buttons that allow booting on different operating systems 0042 FIG 2 is a block diagram of a multi button on switch system suitable for booting the computer on different operating systems according to an embodiment of the inven Mar 2 2006 tion The system includes a CPU 201 a chipset 202 a system RAM 203 a BIOS 204 a searching module 2041 a loading module 2042 an embedded chip EC 205 an EC chip RAM 206 and an on switch button logic unit 207 0043 The on switch button logic unit 207 is used to provide a plurality of on switch buttons and outputs electric signals specific to the pushing of each on switch button The EC 205 and its RAM 206 are respectively connected to the logic unit 207 The EC 205 responds to the electric signals outputted by the on switch button logic unit 207 by gener ating corresponding interruption processes and writes an indicator value into the EC RAM 206 specific to each pushed on switch button The searching module 2041 is operable to search the MBR to be set corresponding to the indicator value stored in the EC RAM According to the search status the loading module 2042 loads the corre spondin
13. ion programs also need correspond ing adjustment so as to only load necessary elements and achieve a fast activation process 0053 FIG 5 is flowchart describing the operation of the system according to an embodiment of the invention When one on switch button is pressed the corresponding EC GPI pin signal is modified which triggers an interruption event step 501 The interruption service program of the EC firmware attributes one specific indicator value and stores it in the EC RAM each on switch button corresponding to one indicator value step 502 After the POST process has been completed the BIOS accesses to the to be set main boot record of a non MBR area in accordance with the indicator value in the EC RAM wherein the non MBR area is at a specific location of the hard disk for example an OS undefined portion of the first cylinder step 503 It is then determined whether the main boot record to be set is present step 504 If the main boot record to be set is not present a MBR and DPT data are accessed step 505 otherwise the disk partition table of the main boot sector is loaded after the main boot record step 506 According to the main boot record and the disk partition table the corresponding oper ating system then is booted step 507 0054 It will be apparent to the person skilled in the art that the invention as described above may be varied in many ways and notwithstanding remaining within the spirit and scope
14. k drive For example if the booting process is to be conducted from the hard drive the system BIOS loads the main boot record into the memory Subsequently the control right is switched to the main boot record MBR and the disk partition table DPT is checked to find an active partition Lastly the main boot record hands the control right to the boot program of the active partition which loads the operating system 0013 The main boot sector starts at the location cylinder 0 side0 sector 1 of the hard disk and includes the main boot record MBR and the disk partition table DPT of the hard disk The main boot sector has a size of 512 bytes wherein the MBR occupies 446 bytes 0000h 01BDh the DPT 64 bytes O1IBE 01FD and the end indicator 2 bytes 55AA The main boot record is used to verify whether the DPT is correct and which partition is the booting partition and when the program ends the main boot record loads the booting program for example IO SYS of the operating system DOS of the partition into the memory and turns the control right to it The partition table has 80H or OOH as start indicator and 55AAH as end indicator totally 64 bytes are located in the end portion of the sector 0014 The structure of the main boot sector is as follows 0015 000H 08AH MBR booting program searching for the booting partition 0016 O8BH OD9H the MBR booting string 0017 ODAH 1BCH spare area 0 0018 1BEH 1FD
15. n different operating systems are respectively booted by pushing on different on switch buttons the method comprising providing a plurality of on switch buttons respectively connected to one embedded chip according to a number of operating systems provided setting a plurality of corresponding main boot records detecting a signal change of the embedded chip caused by one on switch button pushing writing an indicator value in a RAM of the embedded chip corresponding to the signal change searching a main boot record corresponding to the indi cator value loading a main boot record according to the result of the searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value and according to the loaded main boot record booting the corresponding operating system 6 The method of claim 5 wherein each on switch button corresponds to the activation of one operating system 7 The method of claim 5 wherein the main boot records are initially placed at a specific location of a hard disk US 2006 0047940 Al 8 The method of claim 5 wherein searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value comprises look ing up the indicator value in each main boot record and thereby determining whether the sought main boot record exists 9 The method of claim 5 wherein loading a main boot record according to the result of the searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value further com prises Mar 2
16. of the invention as defined in the following claims Mar 2 2006 What is claimed is 1 A multi buttons booting system operable to selectively load different main boot records and thereby boot on dif ferent computer operating systems by pushing on different on switch buttons the system comprising an on switch button logic unit providing a plurality of on switch buttons and operable to generate an electrical signal corresponding to the pushing of one on switch button an embedded chip and its RAM being coupled to the on switch button logic unit wherein the embedded chip generates an interruption process in response to the electrical signal from the on switch button logic unit and writes different indicator data in the RAM corre sponding to the pushed on switch buttons a look up module searching a main boot record corre sponding to the indicator data value in the RAM of the embedded chip and a loading module loading a main boot record according to the lookup status 2 The system of claim 1 wherein the on switch button logic unit comprises a plurality of on switch buttons each on switch button corresponding to the activation of one operating system 3 The system of claim 1 wherein each indicator data value corresponds to one on switch button 4 The system of claim 1 wherein each main boot record corresponding to each indicator data value includes one indicator string 5 A multi buttons booting method wherei
