How to remove BIOS Boot entries?

I have several bootable SSDs in my PC: My main System and a copy of it on another SSD. Plus two SSDs for boys to play their own games each. With the bcdboot command I have produced bootable EFI files on all of them. And because of automatic repairs in the past with Macrium Fix Boot Errors I have also EFI files on other SSDs.
Now I have a long list of eight UEFI bootable partions and Windows Boot Manager partitions. Some work some don't. So I wanted to get rid of the non working entries. I tried whatever gets recommended: EasyBCD, Hasleo Easy UEFI, Visual BCD Editor. But in each case their changes are gone once I reboot. What went wrong and how can I fix this?

Open disk management > widen each columns and rows > post images or share links




Open msconfig > boot tab > post images or share links

As long as those SSDs remain in the system with EFI partitions, the boot entries in UEFI firmware are re-created. Therefore, it is a futile attempt to delete those entries. That is what I experienced before.

Example: Mount a Windows.iso file you download from MS and put the contents of that .iso file in the root of a disk drive, you will get a boot entry for that in UEFI firmware.

Hope this helps.

Leave only one EFI system partition in the entire PC:
- Pick one disk (your main system SSD).
- Keep its EFI partition.
- Delete (delete partition override) EFI partitions on all other disks.
- Rebuild boot:

For example:

bcdboot c:\windows
bcdboot d:\windows
bcdboot e:\windows
(and so on)

With all commands, bcdboot copies the boot files to the same EFI system partition, and creates or updates the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store.

BCDBOOT <source> [/s <volume letter> [/f <firmware type>]]

<source>
- Required.
- Specifies the location of the Windows directory to use as the source for copying boot-environment files.
- Check the volume letter of the Windows partition with DiskPart's list volume command.

/s <volume letter>
- Optional volume letter for the target system partition where the boot files will be copied.
- If the /s option is not used, the system partition is automatically identified based on whether the system is booted in UEFI or BIOS mode.

/f <firmware type>
- Optional firmware type for the target system partition. Determines whether to copy UEFI or BIOS boot files.
- Used with the /s option.

With "bcdboot X:\Windows /s Y: /f UEFI" I had created all the bootable EFI partitions (X and taken from the partition table in diskmgmt). This helped for all Windows installations that were shoveled up by inapropriate attempts to make the bootable (for instance after a restore of a system backup).
So when I now have deleted all but one EFI partitions on the other bootable SSDs, I have to run "bcdboot X:\Windows" for all other Windows installations that shall still be bootable?
Where is the BCD store stored?

TechnoMax said:

So when I now have deleted all but one EFI partitions on the other bootable SSDs, I have to run "bcdboot X:\Windows" for all other Windows installations that shall still be bootable?

Click to expand...

Yes.

TechnoMax said:

Where is the BCD store stored?

Click to expand...

With all commands, bcdboot copies the boot files from the Windows partition to the same EFI system partition, and creates or updates the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store on that partition.

TechnoMax said:

I tried whatever gets recommended: EasyBCD, Hasleo Easy UEFI, Visual BCD Editor. But in each case their changes are gone once I reboot.

Click to expand...

ChatGPT:

What does not work (and why)​

Method	Why it fails
EasyBCD	Manages BCD, not firmware auto-recreation
Hasleo EasyUEFI	Deletes NVRAM entries, but firmware re-adds them
Visual BCD Editor	Same issue
BCDEdit	Does not control UEFI scanning

All these tools only affect Windows or NVRAM, not the firmware’s rescan logic.

Click to expand...

Now it is better: When I boot into BIOS boot drive selection I only have my standard drive. But this even twice, so what.
After some time I get a Boot menu from Windows. Because I had renamed the bootable systems with Visual BCD Editor I now have 4 correctly named bootable Windows versions. It takes a little bit longer than before but basically it works as I wanted it.
Thanks!!

If you give the following command in Command Prompt run as admin

bcdedit /enum firmware >C:\Firmware.txt

you will get a text file in C: drive named Firmware.txt (my text file name is fm.txt below) that lists all the bootable drives in UEFI firmware. You can see the device locations. Just look at the Firmware Applications. How many do you have ?

I have five entries, two to drive letters that I do not have anymore, three to data partitions.

If you can identify the obsolete firmware entries, you can delete them from Windows.

bcdedit /delete {identifier} where identifier is something like {5157128d-cb65-11f0-bc32-806e6f6e6963} in Firmware App list.

Data drives and/or data partitions do not appear in firmware applications list. Only those entries that seem to be bootable even if they are not bootable appear in Firmware Application list.

If you are not certain, do not delete anything. You do not see them unless you run bcdedit command or boot into BIOS.

Happy new year.

One EFI partition on a data partition I could delete. The other partition on the mirror partition was undeleteable with all I tried, I had to reformat it to get rid of it. And then I copied my VMs to it again.