1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to running operating system in device(s), including computer system(s) or computer-controlled device(s) or operating-system-controlled device(s). Such device(s) is/are mentioned hereafter as Device(s).
In particular, this invention relates to operating systems to which this invention can be and is applied; this invention being a method, capable of being implemented in computer-executable or operating-system-executable instructions or programmes, providing for running operating system on virtual system memory address space, being dynamically mapped onto a storage medium, such as but not limited to internal physical memory or internal Random Access Memory (RAM or ram used hereafter), in or accessible to the Device(s) capable of running the operating system under concern.
In this relation, it makes possible, in the Device(s) capable of running the operating system under concern, the phenomenon of booting up and running operating system with the use of virtual disk driver on virtual system memory, the virtual system memory being dynamically mapped onto storage medium for its access.
2. Description of Related Arts
Since Microsoft Windows is the most popular operating system used nowadays, it is taken here as an example for illustrating how this invention can be carried out. This invention however can be applied to other operating systems with similar designs.
Normally, operating systems run up from and on fixed internal IDE/SCSI hard disk(s) of a local computer system or operating-system-controlled device or on the network fileserver of a network computer. Attempts however have been made to run operating systems in other ways. Using Microsoft Windows as an example, the solution of creating a CD capable of booting the full Microsoft Windows 98 at http://www.ct.heise.de/ct/english/99/! 1/206/ put forward by Tobias Remberg and Hajo Schulz provides a suggested solution for creating a bootable CD for running up Microsoft Windows 98. Besides this, Microsoft Windows Pre-installed Environment now can also run up on a live CD or DVD or be loaded up from hard disk to run as ramdisk-based. So it is now a common phenomenon to boot up Microsoft Windows from a local IDE/SCSI hard disk, from a CD or DVD, from a USB storage device or from a network fileserver or in hand-held device(s) to run as a ramdisk-based operating system.
So given time and will, Microsoft Windows can be made to boot up from more and more types of storage medium through designing and implementing the corresponding boot-up device drivers for accessing such types of storage medium. For certain type of storage medium, such as but not limited to internal RAM within a computing system, to be used for storing and booting up the system image of certain versions of Microsoft Windows, such as Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP, boot-up device driver has to be designed and implemented in such a way that the storage medium, for instance the internal RAM, is made available to the operating system for boot-up and subsequent use through allocating virtual memory out of the system memory pool and mapping such virtual memory onto the storage space of the internal RAM.