Dumb Question #2 - How do I access the Boot Menu?

Okay - sounds simple.

I've followed the procedure to use Macrium Reflect to create a rescue partition as per Kari's post - see link: Macrium Reflect Rescue Partition by Kari.

In it, section 2.6 he says You can now select to boot to Macrium Rescue from Windows Boot Menu:



... however, I can't seem to get to the Boot Menu to check that it has a Macrium Rescue option.

I've tried both holding the shift key down whilst restarting and navigating to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery > Advanced Startup > Restart Now.

How can I access the Boot Menu?

Cheers

Art

ignatzatsonic said:

It'll be an F key or possibly Delete key.

Depends on the motherboard; you have a Gigabyte;

try F12 during the boot process.

Thanks - will give that a shot.

UPDATE: Nope. Both F12 and Delete took me into BIOS.

UPDATE 2: Not F8 either!

UPDATE 3: Not 'Esc', F2 or F10 either! F2 takes me to BIOS just as 'Del' does!

Art

Bree said:

That blue boot choice menu will appear automatically on start up if (and only if) you have a choice of more than one OS to boot to. You'll see it if you have a dual boot system, for example.

If you have successfully added the Macrium boot menu option then all you have to do to see it is to restart the PC. If you don't see it, then check you have indeed added the Macrium boot menu. If you have it will show 'Current boot menu' in the boot menu options of the Rescue Media Builder. If you haven't, then that will say 'Add boot menu' instead.

I do indeed get what you included in your post:



However, booting the PC I don't get Kari's blue boot choice menu.

Is there anyting else I need to do to 'activate' this in any way?



Reading through the Macrium Reflect Help for Rescue Builder, it seems that(in my case) the check mark should be against the R: drive as the Macrium Reflect Rescue Media files are stored on a different volume from the System Disk.

Macrium Rescue is in R: drive (and contains the files copied from the .iso image):



Art

Bree said:

It's not actually Kari's blue menu, and it is nothing specific to Macrium either. It is a standard part of the Windows 10 operating system and should always appear whenever there is more than one OS entry in the BCD boot manager's table. I don't even think it is possible to disable this function, AFAIK it would always appear.

Try using Option One (msconfig) in @Brink's tutorial.....

How to Delete Boot Loader Entry on Boot Menu at Startup in Windows

Does the Macrium boot option appear here? If so, try deleting it then going back to Macrium and adding it again.

I will have a crack at that tomorrow.

Going to climb the wooden hills to Bedfordshire!

Art

- - - Updated - - -

Okay - so I checked both msconfig and bcdedit through Command Prompt.

No entry for Macrium Rescue:





So I run the batch file again and get a single error (I also got this last night). Looking at it now, it appears to be the line that specifies the ramdisk ...



... and the output:



... as there are 10 command lines and apart from the first, the rest successfully complete.

Now, when I look at bcdedit, I appear to have TWO entries in the Boot Menu - yay!



and msconfig agrees:



Now to restart the PC and see what I get.

[An aside: trying to find out the syntax of the Ramdisk commands and what the '/d' switch does but getting nothing from the web : ( ]

UPDATE: And now I get the choice (as per picture in post #1 this thread) - success!

Art

I've followed the procedure to use Macrium Reflect to create a rescue partition as per Kari's post - see link: Macrium Reflect Rescue Partition by Kari.

IMO, this tutorial is out of date and used prior to Macrium Free Version 6 when there's no option to create the boot menu as shown above.

Correct procedure is:

1. Create a partition on your Hard drive and assign letter R:
2. From Macrium Menu: Other Tasks->Edit Default->Advanced->Macrium Reflect PE Files, Put a check mark on R.->OK
   Macrium will automatically copy all required files to R:
3. Click on Other Tasks->Windows Boot Menu. Macrium will create entries in BCD similar to the script in the tutorial. Reboot, you should get the Menu.

topgundcp said:

IMO, this tutorial is out of date and used prior to Macrium Free Version 6 when there's no option to create the boot menu as shown above.

Correct procedure is:

1. Create a partition on your Hard drive and assign letter R:
2. From Macrium Menu: Other Tasks->Edit Default->Advanced->Macrium Reflect PE Files, Put a check mark on R.
   Macrium will automatically copy all required files to R:
3. Click on "Windows Boot Menu". Macrium will create entries in BCD similar to the script in the tutorial. Reboot, you should get the Menu.

Thank you TG!

I'm using v7 of Macrium Reflect - seems very 'user friendly'.

It seems to be sorted now. I spotted the 'Select Volume for Rescue Media File Storage' (see third picture in post #5 this thread ) and figured that had to be set to point to the Rescue Partition.

Only way I'll know for sure is if I need to use it I guess. I can't boot to the Rescue Partition to test it without it screwing up the ordinary (working properly) Windows Partition (or can I?)

As an aside, why is the suggestion made to hide the Rescue Partition - to stop some lunk-head deleting it?!

Art

Only way I'll know for sure is if I need to use it I guess. I can't boot to the Rescue Partition to test it without it screwing up the ordinary (working properly) Windows Partition (or can I?)

No, you won't screw up anything. Booting from Rescue will load files into RAM and run from there so that you can work on any hard drive if need to.

As an aside, why is the suggestion made to hide the Rescue Partition - to stop some lunk-head deleting it?!

Where do you get this suggestion ? Hiding a partition will require to remove the drive letter R which will break the BCD entry pointing to R unless you hide it by modifying the registry so it won't show up under "This PC"