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Once all the boot and system drivers have been loaded, the kernel starts the session manager (smss.exe), which begins the login process. After the user has successfully logged into the machine, winlogon applies User and Computer Group Policy setting and runs startup programs declared in the Windows Registry and in "Startup" folders. [5]
A modern PC is configured to attempt to boot from various devices in a certain order. If a computer is not booting from the device desired, such as the floppy drive, the user may have to enter the BIOS Setup function by pressing a special key when the computer is first turned on (such as Delete, F1, F2, F10 or F12), and then changing the boot order. [6]
The two files thus contain only settings and preferences which configure the "global environment" for the computer during the boot phase or when starting a new virtual DOS machine (VDM). To specify or edit other startup values (which, in Windows 98, would be present in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file) the user must edit the following Windows registry key:
A "Cleanup" button on the "Startup" tab allows cleaning up invalid or deleted startup entries. In Windows Me and Windows XP versions, it can restore an individual file from the original Windows installation set. On Windows NT-based operating systems prior to Windows Vista, it can set various BOOT.INI switches.
On Apple Mac computers using Intel x86-64 processor architecture, the EFI system partition is initially left blank and unused for booting into macOS. [13] [14]However, the EFI system partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates [15] and for the Microsoft Windows bootloader for Mac computers configured to boot into a Windows partition using Boot Camp.
The boot screen has been simplified to an extent, with the progress bar being changed from a determinate progress bar seen in Windows 2000 to an indeterminate one. The animated gradient bar seen on the boot screens of Windows 95, 98, Me and Windows 2000 was also removed, as was the text "Starting up…"
The boot partition (or boot volume) [5] is the disk partition that contains the operating system folder, known as the system root or %systemroot% in Windows NT. [6]: 174 Before Windows 7, the system and boot partitions were, by default, the same and were given the "C:" drive letter.
For NT and NT-based operating systems, it also allows the user to pass preconfigured options to the kernel. The menu options are stored in boot.ini, which itself is located in the root of the same disk as NTLDR. Though NTLDR can boot DOS and non-NT versions of Windows, boot.ini cannot configure their boot options.