A friend of mine told me that it's possible to load Windows directly into a computer's EEPROM and run it crash free that way. Is this possible in reality? If Windows were loaded into EEPROM, where would the BIOS go?
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A friend of mine told me that it's possible to load Windows directly into a computer's EEPROM and run it crash free that way. Is this possible in reality? If Windows were loaded into EEPROM, where would the BIOS go?
Windows XP Embedded maybe, but not full-blown Windows XP - you'd run out of space. :D I don't see how it would help you run crash-free though.
As for Windows booting off interesting places, it is possible to boot a variant of Windows XP from the CD without using the hard drive. It's called WinPE (for Preinstallation Environment) and used by OEMs.
You can get an adaptor to connect flash RAM, such as a CF card, to the IDE interface and appear as a bootable disk drive. In principle, a compact Windows installation could be booted from this. However Windows writes to the drive a great deal, and as EEPROM has a limited number of write cycles, lifespan would be poor.
This type of installation needs an OS which seldom writes to the drive.
And I've yet to see an OS that's like that.