Method for quickly booting a computer system

Abstract

A method for quickly booting a personal computer system using boot configuration information on memory and the attached devices that was created and saved in a hard disk at the preceding boot process. The method for a quick boot process includes the steps of performing a power-on self test POST) operation when a personal computer system is powered on or a reset button is pressed; performing a normal boot process after the POST operation; saving the contents of memory and the status of the attached devices to a hard disk; checking if a reboot is requested; restoring the saved boot configuration information from the hard disk, after POST is completed during the reboot process; checking whether or not an initial device configuration file and / or an automatic batch file were changed; and executing commands in the two files and saving a newly created boot configuration information to the hard disk for future boot. The personal computer system, may reboot quickly because of omission of execution of the initial device configuration filed and the automatic batch file.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]NOTICE: More than one reissue application has been filed for the reissue of U.S. Pat. No. 6,434,696, filed May 11, 1999. The reissue applications are U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 961,567 (the present application), filed Dec. 20, 2007, which is a continuation reissue of Ser. No. 10 / 918,293, filed Aug. 12, 2004 (now U.S. Reissued Pat. No. RE40,092), both of which are reissues of U.S. Pat. No. 6,434,696.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates to a method of and apparatus for booting a personal computer system and, more particularly, for quickly booting a computer system, in which a boot configuration information is created and saved in a disk for future boot, and the saved boot configuration information is reused upon the request of the subsequent boot.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of the system architecture for a conventional personal co...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus that significantly reduces the time required for boot process after a POST operation by using a boot configuration information on memory and the attached devices that were created and saved in a disk in the preceding boot process, and thereby skipping execution of statements in an initial device configuration file and an automatic batch file.

[0015]To achieve the object, the present invention provides a method for quickly booting a personal computer system, comprising the steps of performing a POST operation when the system is powered on or a reset button is pressed; checking if a boot configuration information that was created in the preceding boot process exists in a disk; saving the boot configuration information to the disk after execution of a POST operation on the basis of the checking result; and loading a graphic user interface (GUI) program.

[0017]According to the quick booting method of the present invention, after ASCII statements listed in an initial device configuration file and an automatic batch file are executed, a boot configuration information that is resident in a memory, i.e., the status of devices and the contents of memory are saved into a disk. After that, when a reboot is requested, a computer system can be booted quickly by using the stored boot configuration information, without execution of the initial device configuration file and the automatic batch run file.

Problems solved by technology

Therefore, in case where there are a lot of ASCII statements in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, the quick boot of the conventional art is not effective to reduction of the boot time.

If memory size is larger than 32 MB, the amount of data to be saved to the disk becomes too large.

As a result, the subsequent booting by reloading the saved data into the memory may be even slower than a normal boot.

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