Session Manager
Once all the Boot and System drivers have been loaded, the kernel (system thread) starts the Session Manager Subsystem (smss.exe).
Before any files are opened, Autochk is started by smss.exe. Autochk mounts all drives and checks them one at a time to see whether or not they were cleanly unmounted. If autochk determines one or more volumes are dirty, it will automatically run chkdsk and provides the user with a short window to abort the repair process by pressing a key within 10 seconds (introduced in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4; earlier versions would not allow the user to abort chkdsk). Since Windows 2000, XP and 2003 show no text screen at that point (unlike NT, which displayed a blue text screen), the user will see a different background picture holding a mini-text-screen in the center of the screen and show the progress of chkdsk there.
At boot time, the Session Manager Subsystem:
- Creates environment variables (
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment) - Starts the kernel-mode side of the Win32 subsystem (win32k.sys). This allows Windows to switch into graphical mode as there is now enough infrastructure in place.
- Starts the user-mode side of the Win32 subsystem, the Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem (
csrss.exe). This makes Win32 available to user-mode applications. - Creates virtual memory paging files (
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management) - Performs any rename operations that are queued up. This allows previously in-use files (e.g. drivers) to be replaced as part of a reboot.
- Starts the Windows Logon Manager (
winlogon.exe). Winlogon is responsible for handling interactive logons to a Windows system (local or remote). The Graphical Identification aNd Authentication (GINA) library is loaded inside the Winlogon process, and provides support for logging in as a local or Windows domain user.
The Session Manager stores its configuration at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager. The exact operation of most of these items is based on the configuration set in the registry.
Read more about this topic: Windows NT Startup Process
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