Editing NTLDR (section)

==History==
Windows NT was originally designed for [[Advanced RISC Computing|ARC]]-compatible platforms, relying on its boot manager support and providing only ''osloader.exe'', a loading program accepting ordinary command-line arguments specifying Windows directory partition, location or boot parameters, which is launched by ARC-compatible boot manager when a user chooses to start specific Windows NT operating system. However, because [[IBM PC compatible]] machines lacked any of the ARC support, as that platform preceded ARC, the additional layer was added specifically for that platform: custom boot manager code presenting text menu allowing the user to choose from one or more operating system and its options configured in ''boot.ini'' configuration file, prepended by special StartUp module which is responsible for some preparations such as switching the [[Central processing unit|CPU]] to the protected mode. When a user chooses an operating system from the boot menu, the following command-line arguments are then passed to the part of the ''osloader.exe'' common to all processor architectures:

{{Pre|1='''load''' '''osloader'''=''<Windows Path>''\System32\NTLDR '''systempartition'''=''<Windows Partition>'' '''osloadpartition'''=''<Windows Partition>'' '''osloadoptions'''=''<Windows Boot Parameters>'' '''consolein'''=multi(0)key(0)keyboard(0) '''consoleout'''=multi(0)video(0)monitor(0) '''x86systempartition'''=''<NTLDR partition>''}}

In Windows releases starting from [[Windows Vista]] and [[Windows Server 2008]], NTLDR has been split off back to its boot manager and system loader parts: the [[Windows Boot Manager]] and ''[[Windows Boot Manager#winload.exe|winload.exe]]''. The boot manager part has been completely rewritten; it no longer uses ''boot.ini'' as a configuration file, although the ''[[bootcfg]]'' utility for modifying boot.ini is still present for the case of multi-boot configurations with Windows versions up to [[Windows XP]] and [[Windows Server 2003]].