Thursday, February 4, 2010

Control Sets and the Windows XP startup process

For our reference, we need to know which ControlSet is used for system startup.

Typically, if the system\Select\Current value is set to 0x1 (Data: 0x00000001 (1)), then CurrentControlSet is pointing to ControlSet001.


For more detailed information see the below snippets and links.
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Control Sets and the Windows XP startup process
Published: November 03, 2005
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457123.aspx

Startup Phases

The Windows XP Professional startup process closely resembles that of Microsoft Windows NT version 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, but it significantly differs from Microsoft MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me).

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Article ID: 100010 - Last Review: November 1, 2006 - Revision: 3.1
What are Control Sets? What is CurrentControlSet?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/100010

Of importance:
ControlSet001 may be the last control set you booted with, while ControlSet002 could be what is known as the last known good control set, or the control set that last successfully booted Windows NT. The CurrentControlSet subkey is really a pointer to one of the ControlSetXXX keys. Clone is a clone of CurrentControlSet, and is created each time you boot your computer by the kernel initialization process. In order to better understand how these control sets are used, you need to be aware of another subkey, Select.

Select is also under the SYSTEM key. Select contains the following values:
Current
Default
Failed
LastKnownGood
"Each of these values contain a REG_DWORD data type and refer to specifically to a control set. For example, if the Current value is set to 0x1, then CurrentControlSet is pointing to ControlSet001. Similarly, if LastKnownGood is set to 0x2, then the last known good control set is ControlSet002. The Default value usually agrees with Current, and Failed refers to a control set that was unable to boot Windows NT successfully. "

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