Digital Forensic Certification Practice Exam

Which component of NTFS acts as a boot loader and accesses the file system to load the contents of the boot.ini file?

1. Ntldr.exe

2. Ntldlr.dll

3. Winlogon.exe

4. Bootmgr

The correct answer is: Ntldlr.dll

The accurate choice regarding the component of NTFS that functions as a boot loader and interacts with the file system to load the contents of the boot.ini file is Ntldr.exe. This executable is crucial in the booting process for Windows operating systems prior to Windows Vista. It is responsible for loading the operating system and is involved in querying the boot.ini file, which contains information about installed operating systems and the boot options. In the context of NTFS, Ntldr.exe works directly with the file system to locate and load the necessary files for Windows startup, making it an essential part of the operation. The presence of boot.ini facilitates multi-boot configurations, allowing users to select between different operating systems at startup. The remaining options, although related to the Windows operating environment, do not serve the same fundamental role in the NTFS boot process as Ntldr.exe does. For instance, while Bootmgr is indeed a boot manager that takes over from Ntldr in later versions of Windows, it does not utilize boot.ini; instead, it reads from Boot Configuration Data (BCD). On the other hand, Winlogon.exe is part of the login process for Windows and is tasked with managing user sessions but does not involve itself in the boot loader functions. Ntld