Johnny Matthews | Remove old Linux boot options in Windows

If you’re like me, you’ll often find yourself installing new and exciting Linux distros only to get bored of them a week later and saunter back on over to Windows. This is fine, but leaves me with a bunch of un-used boot options whenever I press F12 on start-up. This mini guide walks you through how to delete these boot options from within Windows. This was written on 14th of September 2022.

I ran this stuff on Windows 11, but it should work on anything above Windows XP. If you’re still running Windows XP, I know some people who would love to know your IP address.

  1. Open CMD with elevated privileges.

  2. Show your boot options with bcdedit /enum firmware:

    C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum firmware

> Firmware Boot Manager
> ---------------------
> identifier              {fwbootmgr}
> displayorder            {e2de100a-3458-11ed-b382-806e6f6e6963}
>                         {bootmgr}
>                         {a416dc39-202a-11ed-95d0-dccf2c28a740}
> timeout                 0

> Windows Boot Manager
> --------------------
> identifier              {bootmgr}
> device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
> path                    \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI
> description             Windows Boot Manager
> locale                  en-US
> inherit                 {globalsettings}
> default                 {current}
> resumeobject            {a416dc3c-202a-11ed-95d0-dccf2c28a740}
> displayorder            {current}
> toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
> timeout                 30

> Firmware Application (101fffff)
> -------------------------------
> identifier              {a416dc39-202a-11ed-95d0-dccf2c28a740}
> path                    \EFI\SYSTEMD\SYSTEMD-BOOTX64.EFI
> description             Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS


> Firmware Application (101fffff)
> -------------------------------
> identifier              {e2de100a-3458-11ed-b382-806e6f6e6963}
> device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume5
> path                    \EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI
> description             elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir

  3. Find the identifier of the boot option/s that you want to delete. I want to remove elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir and Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS.

  4. Delete each boot option, in turn, with bcdedit /delete <{identifier}>:

    C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /delete {a416dc39-202a-11ed-95d0-dccf2c28a740}

> The operation completed successfully.

  5. Run bcdedit /enum firmware to confirm that they have been deleted:

    C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum firmware

> Firmware Boot Manager
> ---------------------
> identifier              {fwbootmgr}
> displayorder            {bootmgr}
> timeout                 0

> Windows Boot Manager
> --------------------
> identifier              {bootmgr}
> device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
> path                    \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI
> description             Windows Boot Manager
> locale                  en-US
> inherit                 {globalsettings}
> default                 {current}
> resumeobject            {a416dc3c-202a-11ed-95d0-dccf2c28a740}
> displayorder            {current}
> toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
> timeout                 30

  6. Reboot. You should be good!