Add additional options to your Boot Menu

-
Do you ever get frustrated by having to always press F8 when you want to boot into Safe Mode or the Command Prompt? With a simple modification to your boot.ini, you can add those options to the boot menu.

Here's a typical boot.ini (located at c:\):
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
This boot.ini will prompt with:
  • Windows XP Media Center Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Recovery Console
Add the following three lines under [operating systems] to get Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, and Safe Mode with the Command Prompt:
  1. multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal
  2. multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode with Network" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:network
  3. multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Command Prompt" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal(alternateshell)
If you want your boot to log its activities, add the switch /bootlog at the end of the line. You can find the generated log t c:\ntbtlog.txt.
If you want the to display the drivers as they are loaded, add the switch /sos at the end of the line.
You can find all the possible switch options on Microsoft's website.
When completed, save your new boot.ini, reboot, and you will have these new boot options.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Signatures in PDF Do Not Print

-
Image
Trouble getting the digital signature in a PDF to print? The solution is actually simpler than you might think. With your document open in Adobe Acrobat Reader, click File >> Print. When the Print dialog box opens, look for the "Comments and Forms:" drop-down below the Properties button, located in the upper-right. Click the drop-down and select "Document and Markups." Now print. That's all there is to it.
Read more

Referencing the value of a cell, not its formula

-
Image
In Excel, I will use formulas quite frequently for my analysis. At times I want to reference the resulting value of the formula for comparison or to feed another formula. Unfortunately, if you are doing a comparison, Excel will try to compare the formula instead of the formulas results. Well, turns out there is an easy way to correct this. If you want your formula result to be a number, then use the VALUE function. If you want the formula result to be text, use the TEXT function. Here is the syntax for each: VALUE(text) TEXT(value,format_text) -- The format_text value can be any format from the Category box on the Number tab (in the Format Cells dialog box) except General. Here is an example of each: =VALUE(MID(A2,46,FIND("&",A2)-46)) -- this actually finds a number beginning with the 46th character of a string, and continues until it finds the ampersand character. By wrapping the formula with VALUE, I can now compare the number to other numbers in my looku
Read more

CorelDRAW X4 Crash on Startup

-
I had a fresh install of CorelDRAW X4, and each time I tried to start it, it would crash. After some searching through Google, I found the following fix. Open the folder C:\Program Files\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4\Programs\UIConfig\CorelDRAW Edit DrawUI.xml Find the line <dockpage guidref="bc1e2f70-3b58-41cd-8406-aaa550482972" visible="true" selected="true"> Change visible="false" and remove selected="true" <dockpage guidref="bc1e2f70-3b58-41cd-8406-aaa550482972" visible="false"> Save and close DrawUI.xml Fold down F8 and restart CorelDRAW X4 When prompted to update settings, select OK That did the trick for me. Apparently it is caused by a conflict with MFC dlls that are installed (version 1833) with SQL2008.
Read more