5 December 2008 - 15:19[How to] disable the Windows Boot Manager after installing Vista

I recently upgraded my mom’s PC from XP to Vista. As far as I can tell, the Vista installer copies your old XP files into a folder called Windows.old, and you can’t boot into XP once Vista is installed in that partition… but for some reason, every time I’ve installed Windows Vista the computer boots into a “Windows Boot Manager” where you can pick whether to boot into your Vista installation or an “Earlier version of Windows”. This screen comes up even if you got rid of your “earlier version”.

By default, there’s a 30-second countdown before it boots into your default (Vista) installation. Naturally, we want to skip this menu entirely and boot straight into Vista. Here’s how to disable the Windows Boot Manager and boot straight into Vista:

• Don’t try to change anything in msconfig, it only lets you reduce the countdown to a minimum of 3 seconds.
• This setting can be changed easily from within Vista, so don’t download any programs, especially those that cost six dollars.

1. Bring up the “System” information window by pressing Windows Key + Pause/Break (or: Control Panel -> System, or right click My Computer -> Properties).
2. In the left sidebar, click Advanced system settings to bring up the System Properties window.
3. In the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings… button.
4. Uncheck the box next to “Time to display list of operating systems:”, and make sure Vista is selected as your Default Operating System.

The next time your system boots, it will boot Vista instantly instead of showing the boot manager.