What is the NT Boot Process?

Power on self test (POST) routines are run

Master Boot Record is loaded into memory, and the program is run

The Boot Sector from Active Partition is Loaded into Memory

Ntldr is loaded and initialized from the boot sector

Change the processor from real mode to 32-bit flat memory mode

Ntldr starts the appropriate minifile system drivers. Minifile system drivers are built into Ntldr and can read FAT or NTFS

Ntldr reads the Boot.ini file

Ntldr loads the operating system selected, on of two things happen
* If Windows NT is selected, Ntldr runs Ntdetect.com
* For other operating system, Ntldr loads and runs Bootsect.dos and passes control to it. The Windows NT process ends here

Ntdetect.com scans the computer hardware and sends the list to Ntldr for inclusion in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEHARDWARE

Ntldr then loads Ntoskrnl.exe, Hal.dll and the system hive

Ntldr scans the System hive and loads the device drivers configured to start at boot time

Ntldr passes control to Ntoskrnl.exe, at which point the boot process ends and the load phases begin