Why do you need to boot...

A

alg7_munif

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sorry for the most noob question on [H] but I still don't understand why you need to boot a computer. Why can't it be just like any other things in this world, just turn on the switch and it is ready to go.

Just imagine if you want to drive your car, you can't drive it right away after turning on the ignition but instead you need to wait for every electronic features to finish loading first.
 
alg7_munif said:
Just imagine if you want to drive your car, you can't drive it right away after turning on the ignition but instead you need to wait for every electronic features to finish loading first.
Click to expand...
When a car's engine "turns over" and it starts to run, it is the same as a computer once it has completed POST. Neither has done *anything* of task until the user dictates such.

In your car's case, the car does not spontaneously appear at your destination when you turn the key. You need to drive it.

The computer loads the OS because the OS is the task assigned to it. It's doing the "driving" to the destination (ie. a booted operating system).

I hate car analogies.
 
I would say all the electronics on the car are programmed to do one specific thing, and it is guaranteed to have the same piece of hardware always connected to it.
 
Because an operating system is just another program, essentially, and a large, extremely complex program. Considering how long it takes a simple program like @#$%! Open Office Writer to open up, it's not really surprising. Hard drive's are still the slowest component of a modern PC, and the OS loading is almost entirely dependent on that one component. SSD's are already pushing substantial progress in this area.

Another thing I think we'll see a lot more of soon is instant-on OS's integrated into the motherboard. Quite a few laptop makers are doing this now, and they'll get you a simple interface with web access and a basic music player, something like that. I haven't used one, but I would imagine it's basically just skipping the "OS" multi-functional environment altogether and opening the program hardwired into some kind of flash memory, which makes sense on a netbook where you don't multitask anyway. This, again, will make a lot more sense as flash memory becomes more prevalent. I imagine in a few years we'll see an entire market bloom in this area, with perhaps some unique competition to Windows. If Ubuntu or some other distros could partner with OEM's and push a series of "instant on" laptops with nearly-complete computing environments, selling laptops and motherboards with integrated, customizable operating systems, a lot more people would suddenly be asking the same question you just did, and the entire concept of installing an OS would change.

Frankly, most people just take it for granted by now, and will until presented with another alternative. Most people don't know how a computer works; as long as they can manage to find the power button, they aren't going to question the weird screen that pops up before they can load Facebook.
 
Actually most cars today do boot up, so does your DVD player, cable modem, router. Just about anything that has any sort of processor boots. The difference is only the size of what is booting, hence the time it takes, and it's purpose once booted.

HD tech is getting there, we will have faster boots. But then again, there is more that goes on during boot then just transferring data from a HD. Polling available drives and hardware, irq assignments, ram counting, sequentially booting the various components that may also have their own boot up, (network cards, video cards, HD controllers, etc.), and that is b4 the Win/Nix/BSD/OSwhatever even starts loading.
 
I don't think anyone has answered the question, I just want to know why do we need to boot. I know that harddisk is slow but why do you need to boot? Is it to transfer the neccessary files from the harddisk onto the RAM?
 
Simple: because computer operating systems are not ROM-based, and even if they were (yes I know some can be, but...) it's a question of storage. When we get to a point where we've got 1TB Flash-ROM chips or something of that nature (I'm just being facetious, deal with it), then we'll have the ability to have truly "Instant On" type computer OSes.

Until then, we're limited to using ones that are based on some storage medium like magnetic media or Flash-RAM at this stage of development.

The basic answer is: if you understand what "boot" means in computer parlance (the computer pulls itself up by it's "bootstraps") then it becomes easier to grasp the rest of it.

If you think that car analogy is valid, you're way off because a shitload of things have to fall into place (from a mechanical perspective) when you turn that key. You might think it's "turn it on, change the gear, press the gas, and go" but it's far far more complicated than that so it's a terrible analogy or even an example.

We need to boot because that's how the technology works. That's the best most basic answer your going to get, and the most accurate. When technology gives us a totally new way of doing things, the answer will change in some respects but it'll still be the same overall. It works that way because that's how it works.

The entire concept started long ago as DOS basically, or Disk Operating System meaning it's meant to operate from disk, aka floppies, hard drives, etc. It loads into RAM - so yes RAM does play into it because the OS doesn't operate from the media but from RAM - and then you get your tasks done.
 
Joe Average said:
Simple: because computer operating systems are not ROM-based, and even if they were (yes I know some can be, but...) it's a question of storage. When we get to a point where we've got 1TB Flash-ROM chips or something of that nature (I'm just being facetious, deal with it), then we'll have the ability to have truly "Instant On" type computer OSes.

Until then, we're limited to using ones that are based on some storage medium like magnetic media or Flash-RAM at this stage of development.

The basic answer is: if you understand what "boot" means in computer parlance (the computer pulls itself up by it's "bootstraps") then it becomes easier to grasp the rest of it.

If you think that car analogy is valid, you're way off because a shitload of things have to fall into place (from a mechanical perspective) when you turn that key. You might think it's "turn it on, change the gear, press the gas, and go" but it's far far more complicated than that so it's a terrible analogy or even an example.

We need to boot because that's how the technology works. That's the best most basic answer your going to get, and the most accurate. When technology gives us a totally new way of doing things, the answer will change in some respects but it'll still be the same overall. It works that way because that's how it works.

The entire concept started long ago as DOS basically, or Disk Operating System meaning it's meant to operate from disk, aka floppies, hard drives, etc. It loads into RAM - so yes RAM does play into it because the OS doesn't operate from the media but from RAM - and then you get your tasks done.
Click to expand...

Shitload of mechanical things have to fall into place for the car analogy but mechanical engineers managed to do it without the need to wait for a long time. Starting a car for the first time is not that easy but after everything is already in its place, the fuel is in the fuel line, the lubrication is there, the cooling system works and etc. starting up the car for the next time would just be an instant.

