How to Turn off Dual Boot in Windows

Dual boot is a handy way for computer users to try new operating systems without losing the one they know works.  It is a way of loading a second system onto a hard drive while retaining the original one.

They can be a mix of Windows, Linux or Hackintosh, whatever you need as long as it can install on a hard drive.  It is a widely used way of trying out new Linux distributions in order to see if they work on your machine or not.

Many of us have a favorite operating system that we like and are comfortable with.  This should preclude our trying out news one though, and dual booting is an ideal way of doing this.  Linux isn’t for everyone.  While it offers much greater control over a system, as well as a very stable platform with hundreds, if not thousands of programs and utilities, it is hard to grasp for the beginner.

Someone new to Linux could find dual booting valuable when trying it out for the first time.  A “try before you buy” kind of deal.  Linux is free, but you will still lose all your files and settings if you install it alone on a machine.  This isn’t for everyone until they have truly decided to adopt the system.

Creating a dual boot system in Windows is done automatically when you install a secondary operating system.  You will need to create a partition to install the new software on which will set a new boot record which Windows will recognize.  Once the new system is in place, the Windows or Grub boot loader will read the record and display the dual boot option.

As useful as this technique is, it isn’t for all users.  It does slow down, and slightly complicate system boot as it needs manual input in order to select the system you want to load.  Once you have tested or tried the new system you will probably want to go back to how things were.

There are two ways of discovering how many systems you have installed on your machine.  The primary one is to use “msconfig” which is built into Windows.  Type it into the Run bar or into a CMD window to access it.

You will be presented with a dialog box displaying the currently installed operating systems.  The ones loaded at the moment will be highlighted.  You have the option to change the default operating system by highlighting a different one and clicking the Set as default button.

The other method of seeing how many operating systems you have installed is through the Control Panel.  Click on the Systems and Security, System, the Advanced tab.  Here you should see a button called “Startup and Recovery.”  Click the setting button to display the installed systems.

If you want to disable dual boot, select the system you want to retain here and uncheck the option “Time to display a list of operating systems.”

The system sill need a reboot to take effect, but that in a brief overview is how to disable dual booting in Windows.