IT Campers–How to clean up your boot loader entries with VisualBCD….

Good Morning Folks!   

For those of you that have attended the IT Camps here in the Western United States, we have been doing a hands on lab where we provide you with a VHD file, then walk you through the process of using the BCDEDIT.EXE command line utility to boot into that VHD file. The result is, when you power on/reboot your machine, you now see a Windows Boot Manager Screen with the entry for the VHD file we gave you.

Some people have asked about how to remove the extra item (or items if you had to do it more than once). This post is a walk through on how to use a 3rd party tool to easily clean up your Windows Boot Manager and get back to where you started before the IT Camp.

Step 1 – Figure out where you are

First, boot your system to your normal “host” desktop. This is the desktop you had before you attended the IT Camp. Once you are logged in, Click Start, then type “Advanced System”. You should see a Control Panel item – “View advanced system settings” – Select this

This will open the System Properties window to the Advanced Tab. now click the Startup and Recovery Settings button. you should now see the System Startup screen and a drop down for “Default operating system” click the drop down to see what items you have listed there -

 

You should see the entry(s) you made during the IT Camp in the list. I know some people had to do the Boot to VHD process more than once so you may have more than one entry. Write down the names of the entries you want to remove.

**Note** For those of you that were already configured to Dual Boot prior to the IT Camp, be sure that you do not write down the names of the entries that you want to keep!! Write down ONLY the items you wish to remove!!

Once you have made note of the items you wish to remove, make sure your original host operating system is set as the default and then OK. I recommend you check the properties one more time before proceeding to ensure you have the correct operating system set as the default.

Step 2 - Download and install Visual BCD Editor

The Visual BCD Editor is a 3rd party, GUI based tool that allows you to view and modify your Boot Configuration Database on Windows systems. I encourage you to check out the other functionality it provides. Please note that this is a 3rd party tool though, and Microsoft does not officially support the use of this tool. At the time of this writing, the current version of VisualBCD is 0.9.3.1 and is what I am using for this walkthrough.

Once downloaded, install VisualBCD to your system. Setup only asks for a path to install to and I selected the default path.

Step 3 – Run Visual BCD Editor

Once the install completes, you well have two icons on the desktop. I have not used the Dual-boot repair so you are on your own with that one. For this walkthrough, launch the Visual BCD Editor.

When VisualBCD starts, you will see a list of entries in the Boot Configuration Database (BCD) store. You should see all of the entries that were in the drop down from the previous System Startup properties screen as well as some entries named “Windows Recovery Environment”.

Step 4 – Cleaning things up

Now refer back to the list of entries you wrote down that need to be removed.

1) Select an entry from your list of loaders on the left

2) Verify the selected entry points to the path of the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file in the “ApplicationDevice” field on the right

3) Right-Click the selected loader entry on the left and Delete Selected Object – Confirm – Click OK

***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***

***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***

If you had to walk through the BCDEdit steps more than once during the IT Camp, repeat the above process for any other entries you need to remove.

Now you should go go back to the System Startup properties to verify that your original host operating system is the default operating system. once confirmed, you can reboot your machine. Your Windows Boot Manager will be cleaned up and you will come back to your original host desktop.

You can now delete, move, copy the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file as you wish!

 

Cheers!