New Boot Menu - How To Change Default OS?

[war59312]

Hey,

I am wondering how I can change the Default OS for the new boot menu. I already edited boot.ini to make my WinXP the default OS but on the new menu Win Vista is still the default. But now when clicking legancy mode, winxp is now the default OS since I removed longhorn from it. Which was not even needed in the first place since running from the old, legancy screen, does not work. You have to run loghorn from the new one.

Its just annorying have loghorn the defult OS.

Thanks,

Will

[TigerWolf]

I have a solution for you. This is how I did it.

Control Panel -> System (or right click computer) -> Advanced -> in the bottom section Startup and Recovery Settings, press Advanced -> you can change the default OS here and also change the boot.ini -> in Vista i couldnt edit boot.ini directly and if you have problems with doing it this way, make sur e you are in vista safe mode. Thats how I did it.

[raskren]

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Longhorn" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USENEWLOADER 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

See where it says "default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS"

That number after "partition" in parens should match the boot.ini entry for your default OS. In the example above, Windows Xp is the default.

In order to modify boot.ini you must set it's attributes to read/write e.g. not read-only to Windows.

[TigerWolf]

In Windows vista there is no option that I can easily find yet to view hidden files and boot.ini is hidden so the attributes cannot be easily changed. Also if you edit it my way then there is no problem with having to change the attributes as windows lets you edit it within this dialog.

Yes - I changed that number in the parenthesis so that windows is now my default OS.

Its works and thats all I care about.

[war59312]

Well I did that but did not work. However I then deleted the temp folders created by vista, over 1gb in size on C: drive, vista was on F drive, and old boot menu automaticly kicked in. I was just afraid I would kill windows by doing that. Guess not.

[DumDum]

Vista writes the MBR like linux does, that's why there is a boot screen before the usual screen for choosing the operating system.

A way to solve this is to boot from a dos diskete and use the following command:

FDISK /MBR

It works, I've allready tried it.

[raskren]

In Windows vista there is no option that I can easily find yet to view hidden files and boot.ini is hidden so the attributes cannot be easily changed. Also if you edit it my way then there is no problem with having to change the attributes as windows lets you edit it within this dialog.

Yes - I changed that number in the parenthesis so that windows is now my default OS.

Its works and thats all I care about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you can't find the GUI tools (they are there), you can always do it from the command line:

attrib %systemdrive%\*.*
attrib -r boot.ini
edit boot.ini
<now make changes, save, quit>
attrib +r boot.ini

BTW, to modify folder properties (show hidden files/folders, file extensions, etc) open any explorer window, click the button that modifies the navigation and preview pane, a drop down list will appear, click on "Show Classic Menus." This restores, File, Edit, View, Tools, etc.