How to edit the download file. Editing the Windows Boot Loader Menu

Microsoft engineers have implemented a boot store, also known as Boot Configuration Data (BCD), and a boot menu in Windows. The first contains the bootloader identifiers of all operating systems available on the PC, and the second reads them and displays them as a list of operating systems available for launch. This makes life much easier for the user whose computer has several systems. He doesn't have to do anything fancy to switch between them. Just restart your computer and select the one you need from the list provided. Like other parts of the Windows OS, the boot menu is customizable. This guide lists the available ways to edit this section.

Note: Almost all actions described in this guide must be performed under an account with administrator rights. Otherwise, you must know the password for it.

Editing the Windows 10 boot menu in the bootloader window

The Windows 10 boot menu has a small settings section. It provides a minimal set of options - changing the value of the automatic startup timer of the main system, changing the default OS, as well as an additional section with system startup modes and the computer shutdown function.

Editing the Windows 10 boot menu in System Settings

In the additional system parameters, which can be accessed through the OS properties, there is a section. It contains a small list of functions for editing the boot menu, which is suitable for undemanding users. So, with its help, you can choose which operating system will boot by default, set the time for displaying the list of installed systems or turn off the timeout altogether, and also activate the display of recovery options.

To get to this section, you need to do the following:

Editing the Windows 10 boot menu in System Configuration

If you need a little more customization options, you can try the utility system configuration. In addition to the mentioned settings, it offers the function of deleting boot records of operating systems, an option to display information about the OS, the ability to run Windows without a graphical shell, select safe mode boot options and several more minor functions.

You can edit the boot menu using System Configuration as follows:

How to Edit Windows 10 Boot Menu Using EasyBCD

EasyBCD is a free utility that provides a wide range of options for editing the boot menu. In comparison, all standard system tools (except the Command Line) look very primitive.

This compact program allows you to:

Remove OS from the list of available ones for launching.
Add new entries Windows (including outdated ones), Linux / BSD, Mac.
Add entries for installing systems using ISO images or individual hard drive partitions.
Rename operating system entries.
Set the system to default.
Change the position of entries in the list.
Set boot menu language.
Select the bootloader interface shell (Metro or earlier from Windows Vista / 7).
Set the timeout duration.
Back up and restore boot storage (BCD) settings.
View BCD contents and boot menu.

The program's interface is completely localized into Russian, and it itself is quite easy to use and does not require any supernatural abilities from the user.

How to rename the system entry in the boot menu

How to move system entry to boot menu

How to choose the default boot system

How to change the boot menu display time

How to change the boot menu language

How to Edit Windows 10 Boot Menu Using Command Prompt

If you don't trust third-party programs and try to use system tools exclusively, then you should try ways to edit the Windows 10 boot menu using the command line.

Create or restore a Windows Boot Store backup

Before you proceed, create a backup of your download store so that you can restore it if necessary. You can create a BCD backup as follows:

How to add a system entry to the boot menu

How to remove system entry from boot menu

How to change the order in which systems are displayed in the boot menu

To edit the position of entries in the loader, use the command bcdedit /displayorder (ID2) (ID1) (ID3). Instead of everyone ID specify the actual entry codes in the order in which you want to see them when the computer starts.

After installing several operating systems on a computer, for example, Vista and Windows 7, the initial settings of the boot menu are lost, resulting in the fact that every time you start the PC you have to choose which OS to boot from and which settings to apply. The process, let’s say, is unpleasant, as it takes a lot of time. In this case, restoring the original appearance of the boot menu by editing the system startup order in the Windows bootloader will help return the situation to its normal course. However, it can be done in more than one way.

