Windows 8 In Depth

Using BCDEDIT to Customize the Startup Options

The System Configuration Utility makes it easy to modify BCD store items, but it doesn’t give you access to the entire BCD store. For example, the Boot tab doesn’t list any legacy boot items on your system, and there are no options for renaming boot items or changing the order in which the boot items are displayed in the Windows Boot Manager menu. For these tasks, and indeed for every possible BCD task, you need to use the BCDEDIT command-line tool.

Note that BCDEDIT is an Administrator-only tool, so you must run it under the Administrator account (not just any account in the Administrators group). The easiest way to do this is by running a Command Prompt session with elevated privileges, as described ...