Show Startup Menu During Boot (XP Pro SP1)

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In the olden days (Win9x), I used to add the following lines to msdos.sys

BootMenu=1
BootMenuDelay=3

This would cause the boot menu to be displayed for 3 seconds during reboots. It was great. I did not have worry about pressing F5 or F8 at just the right moment. And 3 seconds was long enough to react to but not too long to become aggravating (the default is 20 seconds so adding the BootMenuDelay line is optional but welcomed). After 3 seconds, it would proceed with its normal boot.

Is there a file or setting I can modify to have the startup menu automatically displayed during boot up in XP

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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The file that does the boot control nowadays is BOOT.INI but I don’t know (yet) if the “old” commands will still work. I’m looking….. Anybody else?

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Right-click “My Computer” (or whatever you have renamed it )
Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery ‘Settings’ > > >

is that what you are looking for?

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Unfortunately that did not do it – I added the two lines as mentioned about and rebooted but no change. I guess it is just not an XP thing – unless someone has another idea for me to try.

Thanks

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Bill–
Ck. out 1) Q242443; 2) Modify the Duration that the Startup List is Displayed Windows XP; 3) Tweaking Your System Startup.

defrag

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Well I thought we had something there with the Win2K solution – but apparently MS changed that feature in XP – it appears the only way to have the boot menu appear during boot up is to have multiple OSs installed. Thanks and if you can think of anything else…

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Did you try the one about duplicating the OS entry, Bill? It worked for me. I know it’s “looks” funny to have two lines saying XP, but at least it’s a workaround. See the attachment – I didn’t change the timeout value ’cause I wanted it to stay on the screen.

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Woo Hoo! Thanks for the screen shot – nothing like pretty pictures to spell things out. I had added the duplicate line but I also had changed the timeout to 5 – I guess this morning BC (before coffee) when I tried it out, I blinked or something and missed it – so I changed it back to 30 after you said yours worked and ta da, it worked.

Thank you kindly.

later…

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Final Note: Thanks to Big Al’s insistence that it does indeed work, I began experimenting with the time settings. I changed the timeout back to 5 and this time it was AC (after coffee). Sure enough, the startup menu did NOT display!! But I did note the usual blank screen period during bootup where the video card does its wakeup call to the monitor and they do their card to monitor handshaking was just about 5 seconds in duration. I was certain that my problem was some other timing issue during the bootup and so I changed the setting to 10 seconds and rebooted. This time, the menu appeared and I noted its countdown clock displayed 5, 4, 3…

So a minor tweak of the setting to 8 seconds gives me my 3 second reaction time. I found 3 seconds is enough for even me to react to but not too long to become annoyed at the extra bootup time. Now I can halt the boot sequence without having to remember if I want F8 or F5, or try to figure out exactly when to press them by just pressing the down arrow to select the second instance of Win XP. With the menu displayed, I can casually select the Safe Mode/boot options I want. It does look a little odd to see 2 identical OS options listed but hey, I can live with that.

Thanks again.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Okay – so 10 months later I have come up with a better solution than editing boot.ini.

Go to Control Panel, System, Hardware, Hardware Profiles

Copy your Current profile (renaming both if you want), select the ” Select the first profile listed if I don’t select a profile in X seconds” radio button (I set mine to 4 seconds) and then click on OK.

Works fine.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Thanks for this tip and following it for so long because almost all the suggestions on sites are to edit boot.ini and this would be hard to find.

SMBP

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It is nice having the menu pop up for a short time in case I want to go into safe mode to run an unhindered scan disk or defrag – and it seems I always miss my window to press F5 during boot up. The menu makes it easy to suspend the boot up process but is not such a delay to make me impatient (unless I leave the default of 30 seconds) during normal bootups. This works for both XP Pro and Home.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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During my first time working with Windows XP I always wondered about the tip to press F8 when boot menu shows up, to select for instance Safe Mode. Maybe, I thought, it’s because this is an OEM or something else; it didn’t have a boot menu. But for obvious reasons, there is only one OS and one hardware profile, so why would it show a boot menu.

Then, I also, thought it might be nice if there was some little time delay for those occasions I want to select start config.

If you install the Recovery Console you get a boot menu with two choices; Windows XP or the Recovery Console. Thus you don’t have to copy anything just to get another entry.

Then, of course, there might be people who don’t want the Recovery Console on boot menu. But I suppose almost everyone has a good password for the administration account.

Regards,

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My mistake – my trick does NOT allow safe mode selection – back to the duplicate line in boot.ini – the problem is that the Profile Menu and Boot up menu is so similar, I thought I was looking at the same. Note that you can edit the boot.ini from within the GUI by right-click on My Computer, properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery Settings, and then click the Edit button to edit the startup options file manually. This will open your boot.ini file. Duplicate the last OS line and exit. I changed the Time to display list of operating systems: setting to 10 seconds (it actually works out to about 4 seconds by the time the video mode syncs and the menu is displayed). Plenty of time to press F8 and have boot options pop up but not so long to be aggravating – and you can always press enter to by-pass the count down and press on.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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