Option #1: Debugging through the System control panel

In order to start the process of restoring settings and removing additional boot options from the Windows bootloader using this method, you will first need to enter the “System” section. You can do this in different ways:

In any case, the “System” window will appear on the screen. In it we find and select the “Advanced system settings” section, and then click the “Settings” button in the system window that appears opposite the “Boot and Recovery” tab:

As a result, users are given the opportunity to:

change the startup order of operating systems by selecting the OS that boots by default;
determine the waiting time (timeout) before starting the system;
remove the display of the list of available operating systems in the boot menu:

It is perhaps easy to see that the advantage of this method is the simplicity and speed of solving the problem of editing the boot menu. However, it would hardly be logical to deny that it can be used to determine only the most basic Windows startup parameters.

Option No. 2: Configuration using the “System Configuration” utility

It is also possible to remove unnecessary variants of operating systems installed on the computer from the Windows boot loader by editing the settings in the System Configuration utility. You can open it using different methods:

One way or another, after the “System Configuration” system window appears on the monitor screen, to restore the standard method of starting Windows, you will need to enter the “Boot” section. Here, in particular, you can make settings such as:

remove an extra entry from the Windows boot loader;
designate one OS to run as default;
set a timeout at system startup;
set maximum memory, number of executable processes, PCI lock:

Thanks to the simple and understandable interface of the utility, the process of performing each of these actions is not difficult at all. For example, in order to remove an unnecessary OS from the start menu, just click on it with the mouse and press the “Delete” button. Accordingly, in the “Timeout” section, the delay time for the system start is set, and so on.

Option No. 3: Restore default settings using the bcdedit.exe command

The process of restoring the standard boot on the OS computer can also be started by working in the bcdedit.exe utility. It is located in the Windows\System32 folder, but you can only run it with administrator rights through the command line.

The easiest way to do this, of course, is to use the search bar available in the Start menu. In this case, the procedure will be as follows:

go to “Start” and set the search word cmd;
right-click on the result displayed in the list of programs and define for it “Run as administrator”:

After the “Command Prompt” opens, you should first take care of saving a backup copy of the bootloader for subsequent access to quick data recovery. To do this, create the BCDREZ folder on drive C, and then enter the value bcdedit /export C:\BCDREZ\bcd into the command line and press Enter. In the future, to cancel all changes and restore the basic settings, it will be enough to use the bcdedit /import C:\BCDREZ\bcd command.

The standard Windows operating system loader is used to select the operating system or its startup mode. Most often, editing the boot menu is required when installing a new OS over the old one - an extra entry forces you to choose between two systems each time, delaying the boot by 30 seconds or forcing you to do an unnecessary action at startup.

Older versions of Windows stored all boot information in a "boot.ini" file. This is a regular text file with several lines of data, which was stored in the root of the C: drive and was hidden.

Windows XP was the last OS version to use this method. In Win7, the information is located in a special BCD (Boot Configuration Data) storage, which, in turn, is located in the BOOT system folder. Editing entries is made possible in the following ways.

A greatly reduced version of the settings is in the “Download” subsection of the system menu, which is located in the “Control Panel”.

Step 1. Go to the system properties of the computer. This can be done in two ways:

Step 2. In the window that opens describing the properties of the computer and OS, go to “Advanced system settings”, and from there to the “Boot and Recovery” parameters.

Step 3. In the "Boot and Recovery" window, the user will have the following options:

Reference! Despite the simplicity and convenience of this method, you cannot edit the boot menu this way, only select the default settings. For direct edits, you will have to delve into system applications.

Editing through the System Configuration utility

Msconfig is a specialized application for configuring OS settings from Microsoft. It is necessary in simple cases, such as unnecessary recording of an already deleted system or automatic loading of Windows in safe mode.

Video - How to edit the Windows 7 boot menu

Fine-tune your boot using the command line

Starting from Vista, partition editing is carried out through a special utility bcdedit. Since it is located in the "System32" folder of the Windows directory, Command Prompt must have administrative rights to run it.

Step 1. In the Start menu search, type " cmd".

Step 2. After the search finds the system application, right-click on it and run it as administrator.

Important! Launching the command line via “Win+R” – “cmd” is only suitable if you are already working under an admin account. Otherwise, bcdedit will not have editing rights.

