Friday, August 15, 2008

Using BCDEDIT.EXE to Clean Up Windows Vista Boot Manager

How to clean up the Windows Vista Boot Manager using the command line tool called BCDEDIT.EXE located at C:\Windows\System32 assuming Windows Vista is installed on Drive C.
You may have installed another operating system earlier on another drive and you now have formatted this drive. When you boot your computer, you are presented with a choice of what operating system to start with but one of the entries do not work because you have removed the operating system. BCDEDIT.EXE is a command line tool to manage the BCD store (Windows Vista Boot Manager). For a list of complete commands that BCDEDIT.EXE offers, open a Command Window and type bcdedit /?.
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Removing invalid entries in the Windows Vista Boot Manager

  1. Type: bcdedit > c:\users\yourusername\desktop\bcd.txt NOTE: A file called "bcd.txt" should now be on the desktop.
  2. Open "bcd.txt" and note the "identifier" value for the invalid boot entries.
  3. Type: bcdedit /delete {identifiler}
  4. To remove the timeout of the Windows Boot Manager, type: bcdedit /timeout 0

Platforms Tested

  • Microsoft Windows XP Editions x86 Versions

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