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Before boot sequence:
POST / Power on Self Test routines are run.
The boot device is found, MBR (Master Boot Record) is loaded into memory; and the active partition boot sector is found, and loads it into memory.
NTLDR is loaded into memory from the boot sector.
Boot Sequence:
The processor is switched from real mode into 32 bit flat memory mode by NTLDR.
Then it starts the minifile system drivers, which could be either FAT, FAT 32 (2000 only) or NTFS.
It reads the BOOT.INI file, and displays the Boot Loader Menu. In case of a dual boot system, if an operating system other than Windows NT is selected, BOOTSECT.DOS is loaded and the control is passed on to it for booting.
If Windows NT/2000 is selected, NTLDR will run NTDETECT.COM which scans the computers hardware and passes this information back to NTLDR.
It then loads NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL, and SYSTEM hive.