17. of the searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value and according to the loaded main boot record booting the corresponding operating system 0029 According to specific functions the system accord ing to the invention therefore provides specific activation buttons According to the specific functionality required the user therefore can directly set the adequate operating system by pushing on the corresponding on switch button The booting speed therefore is faster and the system resource occupation is reduced Moreover given the fact that the service spectrum and the security strategy are initially set in the operating system the users manual settings are reduced while the security is improved and attacks are reduced 0030 Further scope of applicability of the present inven tion will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter However it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention are given by way of illustration only since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed descrip tion BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 0031 The present invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given hereinbelow illustration only and thus does not limit the present inven tion wherein
18. reduced the activa tion speed is increased and the user s intervention in the system activation is reduced 0027 To achieve the above and other objectives a multi buttons booting system comprises an on switch button logic unit providing a plurality of on switch buttons and operable to generate an electrical signal corresponding to the pushing of one on switch button an embedded chip and its RAM being coupled to the on switch button logic unit wherein the embedded chip generates an interruption process in response to the electrical signal from the on switch button logic unit and writes different indicator data in the RAM correspond ing to the pushed on switch buttons a look up module searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator data value in the RAM of the embedded chip and a loading module loading a main boot record according to the lookup status 0028 According to another embodiment a multi buttons booting method comprises providing a plurality of on switch buttons respectively connected to one embedded chip according to a number of operating systems provided setting a plurality of corresponding main boot records detecting a signal change of the embedded chip caused by one on switch button pushing writing an indicator value in a RAM of the embedded chip corresponding to the signal change searching a main boot record corresponding to the indicator value loading a main boot record according to the result
19. s loaded in the memory as well as the basic document system FAT At this moment the monitor usually displays the words Starting Windows 9x IO SYS loads MS SYS in the memory processes the documents System dat and User dat and loads the disk compression program 0008 In a fifth stage the DOS is configured step 105 Once the system implicit documents have been loaded the microprocessor executes the system implicit documents and the system configuration document Config sys and loads the driving programs defined in Config sys 0009 In a sixth stage the microprocessor loads the command interpreter program Command com step 106 The system installs the command management pro gram to manage all the system operation commands the commands Dir Copy etc are usually provided by Command com 0010 In a seventh stage the file Autoexec bat is executed step 107 The computer executes one by one the commands defined in the file Autoexec bat Mar 2 2006 0011 In an eighth stage Win com is loaded step 108 Win com is in charge of executing the driving programs and execution files of Windows The booting process is thereby completed 0012 After the PSOT process the hard drive is reset and the BIOS will proceeds to the booting process according to the sequence specified by the user i e from the floppy device the hard drive or the optical dis
20. ses inputs GPI operate to interrupt the EC The interruption service program is described hereafter 0047 Current BIOS uses the interruption 19H to directly load the MBR of the main boot sector into the memory at the address 0 7COOH The use of one MBR in the invention is not sufficient because each operating system has to corre spond to one independent MBR FIG 4 is a diagram of the MBR loading process according to an embodiment of the invention When the BIOS is loading an MBR an additional determination step is performed whereby the main boot record to be set is loaded according to the indicator value written by the EC firmware in the RAM Each operating system with its main boot record is respectively distin guished via the digit 1 2 3 For example if the indicator value represents the value 2 the BIOS then loads the MBR2 and determines whether it exists If the MBR2 to be set exists the DPT is loaded thereafter to boot the OS2 other wise a MBR and DPT are loaded for protection purposes and the selection of the OS to boot is given to the user according US 2006 0047940 Al to a default mode A method of determining whether the main boot record to be set existed can include first writing a single indicator string at a location of each main boot record and then looking up the indicator string For example setting the main boot record specific to the oper ating system of a game station can include adding the string game
21. termine whether the two documents of the partition root directory are booting documents of the operating system for example the documents IO SYS and MSDOS SYS of MSDOS or Win9x Me If this is the case the first document is loaded into the memory and the control right is turned to the document in question The BPB parameters record the start sector the end sector the document storage format the hard disk medium describing symbol the root directory size FAT number the allocution unit size etc The OBR is generated via a high formatting program for example Format com for the DOS operating system 0022 Recently computer appliances have become more multi functional incorporating many application programs Notwithstanding the improved performance some disad vantageous aspects of the computer may still remain This is the case of the operating system booting that starts at every on switch of the computer which is time consuming and occupies substantial system resources If some insecure services are activated the system may become vulnerable to attacks Moreover specific software programs have to be installed according to different functionality otherwise a normal working process cannot be conducted The manipu lation of the whole operating system usually requires a certain expertise and is not user friendly 0023 For example if the user only wants to watch a movie or listen to music on a computer he has to
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