Vista: Use BCDEDIT to change boot up options (dual boot w/XP Prof)
Posted by Jimmy Selix in Microsoft Vista
This is a quickie recipe on how to change the boot options in Vista. If your running XP and Vista (dual booting), you can use bcdedit from the command line to change the default booting OS, name, etc. Lets take a look!
If you are dual booting XP Prof and Vista, you most likely have the annoying “Earlier Version of Windows” in the boot list and have Vista booting as the default. Lets change that!
In Vista, you do not have the Boot.ini like in XP where these type of settings were changed. We will need to use command line and the bcdedit command.
1. Open up the command line as an administrator or user w/admin rights (right click on the Shorcut > Run As and lets you run as an admin if your on a non-admin account)
2. type this command to see the current state of affairs.
bcdedit
you prob will see something like this (my original boot option)
__________________________________________
D:\Users\seamonkey> bcdedit
Windows Boot Manager
——————–
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
displayorder {ntldr}
{current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30
Windows Legacy OS Loader
————————
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=C:
path \ntldr
description Earlier Version of Windows
Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier {current}
device partition=D:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice partition=D:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {1ecfd635-a8ea-11db-bb9b-ddf07c6aaff1}
nx OptIn
3. to change a value, you need to use this type of command:
bcdedit /set {identifiers name} nameofparamater “value to replace with”
for example, to change my XP os name from “Earlier Version….” to “XP Pro”, i would use this command:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} description “XP Pro”
to change the default boot os to xp, i would use this command:
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} default “{ntldr}”
then type:
bcdedit
and you should see the changes you made.
The main thing is to remember to run the command line with an admin account or as the administrator.
Also, you can type: bcdedit /help to get a list of all of the parameters/flags you can use.
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October 02, 2008 at 6:20 pm, Hari said:
thanx …. i works fine …….
November 12, 2008 at 10:18 pm, a said:
Thnx very useful!
December 14, 2008 at 5:23 pm, Sumit said:
Very very thanks !
February 19, 2009 at 1:46 pm, MAGGEN said:
thx it really help
May 11, 2009 at 3:27 pm, Ke said:
Can somebody tell me how is the standart for win vista??
May 11, 2009 at 5:03 pm, Joel said:
When you type…. bcdedit /set {bootmgr} default “{ntldr}” you need to remove the quotes
August 09, 2009 at 8:54 pm, Nunya Buziness said:
Its great that you shared this SIMPLE way to do this without trying to get us to buy some program to do it. Thanks for the Great Info.
September 14, 2009 at 8:27 am, Anon said:
Thanks for sharing this info…
October 19, 2009 at 10:16 am, aquaphx said:
thanks for the tips.
but since i don’t truly understand each parameter. could u give some easy line to change back vista to default (just in case). thanks.
January 20, 2010 at 10:42 pm, Eric said:
That works great. Now how do I rename Vista?
February 16, 2010 at 8:57 am, Rick said:
I don’t know if it would work in this instance but I have vista and server 2008 installed on my one hard drive and I had the server as the default choice in the boot menu.
I typed “msconfig” into the search box in the start menu.
The Syetem Configuration Dialog box appears.
Go to the Boot tab
select whichever OS I wanted as the default
Then hit the “Set as Default” button.
It was dead easy with no command line needed and now I can power up my computer and walk away and it will be at the login screen for vista when I return
March 11, 2010 at 12:06 am, Anonymous said:
The Boot Manger display has two descriptions, Top: Microsoft Windows Vista
Bottom: Microsoft Windows XP Setup
My problem is that when I display the store contents the bottom message is not there. Initially I deleted the ntldr. I specified {current} should be the first and the default. I want the bottom one to go away. Where do I find it?
March 21, 2010 at 6:51 pm, Anonymous said:
the box appears and in a flash the bcdedit again goes off……..plz help me
April 13, 2010 at 6:18 pm, Anonymous said:
Thank you,
My problem is that I have removed XP from my computer. When I boot there two options: Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows XP Setup. I Want to remove the XP message but it is not in the bcdedit command string. Any ideas?
Blaine
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Subject: [tech-recipes] Re: Vista: Use BCDEDIT to change boot up options (dual boot w/XP Prof) | Microsoft Vista | Tech-Recipes
bharat1 wrote, in response to BlaineA:
the box appears and in a flash the bcdedit again goes off……..plz help me
Link to comment: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2014/vista_using_bcdedit_boot_up_options_dual_boot_xp_prof/#comment-40797036
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April 10, 2010 at 7:01 pm, Name said:
very helpful. this works for Windows 7 also. in my instance to remove the “earlier version of windows” entry before boot. in a command prompt (administratively priveleged) do bcdedit /? /delete to show the syntax of what you want to clean up. in my case it was a ntldr… and it shows directly in the help file.
May 19, 2010 at 9:30 am, Halofan said:
Can anyone tell me how can change the anem of vista like in the system properties i get Windows vista ultimate so i wnt to change it to Windows Vista Halo like the vista black edition
July 17, 2010 at 6:39 pm, Riyaadjondah said:
brilliant! thanks for posting this on the net. works a treat. now ive got “windows xp” rather than “earlier version of windows” listed as a boot option.
August 26, 2010 at 11:06 pm, Ruedi said:
WIN7 din’t boot on a dual boot (XP/7) system because, how nows the device was set to unknow. With BCDEDIT I was able to change these settings.
BCDEDIT /set {…..hexID…..} device partion=D:
September 15, 2010 at 4:31 pm, G G98 said:
what if there is no exiting “Windows Legacy OS Loader”? but there was an xp partition what was C. before installing Vista now D:?
January 28, 2011 at 7:36 pm, Mohan said:
Thank u
it helped me a lot. I was unaware of bcdedit on Vista.
April 11, 2011 at 6:03 pm, Ejsalom said:
In the XP boot.ini I had the option to define in which drive is each OS, but I’m unable to find how to do it with BCDEDIT… it seems that can define only patitions.
June 09, 2011 at 1:07 pm, Buildern said:
i installed server 2008 and now formated the drive but i still get the “earlier version of windows” how can i remove that