How to remove an operating system from the Boot menu on Windows 10
You can install more than one operating system on a PC. You can install Linux and Windows, or you can install Windows twice. Sometimes though, when you do a clean install of Windows 10, or when you remove one of the other operating systems you’ve installed, it continues to appear in the boot menu. You’re prompted to select which OS you want to boot to when you turn your system. Here’s how you can remove an operating system from the boot menu on Windows 10.
Remove operating system from Boot menu
Before your remove the operating system from the boot menu, make sure that you’ve uninstalled/removed it properly. Often, doing that alone is enough to remove it from the boot menu. If it still continues to appear in the boot menu, search for and open the System Configuration app.
On the System Configuration app window, go to the Boot tab. It will list all the operating systems that appear in the boot menu. Select it, and click the Delete button. The screenshot below only shows one OS but you can see the Delete button. You can’t delete the only OS that’s installed on your system.
The extra OS should be gone when you restart your system however, if it doesn’t disappear, you should shut it down properly, and then turn it back on.
If you don’t want to remove an operating system but instead, want to change which one the system boots to by default, you can do that from this same app. Select the operating system that you want to set as the default, and then click the ‘Set as default’ button. Restart your system and the change should take effect.
This will not get rid of the countdown you get on the boot screen. The countdown is there so you can select one of the other operating systems you have installed so you’ll still get it. What it will change is which operating system will be booted when the timer runs out.
If the countdown is too long, or too short for you, you can change that as well. There’s a Timeout field where you can specify, in seconds, how long the countdown timer should be. If you only have one OS installed, the timer will be set to 0 however, you can change it to something else if you need to see the boot menu. You can enter a time value between 0 – 999 seconds.
