Can someone offer advice re the topic title above please ,
General context info - My PC is a HP Elite SFF 8300 PC i7 Processor with 4Gb ram 2no sata HDDs previously dual booting XP & Q4OS (until I recently screwed up the Grub4dos boot loader but that is another story which Wonko the.... very kindly & patiently helped me with). Currently I have XPProSP3 as the default OS which loads from C: drive with the swap file on the second drive within a 10 gig partition.
To the advice, if anyone can shed any light please ?:
What I would like is to be able to have the "Windows Advanced Options Menu" as the default boot menu, now I realize some would say, "what on earth do you want to have that menu as the default menu when that menu is indicative of a fault with your PC & is not what you want to see every time you boot XP? "That Menu spells trouble"
Answer - "I like It & maybe I'm just weird", why? because it a good menu screen for all the repair options at your fingertips once XP Boots. 99% of the time you would select Boot windows as normal but all the Safe-mode options are there along with "Last known configuration" the only option that I can see is not in the menu is Clean-boot but Hey you cannot have your cake and eat it as they say.
I am also familiar with putting a lot of the Safe-mode options within the Boot.ini file but for me I have found this a little hit and miss and tends to get as far as mup.sys then boots to full XP. I suspect a driver issue but have not fully investigated as yet. Also I am familiar with Ms-Config option to force load Safe-mode options but that does not give me last known configuration option.
I also know about the [F8] function key option to load the "WAO-Menu" but that is not automatic enough for my needs.
Then I have heard about the Ntldr hack that will disable the F8 key and Please, Please, Please do not try this at home unless you are experienced with editing he-xi-decimal values within relevant software, you can disable the F8 function key scrolling down to offset 00000770 then horizontally looking for hex numbers 0F 85 09 and change them to 90 90 90 save the ntldr & hey presto the F8 key is disabled. Allegedly virus writers do this to stop you gaining access to the "WAO-Menu". However if this could be done to hack Ntldr, to default to "WAO-Menu" instead that would be great. I wouldn't know which hex numbers to change to bring about this result but if anyone does could they share their knowledge please?
The other option I have & thought about was to deliberately induce a fault to force the "WAO-Menu" to load but this seems a bit dirty/clunky way of doing it - but maybe the only option. The fault would need to be minor in nature and easily rectifiable possibly if you wanted to revert back?
I have also considered the registry but again I believe the last known configuration option is changing every time you boot XP & really its not the Last known configuration option that I am after really after, its the complete menu.
One final note, and to at least contribute something I have found on my travels a small command-line progey called Last known good time 0.4 for XP which can be used as a bolt on for "Last Known good configuration" to enhance this option but I have not checked it out fully yet. Someone else may find it useful. It can be obtained from the link below:
http://vaultec.mbnet.fi/software.php
(6Kbs) scroll down to 3rd program down on website or soft-pedia here,
https://www.softpedi...ood-Time.shtml
......Maybe a good option to repair your PC when the SHTF.
If you want to see what menu I am ranting on about please see the .rtf attachment below for a screenie.
It may be a non-starter but anyway, does anyone know of a hack or another way that I have not thought of please to get this working?
Best Regards & thanks in advance for any advice given!
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