WINLOAD.EXE

winload.exe

The Windows Boot Manager invokes winload.exe—the operating system boot loader—to load the operating system kernel executive (ntoskrnl.exe) and core device drivers. In that respect, winload.exe is functionally equivalent to the operating system loader function of NTLDR in prior versions of Windows NT. In UEFI systems, the file is called winload.efi and the file is always located at \windows\system32 or \windows\system32\boot. In addition, if Hyper-V is enabled, winload.exe or winload.efi will load hvix64.exe or hvax64.exe on x64 computer systems; later, ntoskrnl.exe is loaded.