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The boot sector or UEFI loads the Windows Boot Manager (a file named BOOTMGR on either the system or the boot partition), accesses the Boot Configuration Data store and uses the information to load the operating system through winload.exe or winresume.exe.
Though NTLDR and boot.ini are no longer used to boot Windows Vista and later versions of Windows NT, they ship with the bootcfg utility regardless. This is to handle boot.ini in the case that a multi-boot configuration with previous versions of Windows exists and needs troubleshooting from within the later operating system.
During the boot phase, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are executed, along with the configuration settings files WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI. Virtual device drivers are also loaded in the startup process: they are most commonly loaded from the registry ( HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD ) or from the SYSTEM.INI file.
On Windows NT-based operating systems prior to Windows Vista, it can set various BOOT.INI switches. In Windows XP and Windows Vista, it can hide all operating system services for troubleshooting. In Windows Vista and later, the tool allows configuring various switches for Windows Boot Manager and Boot Configuration Data.
EasyBCD runs on Windows and modifies the Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD) to add support for other operating systems. Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP are supported by handing off the control of boot to either NTLDR or the EasyBCD-specific EasyLDR, which bypasses NTLDR and boots directly into the OS. [4]
This is the reason why a large dummy comment is typically found in the MSDOS.SYS configuration file since Windows 95. [nb 1] [4] [5] [6] By default, the file is located in the root directory of the bootable drive/partition (normally C:\ for hard disks) and has the hidden, read-only, and system file attributes set.
In an OS/2 dual-boot configuration, the C drive can contain both DOS and OS/2. The user issues the BOOT command [1] from the DOS or OS/2 command line to do the necessary copy, move and rename operations and then reboot to the specified system on C:. Other systems provide similar mechanisms for alternate systems on the same logical drive.
Microsoft boot sectors, therefore, traditionally imposed certain restrictions on the boot process. For example, the boot file had to be located at a fixed position in the root directory of the file system and stored within consecutive sectors, [7] [8] conditions taken care of by the SYS command and slightly relaxed in later versions of DOS.