Completion of Kernel Initialization

After the kernel has completed initializing the CPU and memory, and initialized or relocated the kernel data, the following steps are performed to complete the kernel initialization process:

1. The kernel initializes the debug subsystem.

2. The kernel initializes the following OAL time functions:

   • KSystemTimeToFileTime
   • KLocalFileTimeToFileTime
   • KFileTimeToSystemTime
   • KCompareFileTime

3. The kernel creates an idle thread to zero the remaining memory. This thread is an idle thread that will run after the system fully boots and comes to a steady state.

4. The kernel creates the alarm thread that is used by the notification system to trigger time-based events.

   During execution of the alarm thread the kernel will call the following functions:

   • OEMGetRealTime
   • OEMSetAlarmTime

   The alarm thread relies on dwNKAlarmResolutionMSec to set the resolution of the real-time clock alarm. By default, this is set to 10 seconds but can be overridden by the OAL in OEMInit.

5. The kernel calls the OEMIoControl function with IOCTL_HAL_POSTINIT.

   This is the last chance for an OEM to perform work before the rest of the OS is started.

See Also

Other Kernel Tasks | Kernel Initialization

Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

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