Step 3. Further actions on the command line are carried out using bcdedit. Enter a command to view information stored in the boot sector, activate the command by pressing the “Enter” button.

Important values for the user:

In the "Download Manager" it is worth highlighting:

To edit the boot menu, add after the command “ bcdedit" the following parameters and modifiers:

/ default(identAndficator} - set the default boot system;
/ timeout 00– set the waiting time before automatic loading in seconds;
/set (identifier) description ″New″- change the name of the entry;
/create /d ″Windows 7″ /application osloader - create a new entry selecting the operating system and standard bootloader;
/set (identifier) device partition=K: - changing the installation disk, often required when transferring the system to another HDD or SSD;
/delete (identifier) /cleanup- deletes the entry and clears all additional information about it from the BCD;

Important! When using a simplified identifier such as default, a parameter is required at the end of the command /f. The 32-digit code does not require a key.
/export″D: Save″ - saving the boot file in the specified location;
/import ″ D: Save″ - restoration from an existing copy ;
/set (identifier) locale en-US- sets the menu language. Russian localization is marked with the tag “ ru-Ru".

To control the boot order, use the command "bcdedit /displayorder" with various modifiers. The easiest way to set up a queue is to use " /displayorder (id2) (id3) (id1)". Team " /displayorder (id)/remove" will remove the entry from the selection list, leaving it in the file itself.

To get complete help for a command, enter bcdedit or bcdedit.exe with the /? switch.

Connecting a virtual hard disk (VHD)

Bcdedit also allows you to work with virtual disks by adding an entry for them directly into the bootloader. The technique allows you to use a virtual machine as a regular OS, with the ability to start when the computer starts:

To connect VHD, you need:

Editing with third party programs

If the standard methods are too inconvenient or complicated, the user can install third-party download menu managers. One such program is EasyBCD.

EasyBCD works directly with the command line, providing the user with the following options:

setting up multiboot for several operating systems (including Ubuntu, OS X and others);
booting the OS from a flash drive, network drive, ISO file or virtual drive;
repairing a faulty Windows bootloader and rolling back to its standard state;
standard actions - renaming, deleting, changing order, hiding.

To install a new boot partition:

The application supports all systems starting from Windows XP and weighs about one and a half megabytes.

When installing a new operating system, in some cases the bootloader may be completely overwritten - for example, instead of , 8 and 10, only “ten” will be displayed in the menu. To avoid such difficulties, always make a copy of the bootloader before installing a new OS. It will only take a couple of minutes and will protect you from possible problems.

Damage to the boot sector, erroneous changes, or typos in system addresses can lead to problems starting Windows. If you are planning major edits, save a backup of the boot file and leave the original line in the menu until the very end, renaming it WORK, TEST or LEGACY. If the edits are unsuccessful, this line may be the last chance to boot Windows without additional actions.

You should not change parameters unless you understand exactly what they do. For most users, boot menu edits are only needed to remove an annoying menu at startup. To do this, you don’t need to run the command line - use the first or second method, they are no worse.

Reference! Additional information on the task can be found in one of the Russian-language Microsoft blogs at https://news.microsoft.com/ru-ru/microsoft-blogi/.

Video - Editing operating system boot menus

As you know, quite often, when all sorts of failures occur when starting Windows operating systems, it is necessary to use a special start menu, in which you select the desired action to restore the operating system or additional operations that allow you to perform more fine-tuning. But not all users clearly understand how to correctly use the Windows 7 boot menu, what this or that item is used for, how to customize the list of displayed actions or troubleshoot problems if the menu itself is inaccessible when the system starts. Read about all this and much more in the material below.

Windows 7 operating system boot menu: what is it and what is it used for?

