The booting process of Microsoft Windows varies between different releases.
In Windows 3.x and 95/98/ME, the boot loader phase is handled by MS-DOS.
During the boot phase, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are executed, along with the configuration settings files WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI.
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.