With Windows 8, Microsoft made changes to the boot experience. The simple text-based boot loader is now hidden by default and its place, there is a touch friendly graphical user interface with icons and text. Windows 10 has this as well. Although it is functionally richer, the UI is also very cumbersome to navigate and requires many OS components to be loaded before you see the GUI boot menu.

In comparison, the classic boot loader in Windows 7 was extremely fast and gave you all the troubleshooting and startup related options on a single screen. For example, if you need to boot into the Safe Mode of Windows, you have to load this graphical boot UI first and then choose Safe mode. Today, we will see how to add the Safe mode option directly to the new boot loader on the screen where you get the OS choices.

All we need to do is clone the current OS boot options and modify them to start the OS in Safe mode. This is very easy to do. We can use even only the built-in bcdedit tool.

Access the Boot menu

The boot options have been consolidated in Windows 8 into a single menu, called the "boot options menu", providing access to repair tools and options for changing Windows startup behavior, such as enabling debugging, booting into safe mode, and launching into a recovery environment.

The days of pressing a function key or Esc to interrupt the boot process and get into the BIOS configuration (in UEFI enabled systems) are gone. There are three ways of accessing the new boot options menu in Windows 8 and we will show you how.

The first and primary method is through the PC Settings app. Press the Windows key + I (capital "i") and click Change PC Settings.

Click the General option on the left and then click Restart now under Advanced Setup. This starts the normal restart process, which gets automatically interrupted as Windows is about to shut down.

Instead of fully rebooting, the blue boot options menu displays. To access the options for refreshing or resetting your PC or to use the advanced tools, click Troubleshoot.

You can choose to Refresh your PC, Reset your PC, or access Advanced options. Click on Advanced options.

The options pictured below are available on the Advanced options menu. To change how Windows starts up, such as booting into safe mode, click Startup Settings.

A list displays, showing you the options available when Windows restarts next time. Click Restart to restart Windows and gain access to these options.

When your PC restarts, the Startup Settings menu displays. Select an option using the number keys or the function keys F1-F9. There is one additional option accessible by pressing F10.

If you decided you don’t want to use any of these options, you can boot normally by pressing Enter.

Launch recovery environment is the extra option accessed by pressing F10. To return to the other options, press F10 again.

Through the Power Options

Instead of going all the way into the Settings screens, there is a faster way to access the boot options menu. Press Windows key + I (capital “i”) to access the sidebar menu and press the Power button.

Press Shift button as you select the Restart option.

The Continue, Troubleshoot, and Turn off your PC options display on the blue boot options menu, just as they do using the primary method.

This method also allows you to access the boot options menu without logging into Windows. On the login screen, press the Power button in the lower, right corner of the screen and press Shift as you select Restart.

Through the Command Prompt

The final method involves entering a command using the Command Prompt. To open the Command Prompt window, press Windows key + D to access the Desktop, if you are not already there. Move your mouse to the extreme, lower left corner of the Desktop until you see the Start screen button. Right-click to access the Win + X menu and select Command Prompt from the menu.

NOTE: You can also press Win + X to access this menu.

Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter.

shutdown.exe /r /o

NOTE: The /o switch will only work if used with the /r switch.

A message displays in the middle of the screen warning you that you are about to be signed off. Windows will reboot automatically.

Windows 8 now includes the “automatic restart after failure” feature, which detects whether the OS loaded successfully, If not, the system automatically reboots into the boot options menu, allowing you to access the troubleshooting options.

Add Safe mode entries in Windows 10

Open an elevated command prompt. Type the following command:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 10 Safe Mode"

It will produce the following output:

This command clones the current OS boot options to a new boot entry named "Windows 10 Safe Mode". In the bcdedit output, note the {guid} value. Copy it and paste in the following command:

bcdedit /set {guid} safeboot minimal

Replace the guid with your actual guid value, e.g.:

If you want to add Safe Mode with networking support, copy the current OS boot options once again:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 10 Safe Mode with Networking Support"

It will also produce a new guid in the output. Now modify it as follows, use your networking support guid instead of the {guid} part:

bcdedit /set {guid} safeboot network

If you need to add the "Safe Mode (Command Prompt)" item, run the following commands: make a new boot record again:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 10 Safe Mode (Command Prompt)"

Note the {guid} value in the output. Modify it to run in Safe mode using the guid above:

bcdedit /set {guid} safeboot minimal

Finally, make it use the command prompt instead of the Explorer shell:

bcdedit /set {guid} safebootalternateshell yes

Now reboot your PC and test the new options available in the boot menu: