DOS (Disk Operating System)

DOS (Disk Operating System)

DOS (Disk Operating System) is an operating system that runs from a hard disk drive. The term can also refer to a particular family of disk operating systems, most commonly MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System).

An operating system (OS) is the software that controls a computer's hardware and peripheral devices and allows other programs to function. Early computers did not have disk drives but were hard-wired to carry out specific computations. Later, computers were able to store instructions loaded into the computer's memory using punch cards and later magnetic tapes. Computer memory space was limited and when the instructions to control a computer were moved onto a disk drive, such as a floppy disk or internal hard drive, it was considered cutting-edge technology. Today, any modern operating system would be considered a disk operating system.

Disk operating system is also used to describe several very similar command line disk operating systems. PC-DOS (Personal Computer Disk Operating System) was the first widely-installed disk operating system used in personal computers running on Intel 8086 16-bit processors. It was developed for IBM by Microsoft Corporation, which also produced its own almost identical version called MS-DOS. Other computers at the time, such as the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II, all featured a disk operating system, CBM DOS, Atari DOS, and Apple DOS, respectively. (DOS/360 was an operating system for IBM mainframes which first appeared in 1966, but is unrelated to the 8086-based DOS of the 1980s.

These early operating systems did not multitask, as they were only able to run one program at a time. The command line interface, in which a user has to type in commands, required the user to remember commands to run programs or do other operating system tasks, making it difficult for novices to use. For example, typing the command "cd \directory_name" changed the current working directory to the named directory and typing the command "dir" listed the files in the current directory.

When Microsoft first introduced Windows as a graphical user interface (GUI) for MS-DOS, early users had to type "WIN" at the DOS prompt to launch the Windows program. Windows has since evolved from being a GUI program running under DOS to a full operating system taking over as the default OS, though it was not until Windows XP that consumer versions of Windows stopped relying on the DOS program win.com to bootstrap the Windows kernel.

The last retail version of MS-DOS was MS-DOS 6.22. After this release, MS-DOS was still bundled as part of Windows, but no longer required a separate license. It can still be run under Windows using the Command Prompt program. There is an open source version of DOS called FreeDOS which is based on and compatible with MS-DOS.

Note: The acronym DoS with a lowercase O is short for Denial of Service, a method of attacking a networked computer by sending it an abnormally high number of requests in order to exhaust its resources so that genuine users cannot gain access.

DOS (Disk Operating System)

DOS (Disk Operating System)

DOS (Disk Operating System) is an operating system that runs from a hard disk drive. The term can also refer to a particular family of disk operating systems, most commonly MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System).

An operating system (OS) is the software that controls a computer's hardware and peripheral devices and allows other programs to function. Early computers did not have disk drives but were hard-wired to carry out specific computations. Later, computers were able to store instructions loaded into the computer's memory using punch cards and later magnetic tapes. Computer memory space was limited and when the instructions to control a computer were moved onto a disk drive, such as a floppy disk or internal hard drive, it was considered cutting-edge technology. Today, any modern operating system would be considered a disk operating system.

Disk operating system is also used to describe several very similar command line disk operating systems. PC-DOS (Personal Computer Disk Operating System) was the first widely-installed disk operating system used in personal computers running on Intel 8086 16-bit processors. It was developed for IBM by Microsoft Corporation, which also produced its own almost identical version called MS-DOS. Other computers at the time, such as the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II, all featured a disk operating system, CBM DOS, Atari DOS, and Apple DOS, respectively. (DOS/360 was an operating system for IBM mainframes which first appeared in 1966, but is unrelated to the 8086-based DOS of the 1980s.

These early operating systems did not multitask, as they were only able to run one program at a time. The command line interface, in which a user has to type in commands, required the user to remember commands to run programs or do other operating system tasks, making it difficult for novices to use. For example, typing the command "cd \directory_name" changed the current working directory to the named directory and typing the command "dir" listed the files in the current directory.

When Microsoft first introduced Windows as a graphical user interface (GUI) for MS-DOS, early users had to type "WIN" at the DOS prompt to launch the Windows program. Windows has since evolved from being a GUI program running under DOS to a full operating system taking over as the default OS, though it was not until Windows XP that consumer versions of Windows stopped relying on the DOS program win.com to bootstrap the Windows kernel.

The last retail version of MS-DOS was MS-DOS 6.22. After this release, MS-DOS was still bundled as part of Windows, but no longer required a separate license. It can still be run under Windows using the Command Prompt program. There is an open source version of DOS called FreeDOS which is based on and compatible with MS-DOS.

Note: The acronym DoS with a lowercase O is short for Denial of Service, a method of attacking a networked computer by sending it an abnormally high number of requests in order to exhaust its resources so that genuine users cannot gain access.

How to Identify Any Font on Any Web Page

Install the free WhatFont Chrome extension.
1.Open a web page containing the font you want to check out.
2.Click the WhatFont icon in the upper-right corner of your Chrome taskbar. This will enter a “font 3.scanning” mode to provide you with information about the fonts on the page.
4.Simply mouse over the font you want to see more about to see its name. To learn more information, click the text.
5.You’ll see a window with full details about the font. This includes the Style, Size, Color, and a sample of the alphabet in that font. Click the color square to change the Color value from hex to RGB. You can also click the Twitter icon to tweet out a link to the page, which is essentially an ad for the extension.
6.To stop checking fonts, just click the WhatFont extension icon again.
Once you’ve found out what the font is, you can download it for your own use. You’ll find tons of websites offering free fonts. Sites like DaFont and Font Squirrel are good first stops.

Just make sure that when you download a font, you don’t accidentally download malware instead. Check for fake download buttons and stick to trusted download sites. Most modern fonts are either OTF or TTF, so don’t open any fonts that are in EXE format! They’re usually viruses.

How to Identify Any Font on Any Web Page

Install the free WhatFont Chrome extension.
1.Open a web page containing the font you want to check out.
2.Click the WhatFont icon in the upper-right corner of your Chrome taskbar. This will enter a “font 3.scanning” mode to provide you with information about the fonts on the page.
4.Simply mouse over the font you want to see more about to see its name. To learn more information, click the text.
5.You’ll see a window with full details about the font. This includes the Style, Size, Color, and a sample of the alphabet in that font. Click the color square to change the Color value from hex to RGB. You can also click the Twitter icon to tweet out a link to the page, which is essentially an ad for the extension.
6.To stop checking fonts, just click the WhatFont extension icon again.
Once you’ve found out what the font is, you can download it for your own use. You’ll find tons of websites offering free fonts. Sites like DaFont and Font Squirrel are good first stops.

Just make sure that when you download a font, you don’t accidentally download malware instead. Check for fake download buttons and stick to trusted download sites. Most modern fonts are either OTF or TTF, so don’t open any fonts that are in EXE format! They’re usually viruses.

What Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) , What You Need To Know About IT

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification for a software program that connects a computer's firmware to its operating system (OS). UEFI is expected to eventually replace BIOS.

Like BIOS, UEFI is installed at the time of manufacturing and is the first program that runs when a computer is turned on. It checks to see what hardware components the computing device has, wakes the components up and hands them over to the operating system. The new specification addresses several limitations of BIOS, including restrictions on hard disk partition size and the amount of time BIOS takes to perform its tasks.

Because UEFI is programmable, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) developers can add applications and drivers, allowing UEFI to function as a lightweight operating system. 

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is managed by a group of chipset, hardware, system, firmware, and operating system vendors called the UEFI Forum.The specification is most often pronounced by naming the letters U-E-F-I. 

Continue reading about UEFI:

Andrew Regenscheid, a mathematician with the computer security division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is concerned about the security issues UEFI presents. 

Sebastian Anthony demystifies the long-overdue BIOS replacement.

Some Feature Of UEFI:

Quick summary

• UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy
• Secure boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature
• UEFI secure boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture
• Windows 8 utilizes secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure
• Secure boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components
• OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform
• Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

What Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) , What You Need To Know About IT

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification for a software program that connects a computer's firmware to its operating system (OS). UEFI is expected to eventually replace BIOS.

Like BIOS, UEFI is installed at the time of manufacturing and is the first program that runs when a computer is turned on. It checks to see what hardware components the computing device has, wakes the components up and hands them over to the operating system. The new specification addresses several limitations of BIOS, including restrictions on hard disk partition size and the amount of time BIOS takes to perform its tasks.

Because UEFI is programmable, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) developers can add applications and drivers, allowing UEFI to function as a lightweight operating system. 

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is managed by a group of chipset, hardware, system, firmware, and operating system vendors called the UEFI Forum.The specification is most often pronounced by naming the letters U-E-F-I. 

