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ntoskrnl.exe (short for Windows NT operating system kernel executable), also known as the kernel image, contains the kernel and executive layers of the Microsoft Windows NT kernel, and is responsible for hardware abstraction, process handling, and memory management.
The Windows NT operating system family's architecture consists of two layers (user mode and kernel mode), with many different modules within both of these layers.. The architecture of Windows NT, a line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft, is a layered design that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode.
Unlike Win32 applications, native applications instantiate within the Kernel runtime code (ntoskrnl.exe) and so they must have a different entry point (NtProcessStartup, rather than (w)(Win)MainCRTStartup as is found in a Win32 application), [4] obtain their command-line arguments via a pointer to an in-memory structure, manage their own memory ...
The boot loader is responsible for accessing the file system on the boot drive, starting ntoskrnl.exe, and loading boot-time device drivers into memory. Once all the boot and system drivers have been loaded, the kernel starts the session manager (smss.exe), which begins the login process.
The Native API is a lightweight application programming interface (API) used by Windows NT's kernel and user mode applications. This API is used in the early stages of Windows NT startup process, when other components and APIs are still unavailable.
The bootstrap loader takes the control over the booting process and loads NTLDR. Ntdetect.com is invoked by NTLDR, and returns the information it gathers to NTLDR when finished, so that it can then be passed on to ntoskrnl.exe, the Windows NT kernel. Ntdetect.com is used on computers that use BIOS firmware.
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Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993.