Take system standby or sleep for an example, you can continue working almost right away but if you turn off the computer, everything needs to boot again when you turn it back on. Why can't they just make it somehow so that people can start working right away, with a backup power supply or something else.
 
I agree with the fact that soon boot up time will dwindle, but many humans need extra amounts of boot time in the morning too. Some require 2-3 cups of coffee before they are fully operational... just sayin... Wake up, where am I at, what am I wearing, what time is it, is anyone next to me, what day is it, where am I supposed to be.... heh all questions that a computer has to figure out to work properly
 
They could certainly do that, but backup power supplies involve additional cost and additional power (thus even more additional cost). There is also the simple fact that computers can be "left on." Why worry about sleep or standby or whatever.. Just turn the monitor off and come back to it later. I used to do this when I was paying my own electric bill.

Computers are not cars, simple as that. As I said before, a computer can POST very quickly. A car can start very quickly. A car cannot drive from California to Maine instantly. A computer cannot load hundreds of megs of operating system or application instantly. You have to get past the idea that loading the OS is somehow different than loading anything else. The OS is ones and zeros. Your web browser is ones and zeros. Porn is ones and zeros. The computer doesn't differentiate between an OS and an application and a movie.. you do.

To play on your car analogy more, from the time you push the power button to the time the screen displays info is the same as starting a car. From the time it gets through the POST it's the same as the time it takes you to pull out of your driveway. The time it takes to load the OS is the time it takes you to drive to Wisconsin.
 
provided all this talk of the future and web browsers being the actual OS a few years from now i think that is when the change will come. Loading 15GB of windows files vs a 32mb browser as the OS should be pretty instant, but i image when it does get to that point the browser will be at least a few hundred megs to be the actual OS.
 
Computers are all hardware and furthermore are all KNOWN hardware. When you turn on your car, it doesn't need to detect if there are four, six, or eight wheels attached and initialize them. It doesn't need to handle the possibility that there are less than four wheels. It will always have a certain hardware configuration and a certain software configuration.

Computers, in contrast, are general purpose devices. They can have any combination of hardware or software, so each bit has to be initialized. This takes time. People expect computers to work in a much more diverse set of conditions than when they expect their car to work, so there's overhead associated with that.
 
In simplest terms, because 1) to use your computer you typically need hundreds of megabytes of software in memory around whatever it is you're doing with the computer;
and 2) modern system memory is volatile, meaning it is compromised when power gets shut off - and you start from scratch when power is restored.
The boot-up is needed to put everything 'back in place' that was lost in the shut-down, so you can continuing doing stuff in the comfy environment of having everything loaded in memory.
If you didn't need hundreds of megabytes of "stuff" to accomplish your goals (ever use a Commdore 64?), or if memory was non-volatile and was retained after shutdown, you wouldn't need a boot-up.

To the best of my knowledge, no non-volatile memory technology can match the performance, affordability and "re-writability" of the volatile stuff, hence why our model of personal computers is based around volatile memory and "booting" from a slow storage device. I don't mind the boot-up and can still avoid it using sleep/standby mode.
 
Your car does boot up, it just does it a lot faster. When you turn on your ignition and the car starts, the dash lights flicker as each system is tested for functionality while the sensors are coming up.

The difference is in a car you can start driving it as soon as the car is running where a computer you have to wait.
 
alg7_munif said:
Just imagine if you want to drive your car, you can't drive it right away after turning on the ignition but instead you need to wait for every electronic features to finish loading first.
Click to expand...
You clearly haven't driven one of the Toyota Hybrids.
 
alg7_munif said:
Sorry for the most noob question on [H] but I still don't understand why you need to boot a computer. Why can't it be just like any other things in this world, just turn on the switch and it is ready to go.

Just imagine if you want to drive your car, you can't drive it right away after turning on the ignition but instead you need to wait for every electronic features to finish loading first.
Click to expand...

Your question is moot:

buy vista, and you wont have to restart until the 2nd tuesday of the month.

why does a computer take a set amount of time to boot?

Because it has to move bits, and the number of bits it can move in a single second is limited by available bandwidth, amoung other things. Want to use your display? the computer has to load ~2MP to get them on screen, to do that it needs textures, images and code. That code has to be executed and it in turn requires more bits, further reducing available bandwidth. If you want features, those features require you to move bits, and moving bits requires bandwidth, bandwidth we dont always have readily available, thus you wait.
 
Any complex system needs to boot. Systems do so, because they needed to ensure a proper working environment for there system. The booting process is there to simply bring objects from a storage medium into the memory management unit and thus into accessible memory.

In OS terms things are considered to be objects, different than OO Objects though. Each of these objects needs to be brought into accessible memory in a proper order. If the order is not met, then the operating environment is not pure and errors can occur. If you have ever booted up a Linux system and saw it run through the bootup and it says [OK] after each line on the right. Well that is simply a confirmation that the object has been properly loaded and tested.

The system needs to Boot solely because the objects have not been loaded and they now need to be. The system needs to ensure proper operation and the boot process does this by ensuring a solid working environment.

Computers are based on Volatile memory and when you turn one off, you loose the environment which was previously guaranteed by the boot process. To ensure the environment, the boot process needs to occur again.

If you keep the computer on, the enviorment remains.
 
DeaconFrost said:
The car didn't start in the link you provided, so I'm not sure what you were trying to show there. To be more specific, try out a 2010 Camry Hybrid. I just had one of them recently as a rental, and my PC starts up to a usable desktop before that would actually kick on the gas engine.
Click to expand...

The engine didn't start because you can drive off using the electric motor. I guess that you've never driven a car with a start stop function before?
 
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