Control widows start-up by editing boot.ini

Those of us who like to experiment with our pcs have atleast once installed more than one operating systems.In good old days many had windows 98 installed on their pcs along with windows XP, as they couldnt shift to XP overnight.
There are two files that play major role in boot-up process of your windows pc.

1. NTLDR
2. Boot.ini

If you have only one operating system then there is no need to call boot.ini ,the operating system is loaded by NTLDR(BCD for vista) itself. But if you have more than one operating systems then you probably have seen boot.ini in action.It lists all operating systems so that the user can select any one to boot.
But there is one little problem as boot.ini doesnt take into account the frequency with which you use a perticular operating system, it lists operating systems starting from last installed.Now if you just switch ON the pc then boot.ini will highlight that particular operating system(XP64 in my case) and wait for for 30 seconds, with countdown showing you how long you have got to make a choice from the menu. After the 30 seconds it boots into that operating system and leaves you cursing.So with two operating systems on your pc you have no choice but to wait till boot.ini appears and asks you select your preferred operating system or you have to restart (and/or curse).
So how to fix this issue?
Simple. As windows is designed to be extreme user friendly(though it doesnt come that way by default) you can easily edit boot.ini file to change the list order.
Just follow these simple steps:

• Where to find?

Right click "My computer" icon and select properties.
Select "Advanced" tab.
Select "system start-up and recovery"(last one) and click "settings"
Now you will see some highlighted text and "Edit" button below that.
Click "Edit"
you are done.Now to set/change the priority you will have to edit this file.

Word of Caution:
Before editing just copy all the contents and paste in notepad and save with easily recallable name as back up measure in case you screw up. If you do just copy and again paste it at original location.

• Editing Files

I have shown below the boot.ini file for my pc having windows xp64 and media center editions.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP media center
Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP64 Professional" /fastdetect

This file contains two sections

1. boot loader :

• Time out: this specifies the countdown time.You can just increase or decrease by entering some value like 20 or 40 . Now if all you want is the menu to stay until you make a choice then enter "-1" (without quotes of course!).
• default :specifies which operating system is used as default and you can easily change that. e.g if i want media center to boot then i'll just enter "1" instead of "2" default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

1. operating systems: this specifies the operating systems that are present on your machine. "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) " the thing we are interested in is the last one .

• The "partition(x)" value specifies the number of the partition on which a particular operating system is installed.

You are done. Next time when you boot your PC you wont have to wait for making any choice your favorite operating system will get loaded automatically as the timer ends.

Now you are wondering (may be) why i have used red color for "fastdetect".
If you are interested then read on:

• fastdetect is one of many switches that are used to customize boot.ini file. This particular switch helps windows to boot faster by disabling detection of parallel and serial devices.
• If you want to see what happens behind splash screen then just erase "fastdetect" and put "SOS" instead.
• And you will see windows loading all the drivers and checking you disks instead of that pathetic progress indicator.

P.S: I have again used red color for switches. As there are many switches that allow you to control the start-up if you are interested i can provide full list.Just leave a comment.