How can I force the boot menu to always show up at start up without pressing F10?

Question

I have Visual Studio 2010 installed on Windows 7 on one hard disk and Visual Studio 2012 installed on Windows 7 on another hard disk in the same computer.

When I start up my system, I want the boot display options to be always visible, i.e. which allows me to select the hard drive from which to boot the Operating System.

Right now, I have to be alert for pressing F10 at the right point of time, and if I miss, I have to restart again.

Is there any way I can force the Boot Display Options to show up always at start up?

Please advise?

Solution

You can do it from the command line, but I recommend using EasyBCD to add an entry for any one of the Win7 partitions to the other:

There's a guide here if you need help (it's for adding an XP entry, but the procedure's the same). You can select which copy of Win7 you want to be the default, as well as how long you want the boot menu to be displayed.

Comments

[ilansch]

I assume your boot folder and bcd files are properly configured. Run -> Type msconfig.exe -> on boot tab, make sure both OS are there.

[Soso Wang]

NO, Both OS are not there. It has only one OS which is the current one running. How do I add the other one?

[Karan]

That would depend entirely on your BIOS, whether it offers such a feature or not (I've not really seen any that do). If you want you can make one of the bootloaders contain entries for both OSes, such that you can select from the Windows boot menu at startup.

[Admin]

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes