Firmware and Boot Environment
For Plug and Play and power management support under Microsoft Windows operating systems, the system and its firmware must comply with Advanced Configuration and Power Interface Specification (ACPI).
ACPI firmware entries are the same for supporting all versions of Windows for x86 and x64 architectures. EFI firmware is required for 64-bit Windows on Intel Itanium-based systems.
In this section
| Topic | Description |
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On Microsoft Windows Vista and later versions, the boot configuration data (BCD) store, contains the boot configuration parameters and controls the computer's boot environment. BCDEdit is a command-line tool that can be used to add, delete, edit, and modify data in a BCD store. The paper is a reference for BCDEdit commands, data types, and well-known identifiers. |
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Information about the Windows Vista boot environment and the boot configuration data (BCD) store. |
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Proof of concept, methods, and data for enabling “fast and pretty” firmware on PCs running Windows 7. |
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This specification defines the format of the software licensing (SLIC) table and the Microsoft Data Management (MSDM) table, used in platform firmware to enable Windows software licensing. |
Related topics
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Microsoft PE and COFF Specification | This specification describes the structure of executable (image) files and object files under the Windows family of operating systems. These files are referred to as Portable Executable (PE) and Common Object File Format (COFF) files, respectively. This specification includes ARM (64-bit) definitions for UEFI usage. |
| Microsoft Extensible Firmware Initiative (EFI) FAT32 File System Specification | This specification describes the format of the File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. |
| Windows Authenticode Portable Executable Signature Format | This white paper describes the signature format that is used to embed an Authenticode signature within a portable executable file. |
| iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT) | This document describes the table fields for the iSCSI Boot Firmware (iBF) Table as defined in the ACPI 3.0b specification. The (iBFT) is a block of information containing parameters needed to boot Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Windows using the iSCSI protocol and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator. Independent Hardware Vendors implementing iSCSI boot support in their firmware need to use the table headers defined in this specification to enable the passing of boot critical parameters to the Windows operating system. |
See also
Secured Boot and Measured Boot: Hardening Early Boot Components Against Malware
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) Technical Reference
Windows Vista PreOS Environment: What happens before the OS loads
Boot Configuration Data WMI Provider
Windows Management Instrumentation
Extensible Firmware Interface Specification
Implementing the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface with Intel's Framework
Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions
UEFI Specifications [UEFI Forum]