Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Modifying the boot loader in Vista

I miss boot.ini. Why isn't there a GUI version of bcdedit?

I could run bcdedit, but I could not read the boot loader store without admin permission. I found a useful link that had the secret to running cmd with admin permission: type cmd in the search window in the start menu and hit CTRL-SHIFT-ENTER. So obvious.

bcdedit /? will show all the options.

bcdedit /v will show all the boot choices, including the annoying ID.

bcdedit /delete ID /cleanup will delete a choice from the list, as long as you get the ID correct.

If the partition has already been deleted, then this will not work!!!

bcdedit /deletevalue ID type will remove the entry, if you know the type.

bcdedit /? /TYPES will tell you more about the types.

bcdedit /deletevalue ID DESCRIPTION desc should remove the entry, but it doesn't, of course.

The problem that I have is that I have already deleted the Windows 7 partition, so none of the commands work. If I use the current OS, then they work. For instance,

bcdedit /set description "Vista Sucks"

works beautifully. I can even use the ID as

bcdedit /set ID description "Vista Really Sucks"

According to several posts, the /delete command should work but it doesn't.

The solution was to download easybcd

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