Q4OS Forum

clive

Member

Registered: 2017-11-09

Posts: 10

Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

Uninstalled Q4OS (installed using Windows install), but stuck with the Windows Boot Manager. Is there a way to remove it? Command line perhaps. Tried this solution:
"Uncheck the box next to "Time to Display List of Operating Systems" to prevent the Boot Manager from showing at computer startup. You can also enter zero seconds into the field next to "Time to Display List of Operating Systems" to achieve the same result."
There's still a brief flash of the boot manager during boot. I'd like it gone completely.
Thanks

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

What "boot manager" shows? is it grub? What OS are you booting into?

If you are booting into Linux using grub you can usually edit /etc/default/grub and replace

GRUB_TIMEOUT=4

(might be a different value than 4) with

GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

and then run

sudo update-grub

If you are using Windows then you would need to ask in a Windows forum.

clive

Member

Registered: 2017-11-09

Posts: 10

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

What "boot manager" shows? is it grub? What OS are you booting into?

If you are booting into Linux using grub you can usually edit /etc/default/grub and replace

GRUB_TIMEOUT=4

(might be a different value than 4) with

GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

and then run

sudo update-grub

If you are using Windows then you would need to ask in a Windows forum.

It's the Windows Boot Manager. I installed Q4OS using the Q4OS Windows installer. I was dual booting Win 10 and Q4OS. The Windows Boot Manager only became evident after I installed Q4OS so I (reasonably?) assumed that, as it remained after uninstall, it was a remnant of the Q4OS install and that you may have some knowledge about how to properly remove it. Sorry if I presumed too much. I'll try elsewhere. Thanks for your time.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

Q4OS does not affect the windows bootoader in any way so I think you must have either had the same thing happening before and just not noticed it or you have tried to add Q4OS to the Windows bootloader which might have affected it but that has not been mentioned here so I would not know...

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,239

Website

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

If the OP used Windows installer in BIOS mode, it modified the Windows boot-loader indeed. In EFI/Secure-Boot mode, the Windows boot-loader is left untouched. As, the uninstaller should do a full cleanup, we will try to reproduce the issue mentioned and post back here as soon as possible.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

My apologies @clive, I hadn't thought about the possibility of a BIOS boot with Windows 10, in the past I have had to use the fixmbr method from an install Cd, but likely you will not have one, I do think that the Windows 10 images do have an option to recover (or re-write) the MBR but I have never tried it so you might need to do a little googling to find out.

kreemoweet

Member

Registered: 2019-06-26

Posts: 4

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

Windows contains a command-line program "bcdedit" that can be used to change all the Windows Boot Manager
settings, and its consequent behavior. There's a popular gui program available from NeoSmart Technologies called
EasyBCD that can do the same. There's massive info online about both programs.

clive

Member

Registered: 2017-11-09

Posts: 10

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

If the OP used Windows installer in BIOS mode, it modified the Windows boot-loader indeed. In EFI/Secure-Boot mode, the Windows boot-loader is left untouched. As, the uninstaller should do a full cleanup, we will try to reproduce the issue mentioned and post back here as soon as possible.

Thanks for acknowledging incomplete cleanup. My system was in "legacy" mode. I have resolved the issue by using mbr2gpt.exe and this command mbr2gpt /convert /allowfullOS. My system now boots in UEFI mode without Windows boot manager.

clive

Member

Registered: 2017-11-09

Posts: 10

Re: Disable Windows Boot Manager after Q4OS Uninstall

Solved