What is the booting procedure of Windows XP?

Answer 1

By "booting" do you mean when you are installing the OS for the first time or do you mean after, you've installed the OS and are beginning to use Win XP. Are you asking how is it different from all the other OS's from Microsft in the installation. If so, then the first big difference, is that you do NOT have to make a start up disk with Win XP. So long as you change the boot sequence in your BIOS to make the CD Rom drive the first device to boot, save those changes and then restart, you should have smooth sailing so long as you follow the prompts after that. Check you motherboard manual for the right way to get into your BIOS, and under which directory you will find the boot sequence option. Hope this answers your question. Once you've finished the install make certain you change the boot sequence back to make the hard drive with the OS on it the first device to boot so as to increase the boot time [this may shave a couple of seconds off the boot sequence]. BM

Answer 2

Windows XP Booting Process:As with other Windows Operating Systems, when you turn on your PC, it goes through an elaborate boot up process. It begins when the computer performs the POST (power-on self test), followed by the POST for each adapter card that has a BIOS, for example, your video card. The BIOS then reads the MBR (Master Boot Record) which is in the first sector of the first hard disk and transfers control to the code in the MBR which is created by the XP Setup. This is where Windows takes over the startup process.

What comes next? Here's what happens:

1. The MBR reads the boot sector which is the first sector of the active partition.This sector contains the code that starts Ntldr which is the boot strap loader for Windows XP. The first role of Ntldr is to allow full memory addressing, start the file system, read boot.ini and put up the boot menu. IMPORTANT: Ntldr must be located in root folder of the active partition along with Ntdetect.com, boot.ini, bootsect.dos (for dual booting) and Ntbootdd.sys (needed with some SCSI adapters).
2. Selecting XP from the boot menu causes Ntldr to run Ntdetect.com to get information about installed hardware. Ntldr then uses the ARC path specified in the boot.ini to find the boot partition. The one where Windows XP is installed. It might look like this:
   • default=multi (0)disk (0)partiton (2) WINDOWS
   • [operating systems]
   • multi(0)disk(0)partiton(2)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home" /fastdetect

Ntldr, then, loads the two files that make up the core of XP: Ntoskrnl.exe and Hal.dll. These files must be located in theSystem32 folder.

1. Ntldr reads the registry files, selects a hardware profile, control set and loads device drivers, in that order.
2. Then, Ntoskrnl.exe takes over and starts Winlogon.exe which starts Lsass.exe (Local Security Administration), this is the program that displays the Welcome screen (If Professional Edition-the Windows Log On dialog box), and allows the user to log on with his/her user name and password.