[LinuxBIOS] booting XP

[Stefan Reinauer]

* ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> [061107 04:25]:
> So, there are two options I see, in order of preference:
> 1. find some way, using kexec etc., to boot XP under Linux, then put Linux in
> FLASH; done
> 2. revive ADLO

Maybe be can join 1 and 2, and run (parts of) ADLO on top of Linux, 
together with kexec.

> there have been a number of suggestions for how to do the first one.
> 1. freeldr (vapor?)
> 2. tinyldr (vapor?)
 
Any of these might be obsolete with Windows Vista, as it uses
"winload.exe" instead of NTLDR

The ugly thing with all Windows booting approaches is that the boot
loader has a whole lot of intelligence, it is doing device enumeration,
and, a lot worse: It is also loading device drivers. :-(

I found a little bit of information about the boot configuration data
provided by the boot loader to NTOSKERNL.EXE (Vista version)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/BCD.doc

Microsoft also has an online reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BCD/bcd/portal.asp?frame=true

Also there's nice information about the XP boot process:
http://www.geocities.com/asoke_dasgupta/boot-xp.html

Wikipedia knows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Startup_Process

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