Reboot: Alter dual boot menu in Windows 7

If you have installed Windows 7 and Windows XP/Vista on the same system, the Windows 7 installer will rename Windows XP/Vista as ‘Previous version of Windows’ and set default boot choice to Windows 7( with a timeout set to 30 seconds). Changing it with ‘boot.ini’ file simply won’t work with Windows XP/7 or Windows Vista/7 dual boot, it will show the following warning message:

Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems

Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options

So you’ll have to take a detour to perform the tweak, just follow the steps given below to get the desired result:

#1 Boot into your Windows 7 OS, go-to:

Start Menu-> All Programs-> Accessories; then right click on ‘Command Prompt‘ option and jump to ‘Run as‘, in the dialog window set it to ‘ Run as Administrator‘

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#2 Now to change the text description of the “Legacy” OS line in the boot menu, type in the name of the OS in ‘Description‘:

bcdedit /set {legacy} Description “Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP3″

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#3 Next, set the legacy (Windows XP) OS as {default} boot item)