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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.
EasyBCD has a number of bootloader-related features that can be used to repair and configure the bootloader. From the "Manage Bootloader" section of EasyBCD, it is possible to switch between the BOOTMGR bootloader (used since Windows Vista) and the NTLDR bootloader (used by legacy versions of Windows, from Windows NT to Windows XP) in the MBR from within Windows by simply clicking a button.
On system with BIOS firmware, the BIOS invokes MBR boot code from a hard disk drive at startup. The MBR boot code and the VBR boot code are OS-specific. In Microsoft Windows, the MBR boot code tries to find an active partition (the MBR is only 512 bytes), then executes the VBR boot code of an active partition.
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]
NTLDR's first action is to read the boot.ini file. [6] NTLDR allows the user to choose which operating system to boot from at the menu. 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 ...
Typically, the system firmware (UEFI or BIOS) will allow the user to configure a boot order. If the boot order is set to "first, the DVD drive; second, the hard disk drive", then the firmware will try to boot from the DVD drive, and if this fails (e.g. because there is no DVD in the drive), it will try to boot from the local hard disk drive.
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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.