How-to: Easily Access Safe Boot Options in Windows 8

Here’s a highly recommended trick to be able to easily get into safe mode and the rest of the F8 options. From an admin-level command prompt:

Bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes

That will enable the display of the old, text-based boot menu we know and love from earlier versions of Windows, not the GUI boot menu which only appears when the stars align with Steve Balmers’ head.  You can tap F8 at the boot menu to bring up the advanced menu.

You will get this boot menu at every boot up from now on, but as usual, you can reduce the timeout in system properties (advanced tab) and at least it’s more consistent than the alternative methods.

The original post for this came from the VirtualBox forums. AJS