EasyBCD 2.3 Timeout Keeps Changing

bbacle

Member
Hi,
I have a triple boot machine all on separate hard drives.
I have a Win7 which is my main OS.
Then I have a Win7 for my games.
Then I have Win10 which I rarely use.
Here is my problem and it just started a couple of days ago.
The timeout setting was set to 30 seconds (which is the default).
It has been changing to 5 seconds all on its own without any user intervention.
For instance, I keep my computer on during the day with Teamviewer installed so if I need something from work on my home computer, I can connect to it and
get whatever I need.
I made sure I set the timeout this morning to 30 seconds.
I left the computer on all day with no reboots or anything.
I came home and the timeout had changed to 5 seconds again.
Can anyone tell me what is going on?
I have never had this problem with EasyBCD before.
Thanks.
 
Check EasyBCD > Tools > settings to make sure there's nothing in the "automatically load....." field.
It could be that you're not actually changing the "live" BCD, but altering the settings in a BCD on one of the other systems (assuming that they were all installed independently and each has a BCD)
 
Do you mean EasyBCD > Tools > Options?
I checked there as I have done previously several times, and there is nothing there that is automatically loaded.
I do NOT know what you mean by the statement:
"It could be that you're not actually changing the "live" BCD, but altering the settings in a BCD on one of the other systems (assuming that they were all installed independently and each has a BCD)."
Can you explain?
What is a "live" BCD?
 

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There's nothing in that field so that's not your problem in this case, but to answer your last question by "live" I mean the BCD that was actually used to boot your PC.
If you install multiple Windows separately (i.e. not with others installed and visible at the time), they will each have a BCD generated which will contain a single entry for that individual OS.
Installing Windows with another OS visible to the setup process is different. In that case, the newer copy will automatically add a new entry to the BCD of the previous version and you will automatically have a dual-boot without the need to take any action with a utility like EasyBCD.
That's the Windows design architecture and the reason why they tell you always to install an older version before a newer.
The newer Windows not only adds itself, but also updates the boot manager to the latest (backwards compatible) version.
If you install an older version later (e.g. W7 after W10), it will back-level bootmgr and W10's winload.exe will refuse to load (invalid digital signature).

Depending on how you intalled your OSs will determine whether there are multiple BCDs on your PC. If there are multiple BCD's EasyBCD will allow you to point at (and edit) them individually. By default it will locate the system BCD which is being used to boot your PC (provided that "auto.. load..." field is empty)

If you have installed the OSs properly you should be using W10s bootmgr to triple-boot your OSs (W7 can't boot W10 - as above).

Check your Disk Management and post a screenshot here if you don't fully understand it.

Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"
 
I installed Win7 OSes first and then Win10, so I installed them correctly.
The EasyBCD I installed after I installed the Win10 OS.
They EasyBCD has been working flawlessly for months (ever since the summer of 2017 when I installed the OSes).
All of a sudden the other day the timeout changed on its own with no user intervention to 5 seconds from 30 seconds (which is the default).
I have not done anything to change the system of the EasyBCD settings.
The EasyBCD timeout settings just decided to change on its very own, and I am wondering why and how to fix it.
I just checked it and it has changed again to 5 seconds.
How can it change without my having done anything to change it???
 
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