pdoriley
asked on
Can you boot w/ only virtual memory in your PC.
Question:
Can you boot a PC using only it's virtual memory (and no RAM sticks) and please explain why or why not?
Can you boot a PC using only it's virtual memory (and no RAM sticks) and please explain why or why not?
Pete Long
No the computer would fail its POST (power on self test) that runs before the OS is loaded, it would just beep at you :(
ASKER
Why?
ASKER
If not for the POST, could it theoritically run off of virtual memory? Why do we need memory sticks?
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Happy to help...
By way of further clarification, virtual memory is really nothing more than the process of an operating system paging out (i.e.- writing out to disk) parts of memory-resident programs and data that are not in use at a moment in time, and then bringing them back in when they are needed. This frees up memory for programs that need to run at that particular moment in time.
So fundamentally virtual memory is just a feature that is created by the operating system (with a bit of help from memory management features in the CPU). If you start up your PC with a basic dumb operating system like DOS for instance, there is no virtual memory -- the RAM sticks is all you have!
By way of further clarification, virtual memory is really nothing more than the process of an operating system paging out (i.e.- writing out to disk) parts of memory-resident programs and data that are not in use at a moment in time, and then bringing them back in when they are needed. This frees up memory for programs that need to run at that particular moment in time.
So fundamentally virtual memory is just a feature that is created by the operating system (with a bit of help from memory management features in the CPU). If you start up your PC with a basic dumb operating system like DOS for instance, there is no virtual memory -- the RAM sticks is all you have!