Ever wonder what happens when the OS is loading, after the BIOS hands off control? From the article and video here, Microsoft gurus and fellow UEFI contributors Jamie Schwartz and Andrew Ritz describe the shadowlands...
(this is the single threaded world of pre-operating system start-up context where there is no memory manager, no object manager, no kernel period - it takes highly skilled developers to write code in this memory confined space, the land of real mode code and the BIOS).
Worth a look to see life inside the guts of the Windows loader.
Tim
Ah, yes, the mysterious hidden Phoenix setup pages. Nope, don't exist, never heard of them, couldn't tell you if I did . Insert your own plausible deniability phrase here :-)
No, seriously, there aren't any pages like that produced by Phoenix. OEMs who license our product determine the design of setup and what pages and nodes are included.
Tim
Posted by: Tim Lewis | April 02, 2007 at 08:46 AM
Nice that I got a reply, nevertheless :) Not everyday I've had the chance to ask Phoenix for something!
While we're at it, are there some secrets menus incorporated by default on your BIOSes? Hidden device settings or clock settings of some sort? :) Would be nice to know :)
Posted by: Will anyone read? | March 31, 2007 at 02:18 AM
There is usually a motherboard jumper for doing this (if the platform supports it). Otherwise, some platforms support a dongle (COM, LPT or USB) which has funny wiring which will force the system into recovery mode. In this case you need to have a recovery disk from your manufacturer handy.
Posted by: Tim Lewis | March 29, 2007 at 07:29 AM
Never mind, the method described worked, I just had to press Fn+Esc twice during boot :)
Posted by: Will anyone read? | March 29, 2007 at 05:12 AM
Uhm, didn't think I would run into a BIOS Development blog! I'm about here googling my way to try to find out how to recover my Acer Aspire 9814-laptop which just happen to have a Phoenix BIOS of newer date on it. I say recover because when I tried to update the BIOS on it using WinPhlash, the computer froze midways during the flashing and left me with a heavy paperweight.
Now, I've surfed the net quite a bit trying to find ways to initiate the laptop to start a kind of boot block flash recovery procedure, but with no luck. Especially this ( http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=21209 ) forum post looked promising, but no matter what key combination I used, I couldn't get the laptop to read anything from my USB floppy, or bootable CD.
So now I ask you, developers, what methods can be used to recover Phoenix BIOSes after a bad flashing? I really want to know, but I have noone to ask...
Posted by: Will anyone read? | March 28, 2007 at 02:57 PM