     [ Questions & Answers ]ķ
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  Q: I used another harddisk on my computer, all went okay, but a friend     
      needed the drive again, so I removed it. Now he is not able to boot    
      anymore. What shall I do ?                                             
  A: That's a problem with the partition table. Some systems need to be the  
      only "active" partition, so AiR-BOOT removes those flags on ANY        
      partition, BUT the one that was booted on.                             
      To be able to boot, you have to reget the harddisk, boot from the      
      partition your friend wants to boot from, switch your computer off,    
      remove the harddisk and you are done.                                  
                                                                             
      NOTE: If your friend would use AiR-BOOT, this problem would not occur. 
            occur. If he does have only one partition that is bootable and   
            does not want the menu, he can switch it off. AiR-BOOT will use  
            its definable default partition automatically.                   
                                                                             
  Q: Why did you force the user to have at least 62 sectors per track on his 
      harddisk. I looked at your code-image and it's using not half of it.   
  A: I did a more 'compressed' version (31 sectors required) before, but I   
      discovered that this was stupid. A stealth-virus killed part of the    
      configuration, so the user would have to re-setup AiR-BOOT entirely.   
      Now I save the configuration at a different point. Most viruses        
      should not kill the configuration. Note: The AiR-BOOT disc is able to  
      repair AiR-BOOT code *alone*, so you won't have to re-setup AiR-BOOT.  
      Just insert the AiR-BOOT disc, if you have problems starting your      
      computer. It will search&repair all missing parts of AiR-BOOT.         
                                                                             
  Q: I just looked at your MBR-code and I saw that you are doing some        
      strange things. Why did you do this ?                                  
  A: Here is the starting code that's in the MBR-code since 0.26b:           
      CLI (disables Interrupts)                                              
      JuMP Somewhere                                                         
      JuMP ToAnotherLocation                                                 
      STI (enables Interrupts)                                               
                                                                             
      Now why: It's because of Microsoft. A nice "greeting" is in the MBR    
                as well. They don't use any standards. Why should they.      
                Windoze NT/2000 is checking for the CLI instruction.         
                I don't know why. It's not a standard for MBR writing.       
                If it's not found Windoze 2000 gets berserk. The 2 jumps are 
                because at MBR-offset 2h, there is the AiR-BOOT signature.   
                I didn't want to change the detection, so I made the 'A' to  
                a part of the JMP instruction as well. So the thing jumps to 
                a specific location and has to jump to the actual start.     
                                                                             
     This had to be done JUST because of Microsoft. I can't stand this any   
      longer. There is no need for such checking. It's not documented        
      anywhere and the CLI was needed on some of the earliest x86 computers  
      when changing stack. Anyway it's not needed in the MBR at least not    
      at offset 0.                                                           
                                                                             
  Q: Ohhh man, what do you got against LILO. It's soooo good.                
  A: Well, I had nothing against it, till it nearly erased my projects       
      partition. It was FAT and this nice little bugger overwrote some       
      internals *as documented* without even giving me any warning message.  
      I see LILO as on the same level as Microsoft products. Just believing  
      they would rule the whole computer and could do anything.              
      Even all AiR-BOOT alphas never corrupted any partition table.          
      The only problems were crashs, so I had to restore to an older MBR.    
      During late beta testing, it never got any problems. And if there were 
      any, I just inserted the AiR-BOOT disc and the problem was gone.       
      (btw: that's the way I noticed that Partition Magic 3.x overwrites     
       quietly some sectors in track 0).                                     
                                                                             
  Q: I believe you have copied the text of your boot-menu from DocsBoot.     
  A: You are right. DocsBoot is cool, but you had to setup using a DOS-exe.  
      This ain't possible under Unix/Linux, nor under WinNT or OS/2. So it's 
      a no-no. And it didn't have many options that AiR-BOOT has.            
                                                                             
  Q: By the way, your SETUP looks much as my Award BIOS SETUP.               
  A: Well, :] nope, I modified most of its design. The menu-locations were   
      done good, same goes for the colors, so I used them too (Most users    
      would not like to have 2 different setups). But window design, window  
      drawing speed and optimization are a little bit different <bg>.        
                                                                             
  Q: I am a representative of a bios manufacturer and we would like to       
      implement AiR-BOOT in our BIOS.                                        
  A: This would be great, we are looking for something like this, so it      
      could be pre-executed from BIOS, so no WinNT-install could kill it.    
      Please contact us. (We have coded AiR-BOOT in a way, so this would be  
      possible. We would need about 512 byte code space in your BIOS).       
      AiR-BOOT would need to be installed to the harddisk anyway, but the    
      layer 0 code would be in BIOS, so AiR-BOOT would get the first pick on 
      the harddisk and could check for virus etc.                            
                                                                             
  Q: I am a representative of a OS building software company. We would like  
      to implement your AiR-BOOT, too.                                       
  A: We could talk about bundled versions. But I will NEVER EVER modify      
      AiR-BOOT to be OS dependant. AiR-BOOT was coded for being totally      
      independant from any OS, so OEM versions would boot other OS as well.  
                                                                             
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