How do I get rid of boot choices in Windows 7?

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Summary: It can be confusing to remove multi-boot choices for operating systems that have been removed. We'll walk through the simple process for Windows 7.

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Yep, things changed (back in Vista, I believe).

The good news is that it's still pretty easy to modify your boot choices.

You just need to drop to the Windows Command prompt - as administrator, of course.

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Editing boot choices has become significantly more powerful, but has moved to a command-line tool.

Fire up a Windows Command Prompt, making sure to run it as administrator (right click on the shortcut and select "Run as administrator"):

In the command prompt, run bcdedit /enum - here's the result from my Windows 7 machine:

bcdedit /enum

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {8fe75379-c446-11de-9f1d-ab62aca77990}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {8fe7537b-c446-11de-9f1d-ab62aca77990}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {8fe75379-c446-11de-9f1d-ab62aca77990}
nx                      OptIn

I've highlighted the identifier "{current}" - each Windows Boot Loader will have its own unique identifier, and that's what you'll use in the next step.

To simply delete one of the boot options, type bcdedit /delete {identifier}, where "identifier" is replaced with the identifier for the boot option you want removed.

For example, if I wanted to remove my current boot option (and in my case render my machine unbootable), I'd enter:

bcdedit /delete {current}

Since "{current}" is the identifier of my one and only boot choice.

And no, I didn't.

But that bringw up a very good point: as you can imagine, used improperly, bcdedit can indeed render your machine unbootable, which can only then be fixed by booting from the Windows 7 install or recovery disk and running repair tools.

And finally, if you're interested in all that bcdedit can do, enter bcdedit /? for a full list of options.

Use it with caution.

Related:

• How do I remove boot choices that I no longer want? In Windows XP removing boot choices is as simple as editing a hidden configuration file. Fortunately finding that file is relatively easy.

Article C3915 - October 30, 2009