Update Macrium Reflect Boot Menu Option?

You should always create a new rescue media when you have updated Macrium. In doing so also the WinPE files for Macrium Rescue will be updated (files in %programdata%\Macrium folder). In this case the boot menu entry does not need to be edited when Macrium is updated.

The easiest way to remove all entries, including Macrium, from boot menu is to boot the PC to Macrium Recovery Console and select Fix Windows boot problems:

Accept all prompts:

Boot menu is gone and PC boots now directly to Windows.

You can manually edit the boot menu in an Elevated Command Prompt with command bcdedit. Here some commands to modify boot menu:

• bcdedit
  
  • list all boot entries
  
  
• bcdedit /delete {Boot Entry Identifier}
  
  • Removes the selected entry from Boot Menu
  
  
• bcdedit /set {Boot Entry Identifier} description "Any Name"
  
  • Sets the name of selected entry in Boot Menu to your chosen one, instead of for instance having two entries named Windows 10, you can name them as Windows 10 Pro on HDD and Windows 10 Home on VHD
  • New name (description) needs to be in quotes if it contains spaces
  
  
• bcdedit /default {Boot Entry Identifier}
  
  • Sets the selected entry as default OS which will be automatically started when countdown reaches 0

An example. Here I wanted to change the name of the Macrium Reflect System Recovery entry in my boot menu to simple and short Macrium (highlighted blue). For that I need to use it's identifier (highlighted yellow):

Checking with plain bcdedit command I can see the name (description) has been changed:

Notice that the identifier is a 128 bit (32 hexa digits) GUID, with two exceptions: the current OS, the one you are using at the moment is always identified as {current}, and the OS set to be default is identified as {default}. If {current} is also {default}, then all other entries except {current} have the 32 digit GUID.


See these tutorials on our sister site Seven Forums for more bcdedit info:

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...t-manager.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...t-how-use.html

Kari

Does the "Fix Windows boot problems" option clean up the various hidden recovery partitions left over by Windows upgrades by any chance?

I noted the updated files are in C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect - you can peruse these log files to see what has been copied. The recovery files are copied from c:\boot\macrium\WA10KFiles\media to your selected recovery drive and you can look at the dates in that directory to see what has changed.

Steve C said:

Does the "Fix Windows boot problems" option clean up the various hidden recovery partitions left over by Windows upgrades by any chance?

No. That option only clears the boot records and files. It does in no way change / add / remove any partitions, system or normal ones.

Steve C said:

About a year ago, I added a Macrium Reflect boot menu option but have never needed to use it. There have been several Reflect updates since then. Do I need to do anything to update this boot menu option? Also, how do you remove the boot menu option?

1) no you do not need to update it.

2) to remove it, simply run Macrium, select "Other Tasks", click "add recovery boot menu option", and select "no menu".

cereberus said:

2) to remove it, simply run Macrium, select "Other Tasks", click "add recovery boot menu option", and select "no menu".

I forgot that :)

Kari said:

I forgot that :)

That is the problem with being a "Marvin" with the brain the size of a planet (only kidding of course) .

Steve C said:

I noticed in c:\boot\macrium I had 2 folders - WA10KFiles (Windows PE 10.0) and WA5KFiles (Windows PE 5.0). I updated my recovery drive from the latest Macrium version and deleted that WA5KFiles folder which relates to the Windows 5.0 rescue media which I thought I no longer needed. The USB recovery drive booted fine but I got an error trying to boot to Macrium recovery from the boot menu. I then restored the WA5KFiles folder and all was fine. Clearly, rebuilding the USB recovery drive did not assign the correct boot recovery environment in my case since my PC was still using the old Windows 5.0 recovery environment (since my PC was recently upgraded from Windows 8.1).

I then tried the fix from cereberus in post 5 to select "Other Tasks", click "add recovery boot menu option", and select "no menu". I confirm that removed the Macrium boot menu. I deleted those folders WA10KFiles and WA5KFiles again then rebuilt the recovery USB drive. That procedure reinstalled the WA10KFiles folder. I then reinstated the Macrium boot menu option (this time only the WA10KFiles folder is present), rebooted and selected the Macrium recovery option. This time it worked proving the boot menu is now using the Windows PE 10 recovery environment.

If you have upgraded from Windows 8.1 you may need to reset your Macrium boot menu option as noted above to ensure you are using the latest recovery environment for Windows 10.

Yeah - good tip.

Actually the old 8.1 menu should work still but there is more flexibility with 10 version.

I love way software is sometime counter-intuitive i.e. you have to select to add a menu to remove it.

Similar happens in Windows if you do not want to enter a password from wake up. You always have to click the sign-in option even if using a local account without a password, and cannot change setting to not require the login screen as the option is hidden. You have to add a password to see the option that allows you to not need a password - how logical is that!!