Countdown Timer Failure

K

KB1

Member
Hello,
After setting up my Win10 system, in UEFI this time, I have found the countdown timer no longer functions. Everything else seems fine, but no matter what I set the timer to, no timer runs on a start up.

I checked the BCD parameters using the command line and they are present and they change when using EasyBCD. But still no countdown.

Any help?
 
What exactly do you mean?
You get a boot menu that never times out to the default OS ?
You don't get a boot menu ?
If, as your post implies, you only have W10 on the PC then you won't get a boot menu no matter what you set the timer to because bootmgr doesn't display a boot menu if there's no choice to be made. It simply starts the only OS available.
The timer value only has meaning if there are multiple OS choices in the BCD. Then it will wait for the defined timer interval displaying the boot menu waiting for end-user input. The moment it detects an input it stops the timer indefinitely until the user makes a boot choice and hits "enter". If it detects no user input within the set timer value it will start whichever of the OSs is marked "default".
 
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Sorry, Win10 and Win7 both existed on the system prior to reinstalling Win10. EasyBCD also worked fine, including the countdown.
So yes, I get a boot menu that never times out to the default OS.
 
Does the same thing happen whichever OS is set default ?
Is the new W10 GPT or MBR ?
I've never seen anything like this and the only similar references I can find online mention one of the two above.
 
Can you post the contents of the EasyBCD "view settings".
Do you get a W10 GUI boot menu or a W7 style command line ?
 
Well, things went bad quickly.
After your last post, I thought I would try the Metro menu again to see what happens. I turned on Metro and restarted. Surprisingly, the timer worked!
However, Win10 failed to load. After the login screen I got a black screen and a mouse pointer. Win7 booted fine. Took forever to get Win10 to boot into Safe Mode, but I did get in and used Selective Startup to get back into Win10.
I said screw it and reloaded a backup image. All that only took 1 hour. :smile:
After the backup was restored the menu was back to the old style and the timer wasn't working again.
Now I'm afraid to turn Metro back on.
 
I got a little brave this morning and turned on the Metro menu. Seems to be working fine.
I don't like the Metro menu, but at least it works.
 
I dual-boot the same two OSs as you using the old menu, only difference being W7 is my default. Never had a problem with the timer (mine's set to 2 to give just enough time to jump in for the monthly W10 boot for patches, but normally an almost immediate default to W7).
I've never seen a problem like you describe before and I can't see any obvious reason for it, though your penultimate post about the W10 boot problem makes me wonder if this is responsible in some way I've not come across previously
 
My guess is the "windows not working" issue you ran into isn't strictly related to the metro menu but rather perhaps an unsafe shutdown or filesystem corruption exacerbated by the reboot cycles, especially since restoring from backup and trying again just worked.







Sorry to ask the obvious, but once the countdown started working with the switch to the Metro menu, did you try to disable the Metro menu thereafter to see if the countdown would continue to work? Unfortunately Microsoft made a huge mess of the flags/options that control the Metro menu and there is overlap between the BCD keys that control keeping the boot menu active without a countdown/automatic boot into the default OS and the keys that toggle the Metro menu. The biggest problem is that there are multiple keys but only two or three "valid" permutations. EasyBCD does not have a UI state for "partially enabled" and instead just shows a binary checkbox either ticked or unticked for metro bootloader enabled or disabled. When the checkbox is not touched, the underlying flags/switches are not updated or modified; but when you toggle the checkbox one way or the other and save it in the contraindicated state, all the relevant keys are set/updated.

All that is to say the following two may result in the UI presenting the same state, but are in fact different:
  • Starting off with the metro bootloader checkbox unticked and pressing (or not) the save button, versus
  • Starting off with the metro bootloader checkbox unticked, ticking it and saving, unticking it and saving
 
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Yes, I switched back to the old menu and still had no timer.
I just tried unchecking, saving, and rechecking, but there was no difference.
I'll just have to get used to Metro.
 
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