How to Enable F8 Advanced Boot Options in Windows 10/11

What can F8 Advanced Boot Options do

In earlier versions of Windows, such as Windows 7, you can access the Advanced Boot Options screen by pressing F8 at boot, which enables you to start Windows in advanced troubleshooting modes. For example, boot in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, or Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Command Prompt, loading Windows at a lower video resolution, using the last known good configuration and disabling drivers, etc.

These features and boot options are very useful when you try to troubleshoot problems that occur during the standard boot process of a Windows PC. However, in recent systems such as Windows 10 and Windows 11, that F8 advanced startup options list has been replaced with a more modern Startup Settings menu, and accessing it, while there is more than one way to do so, is becoming cumbersome overall. This has led some users to want to retrieve the old interface to more easily boot their computers from Safe Mode, etc.

Use BCDEdit to retrieve the legacy Advanced Boot Options

So how do you do this? We can easily retrieve the F8 "Advanced Boot Options" menu by running a specific command from the command prompt, regardless of whether we are running Windows 10 or Windows 11.

BCDEdit is a command line tool for managing boot configuration data and is the primary tool for editing the boot configuration of the Windows operating system. It is included in the %WINDIR%\System32 folder of the Windows Vista distribution and can be used for a variety of purposes, including creating new stores, modifying existing stores, adding boot menu parameters, and more. If you intend to use BCDEdit to change the BCD, you will need administrator privileges to enable the Command Prompt or Command Prompt in Windows RE.

Here's how to use it for the purpose of this article.

Steps to enable F8 Advanced Boot Options in Windows 10/11

To add older versions of Advanced Boot Options to either current version of Windows, type "cmd" in the Windows search tool and open the command prompt with the "Run as administrator" option.

At the command prompt, type the following BCDEdit command and press Enter.

If you enter the command correctly, you will be notified of success. This will allow you to display the Advanced Boot Options menu by pressing F8 the next time you boot your Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer.

How to disable this menu

If you want to disable the Advanced Boot Options menu and return to the standard Windows 10 or Windows 11 boot process, please "Run as Administrator" command prompt and type the following BCDedit command.

If the command is successful, you will be notified.