Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In Windows NT, the booting process is initiated by NTLDR in versions before Vista and the Windows Boot Manager (BOOTMGR) in Vista and later. [4] 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.
The pointer's destination contains information about the hardware, the path to the Windows Registry file, kernel parameters containing boot preferences or options that change the behavior of the kernel, path of the files loaded by the bootloader (SYSTEM Registry hive, nls for character encoding conversion, and vga font). [8]
The Windows Boot Manager invokes winload.exe—the operating system boot loader—to load the operating system kernel executive (ntoskrnl.exe) and core device drivers. In that respect, winload.exe is functionally equivalent to the operating system loader function of NTLDR in prior versions of Windows NT.
Though NTLDR can boot DOS and non-NT versions of Windows, boot.ini cannot configure their boot options. For NT-based OSs, the location of the operating system is written as an Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) path. boot.ini is protected from user configuration by having the following file attributes: system, hidden, read-only.
The Native API is also used by subroutines such as those in kernel32.dll that implement the Windows API, the API based on which most of the Windows components are created. Most of the Native API calls are implemented in ntoskrnl.exe and are exposed to user mode by ntdll.dll. The entry point of ntdll.dll is LdrInitializeThunk.
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.
The boot sequence is initiated by NTLDR in versions before Vista and the Windows Boot Manager in Vista and later. [28] 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.
Note: The column MBR (Master Boot Record) refers to whether or not the boot loader can be stored in the first sector of a mass storage device. The column VBR (Volume Boot Record) refers to the ability of the boot loader to be stored in the first sector of any partition on a mass storage device.