I'm repeating information already available in multiple places, but it seems everybody is going in too much details for the mere mortals who are simply dual booting their existing Windows XP installation with a new Windows Vista partition, and wish to rename the "Earlier version of Windows" entry in the boot menu. Here is how you can rename those entries once you have installed Windows Vista:
- From Vista, press the Windows key, type cmd, press the Application key (or right-click on the "cmd" entry) and select "Run as administrator".
- Type "BCDEDIT" and note the identifier value for the "Windows Legacy OS Loader" (which is your Windows XP or older partition) and the "Windows Boot Loader" (which is your new Vista partition). Those values should normally be "{ntldr}" and "{current}", though it could be different in your case.
- To rename "Earlier version of Windows" to "Windows XP", simply type this:
BCDEDIT /set {ntldr} description "Windows XP"
- To rename "Microsoft Windows Vista" to "Windows VISTA", type this:
BCDEDIT /set {current} description "Windows VISTA"
- To set your Windows XP as the default boot partition (i.e. if your wife is more used to Windows XP and freezes with anxiety in front of the boot menu counting down to zero), type this:
BCDEDIT /default {ntldr}
Keep in mind that you may have to change "{ntldr}" or "{current}" to the correct values for your current installation. Hope this helps.
Technorati tags:
Vista,
Boot,
BCDEDIT