How to choose to boot windows. Selecting an operating system when booting your computer: how to change or disable

Hello friends! I saw a question in the comments about how to remove OS selection when turning on computer, and decided to write about it.

One indirect question - is it possible to somehow get rid of the system selection at boot? You can, of course, uncheck the “system selection” box, but somehow it’s not feng shui. But I don’t know how to fix something like BOOT.INI in HP (to delete a line) (((

Apparently the person is not looking for easy ways :), but that’s okay, we’ll figure it out now.

By the way, I’m not working from my computer. Today I work on Windows XP and weak hardware, also via 3G Internet. So sorry if something is wrong :).

Why does the selection window appear? operating system when you boot your computer? And because you don’t read my blog carefully, in particular articles about this and that. During the installation process, various failures and errors appear, you install Windows from the beginning, or install it on an unformatted partition. I had this happen before, and I couldn’t figure out what it was from.

We remove the window with the choice of Windows. The easy way.

First of all, I’ll say that in a complex way we will edit system file boot.ini . And if you make incorrect changes to this file, the computer may not turn on. A simple method is quite enough to prevent the OS selection window from appearing.

So, right-click on “My computer” and select “Properties”. Go to the tab "Additionally" and in the section click on parameters.

A new window will appear in which we select the operating system that will boot by default (look carefully, you need to select a working system, otherwise the computer may not boot).

Then uncheck the box “Display list of operating systems” and click “OK”.

That's all, now when you turn on the computer, a window asking which OS to load will not appear.

We remove the OS selection using the boot.ini file. The hard way.

As I promised, the second method. Please be aware that editing the boot.ini file may cause your system to crash.

We go there in the same way as in the first method, but we don’t change anything, but click on “Edit” (screenshot above).

A window will open with editing the boot.ini file.

The correct contents of the boot.ini file for Windows XP Professional looks like this:

timeout=30
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect

If two systems are installed and a choice appears, it looks like this:

timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT=”Windows 2000 Professional” /fastdetect

You can read more about editing boot.ini on the Microsoft website http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022/ru.

Friends, I can explain to you in a nutshell why this happens, for example, you installed Windows 8 on one hard drive, and then Windows 7 on another, so Windows 8 commands the loading of both operating systems and all the files responsible for loading are in it, if If you delete it or dismantle the disk on which it is installed from the system unit, you will no longer be able to boot Windows 7. Why? Because...

1. The partition from which the operating system is loaded is not active.

2. Or the partition from which the operating system is loaded is active, but there are no operating system boot files on it. For Windows 7, 8, the bootmgr file and the Boot folder with boot configuration files (BCD).

4. If you permanently disconnect one hard drive, then restore the loading remaining on the second Windows disk 7, 8.1, 10 can be found in our article.

5. You can also produce .

Note: EasyBCD 2.0.2 boot manager is best used if you have two or three operating systems installed on one hard drive.

• If you want to install on different hard drives There are several operating systems with bootloaders independent from each other, then everything needs to be done so that each installed Windows does not know anything about its neighbor located on another hard drive installed in the same system unit. That's it. Another question how to do this and how to then control the computer boot? The answer is yes, very simple.

Look at my working system unit, it contains four hard drives and operating systems are installed on all hard drives, they all start and work while in the system unit together or one at a time. None of the systems have special boot managers installed: EasyBCD 2.0.2 or MultiBoot.

Solid State SSD drive SiliconPower (120GB) - Windows 8 installed

SSD ADATA SSD S510 (60GB) - Windows XP installed

Kingston HyperX 3K SSD (120GB) - Windows 7 installed

Simple hard Western drive Digital Caviar Blue (250 GB) - Ubuntu Linux installed

The secret is simple, install any operating system on your computer, then simply disconnect the hard drive with this Windows from the system unit and connect another hard drive, and install another operating system on it, if you have a third hard drive, do the same with it. But now the most important thing, when you install everything and connect all the hard drives to system unit, how to manage the loading of operating systems?

If there are several in the system hard drives, the parameter appears in the BIOS (AMI) Hard Disk Drives,

And in the BIOS (Award) the parameter Hard Disk Boot Priority,

In BIOS UEFI parameter Hard Drive BBS Priorities, all of them are responsible for the primacy or priority of hard drives in the system.

