Windows Vista BCD Terminology

To work with BCD, we need to learn a bit of BCD-ese. What we might think of as the entire BCD "database" is called the "store" or the "system BCD store." The store contains one or more "entries," which act as boot.ini entries did; thus, were I to translate my boot.ini into a BCD, I'd have a store containing three entries. There is, in addition to the entries, a tools menu that by default contains just one entry, the memory tester. Each entry may contain what we used to call boot.ini switches, like /NoExecute=AlwaysOff, but they're not called "switches," they're called "entry options."

Let's see how to relate this to an actual BCD by telling bcdedit to dump the current configuration. Do that by opening a command prompt as an administrator (right-click the Command Prompt icon, choose Run as administrator, and confirm the choice when UAC asks), and then type just bcdedit. I get an output like this (I've shortened a few items for clarity):

C:\Users\mark>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager

--------------------

identifier         {bootmgr}

device             partition=D:

description        Windows Boot Manager

locale             en-US

inherit            {globalsettings}

default            {current}

displayorder       {current}

                   {}

toolsdisplayorder  {memdiag}

timeout            30

Windows Boot Loader

-------------------

identifier         {current}

device             partition=C:

path               \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description        Microsoft Windows Vista

locale             en-US

inherit            {bootloadersettings}

osdevice           partition=C:

systemroot         \Windows

nx                 OptOut

Windows Boot Loader

-------------------

identifier         {}

device             partition=C:

path               \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description        Vista without DEP

locale             en-US

inherit            {bootloadersettings}

osdevice           partition=C:

systemroot         \Windows

nx                 AlwaysOff

Notice that you see three sections in this report: a "Windows Boot Manager" section and two "Windows Boot Loader" sections. Remember the [boot loader] section? It has morphed into the Windows Boot Manager information. Each entry in the [operating systems] section gets its own Windows Boot Loader section.

*.* Source of Information : Administering Windows Vista Security: The Big Surprises