▷ How to add another windows to the startup of your computer and customize this one

If you have multiple Microsoft systems installed on your computer, you will need to know how to add another Windows to startup. In this way you can use your first installed system without losing possibility the moment you install a second one. Of course, this method is only applicable to Windows operating systems, either desktop versions or Windows Server versions.

Index of contents

When we install a second Windows operating system, it is normally automatically added to the boot menu, although it does not always happen this way. If, for example, we format the system boot partition (the one created from Windows 7 and weighing 400 MB) to install Windows again, we will make the boot menu unusable.

In this article, what we are going to do is manually add a Windows operating system to the boot menu, since when formatting the "main" system, the second one was not detected and, therefore, it is not at startup. In addition, we can choose the system that starts by default after the interaction time of the menu.

Know which drive is the Windows that we want to add

Well, the first thing that we will obviously have to know is to know where is the operating system that we want to add to the boot menu. Of course if we are already inside one of the systems, by discard it will be the other or others that exist.

We must always keep in mind that the system with which we have started our computer will be located in volume "C:", this can be verified, for example, by accessing " Users " and verifying that the user folder is there.

We will go to " This team " and give a visual to the units that are mounted on our team. In our case it is easy, since we only have two disks, each with a Windows. So the letter of the unit that interests us is "D:". We can verify that the Windows is not active by verifying files or user folders.

If you are not sure, look in Disk Manager

We can also look in more detail in the Windows Disk Management tool. Press the key combination " Windows + X " and choose the option from the " Disk Management " menu.

Here we can see that the "C:" drive corresponds to an operating system installed on a separate disk, and that the "D:" drive, which is the one that interests us, is installed next to the boot partition.

Of course, no matter where each system is, identifying the letter of the current volume, we can add it to the menu in the same way.

Add system to boot menu with BcdBoot

Now we come to the important moment, we already know exactly which Windows we want to add to the boot menu, so now we need to know the procedure to do it.

The tool to do this is " bcdboot " a command that must be used with administrator permissions in the command terminal. So we open for example " Windows PowerShell (Administrator) " from the previous menu, using the key combination " Windows + X ".

Now we simply have to put the following command:

bcdboot : \ Windows

We will have already been able to add another Windows to the boot, as simple as this. But we can still do a couple of other cool things, so don't go.

Rename on Windows Dual Start Screen

We are going to take advantage of having the PowerShell open to explain how to change the name that will appear in the operating system on the dual startup screen. This is important in case we have two identical systems, as is our case, since both will come out with exactly the same name.

To see the properties of our boot menu, we will place this command:

bcdedit

The bootloader header will appear and the two entries that we have added, that is, the two systems. In the image below we must look very carefully at two sections of each entry:

• The identifier " Identifier {many numbers and letters} ". The description " description " that sets the name in the boot menu.

Well now we must place the following command to modify the description of the system that interests us in the following way:

bcdedit / set " description " ”

To write the identifier, the easiest thing will be to select the code and press " Ctrl + C " and to paste " Ctrl + V ".

It would be like this:

We would already have changed the name at startup.

Choose operating system as default at startup

We will also have the possibility to set one of the systems as default at startup, so that, if we do not touch any key, this will start by default.

For this we are going to go to another Windows graphical tool called " Msconfig ". We can access it by opening the Run tool with the key combination " Windows + R " and typing:

msconfig

Next we are going to place ourselves on the " Start " tab, and there we will see both operating systems. In case we do not see them, we will have to restart our computer for the changes in the boot menu to take effect.

If we select one of the options here, we can choose “ Set as default ” in the lower area . ”

How this boot will come out

With the modifications made, we will be able to restart our equipment and see the changes that have been made. We will see that now our second system appears in the list and with the name that we have given it.

From here we can also modify some parameters of the boot menu, for this click on the option below.

We will have already managed to add another system to Windows startup. As you can see, the process is quite simple. Visit these tutorials to learn more about topics related to this:

We hope this tutorial has been useful, if you have had any problem or want to know more, just write it in the comments.