Let's start with the fact that this menu is mostly used precisely in those situations when the operating system installed on the computer as the main one, for some reason, crashes, loads incorrectly, or does not start at all. Using this toolkit allows you to bring the system back to life, and, as is already clear, for this you do not need to start from a removable media with a distribution kit or recovery environment, since the operating system can correct most errors and problems with its own means. And despite the fact that the contents of the main list and menu of additional boot options for Windows 7 are standard for all versions of this OS (the same by default), they can be rearranged based on your own needs and considerations: change some items, add your own, disable unused tools, etc. . d. How to do this or even restore the functionality of the toolkit itself if it fails, we will consider a little later, but for now we will focus on how to call the described menu, what options of action and in what situations can be used.

How to enter the Windows 7 boot menu?

Ever since the very first modifications of Windows were released, which made it possible to take “snapshots” of the state of the OS at a certain point in time and use them to restore system components and user data, they specifically provided for the use of special tools through which it would be possible to achieve the desired result without reinstalling the entire system. This tool is still presented in the form in which it was originally developed (with the exception of the background color and access method in the eighth and tenth modifications). But how to bring up the Windows 7 boot menu? In the seventh modification and versions below, this is done by pressing the F8 key at the moment when the start screen with brief characteristics of the main equipment (CPU and RAM) disappears, but the logo indicating the start of the operating system has not yet appeared. At the same time, pressing a key once almost never gives the desired result, so you have to press it several times.

Main boot menu items

So, you have entered the Windows 7 boot menu. What interesting things can you find here? First of all, you should pay attention to the fact that it is divided into several main information blocks. The first option is the troubleshooting option, which launches the recovery environment (RE) and allows you to select the required action. But sometimes there may not be such a point. You can restore it, but more on that later. Next comes a block corresponding to launching Safe Mode in several options. The list is completed by a block of additional operations, of which users for the most part use only the start point of the last working configuration (restore point), without paying attention to the other tools. And their use may be required quite often.

What should be used and in what cases?

Now let's briefly go through all three blocks present in the Windows 7 boot menu. The troubleshooting item is used if Safe Start does not work correctly or does not start at all.

When you click on this item, you have the opportunity to use the following operations:

startup restoration, including from a backup copy (not to be confused with a rollback point);
performing a standard rollback from a manually selected restore point;
checking RAM using system tools;
use of SFC system diagnostic tools;
perform disk check;
editing the registry, etc.

Safe start allows you to boot the system with restrictions on services and drivers that start automatically, which allows you to find faulty software components and restore their functionality. Command line support is designed for those situations when you know exactly which command is performing a particular action, or when other safe start options do not work. Starting with network drivers is necessary if you may need to access the Internet or communicate with other computers over a local network.

Keeping a boot log allows the system to independently eliminate some failures based on recording recorded events. Everything is clear with the last known good configuration (it is selected to perform a quick rollback, if possible). Reducing the screen resolution (but without entering Safe Mode) is used if failures are observed due to problems with graphics adapter drivers or related screen settings.

The remaining modes are, by and large, not needed by ordinary users, but are intended for system specialists, although if failures occur due to the lack of a digital signature in device drivers, deactivating its verification can also give an instant result.

Is it possible to remove additional download options?

Some users seek to customize (personalize by setting their own settings) the start menu and try to remove the third block described above from it. It should be said right away that if you don’t know exactly what such actions will lead to, it’s better not to do this, because then you won’t be able to quickly roll back the system (you’ll have to choose the tools presented for the first point). However, you can disable it. How to remove Windows 7 boot menu related to advanced options?

To do this, in the computer properties (of course, in a fully loaded system), you need to call up the additional options item and go to the boot and recovery section, then in the window that appears, uncheck the option to display additional recovery options). When you restart the system and call up the Windows 7 boot menu again, the third block will no longer appear. If for some reason you need it again, you can activate it by performing the reverse action.

Techniques for editing the start menu

Now let's see how to edit the Windows 7 boot menu. For this, the system itself provides three main options (at least):

setting the minimum parameters in the system configuration;
changing additional system options;
using the BCEDIT toolkit via the command console.