Continue reading about UEFI:

Andrew Regenscheid, a mathematician with the computer security division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is concerned about the security issues UEFI presents. 

Sebastian Anthony demystifies the long-overdue BIOS replacement.

Some Feature Of UEFI:

Quick summary

• UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy
• Secure boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature
• UEFI secure boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture
• Windows 8 utilizes secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure
• Secure boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components
• OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform
• Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

What Is Secure Boot? How Its Works on Windows 8 and 10.

Modern PCs ship with a feature called “Secure Boot” enabled. This is a platform feature in UEFI, which replaces the traditional PC BIOS. If a PC manufacturer wants to place a “Windows 10” or “Windows 8” logo sticker to their PC, Microsoft requires they enable Secure Boot and follow some guidelines.

How Secure Boot Secures Your PC’s Boot Process

Secure Boot isn’t just designed to make running Linux more difficult. There are real security advantages to having Secure Boot enabled, and even Linux users can benefit from them.

A traditional BIOS will boot any software. When you boot your PC, it checks the hardware devices according to the boot order you’ve configured, and attempts to boot from them. Typical PCs will normally find and boot the Windows boot loader, which goes on to boot the full Windows operating system. If you use Linux, the BIOS will find and boot the GRUB boot loader, which most Linux distributions use.

However, it’s possible for malware, such as a rootkit, to replace your boot loader. The rootkit could load your normal operating system with no indication anything was wrong, staying completely invisible and undetectable on your system. The BIOS doesn’t know the difference between malware and a trusted boot loader–it just boots whatever it finds.

Secure Boot is designed to stop this. Windows 8 and 10 PCs ship with Microsoft’s certificate stored in UEFI. UEFI will check the boot loader before launching it and ensure it’s signed by Microsoft. If a rootkit or another piece of malware does replace your boot loader or tamper with it, UEFI won’t allow it to boot. This prevents malware from hijacking your boot process and concealing itself from your operating system.

How You Can Disable or Control Secure Boot:

If that was all Secure Boot did, you wouldn’t be able to run any non-Microsoft-approved operating system on your PC. But you can likely control Secure Boot from your PC’s UEFI firmware, which is like the BIOS in older PCs.

There are two ways to control Secure Boot. The easiest method is to head to the UEFI firmware and disable it entirely. The UEFI firmware won’t check to ensure you’re running a signed boot loader, and anything will boot. You can boot any Linux distribution or even install Windows 7, which doesn’t support Secure Boot. Windows 8 and 10 will work fine, you’ll just lose the security advantages of having Secure Boot protect your boot process.

You can can also further customize Secure Boot. You can control which signing certificates Secure Boot offers. You’re free to both install new certificates and remove existing certificates. An organization that ran Linux on its PCs, for example, could choose to remove Microsoft’s certificates and install the organization’s own certificate in its place. Those PCs would then only boot boot loaders approved and signed by that specific organization.

An individual could do this, too–you could sign your own Linux boot loader and ensure your PC could only boot boot loaders you personally compiled and signed. That’s the kind of control and power Secure Boot offers.

What Microsoft Requires of PC Manufacturers

Microsoft doesn’t just require PC vendors enable Secure Boot if they want that nice “Windows 10” or “Windows 8” certification sticker on their PCs. Microsoft requires PC manufacturers implement it in a specific way.

For Windows 8 PCs, manufacturers had to give you a way to turn Secure Boot off. Microsoft required PC manufacturers to put a Secure Boot kill switch in users’ hands.

For Windows 10 PCs, this is no longer mandatory. PC manufacturers can choose to enable Secure Boot and not give users a way to turn it off. However, we’re not actually aware of any PC manufacturers that do this.

Similarly, while PC manufacturers have to include Microsoft’s main “Microsoft Windows Production PCA” key so Windows can boot, they don’t have to include the “Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA” key. This second key is only recommended. It’s the second, optional key that Microsoft uses to sign Linux boot loaders. Ubuntu’s documentation explains this.

In other words, not all PCs will necessarily boot signed Linux distributions with Secure Boot turned on. Again, in practice, we haven’t seen any PCs that did this. Perhaps no PC manufacturer wants to make the only line of laptops you can’t install Linux on.

For now, at least, mainstream Windows PCs should allow you to disable Secure Boot if you like, and they should boot Linux distributions that have been signed by Microsoft even if you don’t disable Secure Boot.