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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Boot menu policy - set text or metro style boot menu in Windows 8



BootMenuPolicy - set text or metro style boot menu in Windows 8

 
In Windows 8 Consumer Preview we see a new BCD element - BootMenuPolicy - in the list of BCD elements for Windows 8 loader object.


BootMenuPolicy (displayed as custom:250000c2 in older versions of bcdedit)


 
BootMenuPolicy is an enumeration with values:
  • MenuPolicyLegacy(0)
  • MenuPolicyStandard(1)


 
When BootMenuPolicy is set to MenuPolicyStandard(1) Windows 8 bootmgr displays the new graphical style boot menu.
Setting BootMenuPolicy to MenuPolicyLegacy(0) or removing that element from loader object causes bootmgr to display old text style boot menu.
If you set any other loader to be the default bootmgr object/loader old text style boot menu is displayed as element BootMenuPolicy is usually not defined for older loader objects.

As a side effect(?) setting element DisplayBootMenu element of {bootmgr} object to true(1) causes bootmgr to display old text style boot menu even if BootMenuPolicy is set to MenuPolicyStandard for Windows 8 loader set as default loader.

You can edit all elements which influence boot menu style easily using Visual BCD Editor.