Those of you who have been using NT based Microsoft operating systems would all be very familiar with the good old boot.ini file which is normally on the root of your C: drive.
Boot.ini is just a plain text file, which can relatively easily be modified and tweaked.
With the release of Windows Vista, the boot.ini has been left behind, and manipulation of the boot manager menu has been replaced by the utility “bcdedit”. To access the syntax, go to a command prompt and type “bcdedit -?” (without the quotes).
Microsoft have a page showing how to use the bcdedit tool. It’s a short and sweet 14 pages worth!
Rather than struggling with the command line syntax of bcdedit, I would suggest that you take a look at a freeware tool called Vista Boot Pro which has been released by ProNetworks. Vista Boot Pro acts as a graphical interface for the bcdedit tool.
This should make life much easier for everyone.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
VistaBootPRO is a cheap and shameless rip off of NeoSmart Technologies’ excellent EasyBCD.
EasyBCD has tenfold more features, doesn’t steal code, is free, and really works.
Hi Arthur
Thanks for the pointer to EasyBCD.
I checked it out, and agree with you that it has more features than Vista Boot Pro.
Since it is also freeware, it would seem that this is the better choice of the two.
Thanks again for the tip.