In Windows 95, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are processed similarly to the way they are processed under MS-DOS 6.x. MS-DOS drivers and TSRs are loaded in real mode. Any hardware drivers that load at this point should use the MS-DOS configuration management services to determine how their hardware has been configured.
The difference between the Windows 95 implementation and the process with MS-DOS 6.0 is that the system attempts to calculate the current configuration if the computer is a docking system. A hardware profile is selected before CONFIG.SYS is processed. If the "friendly name" of the hardware profile matches a multi-configuration menu item name (that is, the long text in the menu, not the section name enclosed in square brackets), the system automatically selects that multi-configuration menu item and automatically process the corresponding section of CONFIG.SYS.
For more information about hardware profiles, see Hardware Profile Detection.