The first two methods allow you to change only basic settings, but using the third makes it possible not only to rebuild the menu itself at your discretion, adding additional items to it or removing unnecessary ones, but also to perform some related actions that are not available in the graphical interface.

Actions with system configuration

The simplest editing of the Windows 7 boot menu is done in a special section called configuration, which is called from the Run console (Win + R) by entering the abbreviation msconfig. The main parameter here is to remove unused operating systems from the list of installed operating systems. This is necessary for those cases when you have several operating systems and at each start you are prompted to select the bootable operating system.

You can leave only the one that will be loaded by default as the main one.

Along the way, you can note the launch of accompanying modes (safe start, recovery environment, loading without a graphical interface, etc.), which upon restart will be activated automatically without the need to manually launch them in the start menu. But this is inconvenient because in such modes the system will boot constantly, and to set a normal start, the options will have to be changed to their original values.

Configuring advanced system settings

Additional parameters have already been briefly discussed. But here you can also use the ability to display or hide the list of installed operating systems, which fully duplicates the previous method. You can also set the desired timeout time, activate logging, enable or disable automatic restart in case of system failure, etc. As is already clear, any of these actions makes adjustments to the start menu.

Command Line and BCDEDIT Toolkit

Finally, the most powerful tool that allows you not only to edit the start menu, but also to restore it if failures occur, is the BCDEDIT toolkit. And you can call it only through the command line, which requires starting as an administrator to perform most of the actions provided for the entire toolkit. The console can be launched from the “Run” console using the cmd command and checking the start box as administrator. If this item is missing, a similar operation can be performed through the “Task Manager” by creating a new task in the file menu.

We will not list all possible commands, operators and attributes.

If you wish, you can use the additional quick help system provided for this toolkit (with examples), which can be accessed by executing the main command with the additional attribute “bcdedit /?”, entered without quotes.

By the way, using the Shell, you can return the troubleshooting item, for which you need to run the combination “reagent /enable” (without quotes).

Typical problems with the start menu

As for failures when trying to access the start menu, unfortunately, they occur quite often.

In this case, a notification is displayed on the screen that the installed OS is not found, and the user must use the system disk to boot, or it is offered to correct errors using the system, if it is defined. This Windows 7 boot menu crash indicates that the bootloader system files are corrupted. In most cases, restoring the functionality of both the system and the start menu is really only possible when booting from removable media, which must be set as a priority device in the BIOS parameters.

At startup, you can use either an automated recovery tool, the command line, or additional tools (for example, hard drive diagnostics).

Automatic boot repair

Not every Windows 7 boot menu glitch can be resolved using automated tools, but it's worth a try. To do this, after starting from removable media, you just need to go to the recovery item and select automatic recovery at boot. It is quite possible that this will help in case of non-critical failures.

Bootloader recovery

The Botrec.exe applet with additional attributes is considered a much more effective tool. To use it from an installation or recovery disk, you need to launch the command line, and then enter the following commands, pressing the Enter key after each of them:

bootrec /fixmbr;
bootrec/fixboot;
bootsect /nt60 ALL /force /mbr;
exit.

Note: all commands are entered without punctuation. If this sequence does not produce any effect when executed, you can try to completely rewrite the bootloader by running the command “Bootrec.exe /RebuildBCD” (again, without quotes).

Troubleshooting hard drive problems

Apparently, there is no need to say that errors on the hard drive or damage to boot sectors and areas can also lead to countless failures. System tools can be used to identify and troubleshoot problems, but software products from third-party developers seem to be much more effective.

So, to restore the Windows 7 boot menu, errors in the operation of which were associated specifically with hard drive problems, you can first create startup media with Hiren’s BootCD utility, which has enough tools to correct failures. For the hard drive, the Hard Disk Tools, included in the main set, are used. However, you can experiment with additional tools from the proposed package.

Note: if the hard drive is damaged to such an extent that it is impossible to restore it by any means, try using the HDD Regenerator utility, which, according to its creators, is capable of resuscitating any hard drive through the use of a unique surface magnetization reversal technology.

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