Windows 7: I want to get rid of the Boot Manager Screen - how do I solve it?

I did a dual install on my desktop (Windows 7 home and Win XP clean installs on separate (sata)HDs with the other HD disconnected during install of each OS). Technically it's a triple since I have Linux Mint Debian on a third, thumbHD (same disconnect procedure there).
I expected that to run smoothly. Well, it did the first few times, I could bring up the boot options (Esc on this one) and choose what drive to boot from.
And a little while later this darned meddlesome win 7 boot manager shows up at startup and asks me what OS I want to boot from. I have to hit Esc real quick and bring up the boot sequence to chose what HD to boot from instead.



Because if I play along and choose an OS from the list any boot option but the Windows 7 fails.
Any way I can get this meddlesome thing off my back? (It's like the good old annoying Office Assistant.)

(If I truly wanted this option, I'd probably install EasyBCD. I used that when I dual/triplebooted a couple of old laptops a few years back, and it was fairly nice. But right now I just don't need it.)
I looked into BCDedit, which I am not terribly familiar with, but I couldn't quite find an option to shut down the BMS. (And I know better then to start deleting entries in there without proper backup. Barely, but still.)
I would be extremely grateful for any help here.

The description is not very clear.

Please confirm if:

You have three disks.
On every separate disk there is only one OS (XP or 7 or Linux).
Every OS doesn't know anything about the other OS's (other disks unplugged during installation).
Every single disk and OS (others unplugged) can boot cleanly and does not offer "foreign" boot-choices.
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There is always a disk (when all disks are plugged in) that will be booted by default and this is setup in BIOS.

If Windows 7 is first than you are getting Windows 7 boot manager by default.
If Windows 7 was installed cleanly then there should be no "foreign" boot choices.
Every single boot choice in the BCD can be deleted until there is only one left - Windows 7 itself.
(The bootmgr entry is not a choice - it is a must. )

I can suggest a GUI tool Visual BCD Editor - Windows 7/Vista which displays the whole BCD in an explorer like style and allows edits on every single item. So you can get rid of unnecessary entries in the BCD. The tool is as powerful as bcdedit in contrast to other GUI BCD tools which can display/edit only parts of the BCD store.

There must have been a prior established Windows-managed Dual Boot before you got wise to the best way to multi-boot with multiple HD's which is via the BIOS Boot menu key.

Access msconfig on the drive which is bringing up the menu when selected, on Boot tab remove the unwanted listing.

If it isn't listed there install EasyBCD 2.0, remove the ghost listing using Edit OS tab to Delete. http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/welcome-to-easybcd-2/

I am much indebted to both of You. Solving part one of this was thus far easier than I thought.
C'est humain, mais il faut y penser.... if you pardon my french ;-)

I had the Windows 7 HD on top of the boot sequence for convenience - since I was set on chosing HD at each startup, I simply hadn't counted on how Windows 7 would act. At first it worked fine, but after a few startups with the other HDD:s aboard Windows 7 suddenly realised that it was not alone anymore - and started interfering with a vengeance.

(I keep OSes on different HD:s whenever I can because that's "clean" and gives me space to play around a bit. Since I can chose what HD to boot from I simply don't need the Boot Manager Screen.
If I needed one, I'd pick Easy BCD, that worked well when I dualbooted laptops and had to make do with a single HDD.) And no, there were no previous dual boots on this machine.

So I just 'demoted' the win 7 HD to number 3 on the HDgroup in the bootlist, and now I can start XP and Debian with no interference.

But whenever I start with the Windows 7 HDD I still get the BMS.
Of course I can solve that by going into the msconfig and change the timeout from 30 to 0 seconds.
But I can't remove the other entries because they're not there (in msconfig) - there is only the Windows 7 option - as should be. That's logical, isn't it? After all all OSes were installed separately with the other HD:s disconnected.

It's only the BMS (when I start with the Windows 7 HD) that behaves illogically and makes a fuss about the other OSes.
So, if I understand this correctly - if I want to do this the very hard way (instead of just resetting the timeout as I said above) I should boot up Windows 7, foray into the BCDedit (thanks for the link to the GUI variety) - not msconfig - and delete the XP and linux options?
And that will not affect their ability to start (because they reside on their own HDDs and are in no way dependent on the Windows 7 BM) - it will only get the Windows 7 BM to stop meddling.

Correct?


Wow. Thanks a ginormous lot, guys (er, fellow sentinent beings of any gender to be PC)! Windows 7 certainly works/'thinks' differently from XP - and I'm a late convert (I threw out Vista ASAP).
I'm actually beginning to enjoy this now...

If you have a Windows Boot Menu starting up with Windows 7 HD and the ghost listings are not present to Delete in msconfig>Boot, then install EasyBCD 2.0 to remove each unwanted listing on Edit OS menu.