With great interest I followed the past discussions on booting non-linux operating systems with kexec. There is an implementation of the linux kernel as an MS-DOS executable. [1] I see some potential in it. If I understand this linux.exe project correctly it's possible to start linux as an normal executable, use linux, shut down linux and finally return to DOS. Couldn't the linux.exe approach be used in order to start non-linux operating systems without going thought BIOS again? There is also a DOS-based bootloader (grub.exe) to chainload other Master Boot Records, Volume Boot Records or even system files (such as NTLDR) directly. [2] If all can be put together well it should be possible to shut down linux and to boot a non-linux operating system without going thought BIOS. [1] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2008/9/8/3224284 [2] https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos regards, -mr