If in any of the above parameters a certain hard drive is listed first, then the computer will boot from it first by default, since it is the main one. But for quick change priority hard drive It’s not at all necessary to go into the BIOS every time and look for these parameters, you can make everything simpler.

When loading, press the Delete or F8 key and enter the boot menu, then use the arrows on the keyboard to select the hard drive with the operating system you need and press Enter, the Windows you have chosen will load.

If you most often use a particular operating system, then you need to make it bootable by default.

Boot parameter No. 1 is the hard drive on which the operating system boots by default first. Click on the parameter with the left mouse

And in the menu that appears, select the hard drive with the Windows we need. For example, I will choose a SiliconPower SSD with installed Windows 8 since it is my main operating system.

And Yes, the computer reboots and loads Windows 8 on the hard drive I selected SSD drive SiliconPower.

If during the day I suddenly need Windows XP, then I reboot, press Delete, enter the boot menu and select the hard drive with Windows XP installed and that’s it.

For work, educational and other purposes, the user may need to work on different operating systems. If there is only one computer at home, then installing two operating systems can be suggested as a solution.

There are two ways to install an additional operating system: using virtual machine, that is, a program within which Windows or another OS will be installed, or by installing a full-fledged neighboring operating system.
The disadvantage of the first method is that another one will work inside the running operating system. This leads to consumption RAM doubles. The second method has the disadvantage that when you start the computer, you must immediately decide which OS will be launched - either one or the other.

In the article below we will talk about installing two operating systems using the second method.

Installing two operating systems on a computer

The further procedure assumes that one operating system is already installed on your computer, for example, Windows 10, and in further steps we will install another one next to it. If you don't have any OS yet, you should install the first version of Windows you want.

Stage 1: creating a partition for the second operating system

You should not create a partition from the allocated space, so immediately close the window and proceed to the second or third stage of the procedure.

Step 2: Prepare bootable media

The section is available, now you need to take care of availability bootable flash drive or disk. In our work, we will need the UltraISO program, which you can download from the link below, a flash drive (or disk), as well as a Windows distribution kit in ISO format, which can be downloaded both from the official Microsoft website and from third-party resources.

Wait until the program completes the procedure, after which you can close the program and then proceed to the process of installing an additional operating system.

Step 3: Enter BIOS and install a second operating system

After this, every time you turn on or restart the computer, the operating system selection window will appear on the screen. If you do not select anything in it, after a while the operating system first on the list will be automatically loaded.

Some users don't know what exists selecting the operating system when booting the computer. Of course, if you have plenty to choose from. For example, I have three installed Windows systems, and I don’t always have time to choose in time the system that I need at the moment. If you also have several operating systems on your computer, then you can configure it so that when you boot your computer, a list of them will be displayed, and not in a fraction of a second, but for as long as you need. Or you can remove this list altogether, and the computer will boot only one system of your choice. You can configure all this yourself.

To do this, so that we can change the boot order or remove the list of operating systems when we turn on the computer, we need to get to the system settings. This is done differently in different operating systems.

INWindows 7

In Windows 7 this can be done in several ways:

• First way. If there is a Computer icon on the desktop, then right-click on it and select context menu paragraph Properties. If there is no icon on the desktop, then go to the menu Start and find the entry Computer. Right-click on it and also select Properties Options.

• Second way. This is open menu Start, choose Control Panel, go to System and security, and select the link System. The “System” window will open, in which you need to follow the link on the left Additional options systems, go to the block, and click on the button Options.

Where it is written

INWindows 10

• First way. Right click on the button Start. Select an item from the list System. The “System” window will open, in which you need to follow the link on the left Advanced System Settings, go to the block, and click on the button Options.

Where it is written Display a list of operating systems, you can change the display time of this list, or uncheck the box so that this list is not displayed at all.

• Second way. If there is an icon on the desktop " This computer", then right-click on it and select the item in the drop-down context menu Properties. Continue as described above.

• Third way. Login to system settings via .

There are other methods, but they are more complex and time consuming.

Video about choosing an operating system when booting into Windows 7:

Almost the same thing can be done in Windows 10.