Disable F8 Safe mode with networking on boot

[zag]

I've just had some students rebooting computers, pressing F8 and going into safe mode with networking.

 

Apparently this lets the browse YouTube ect as the policies don't apply.

 

Any thoughts on how to restrict this?

Edited July 8, 2015 by zag

[Arthur]

Any thoughts on how to restrict this?

From an elevated Command Prompt (or startup script), run this:

 

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu no

[zag]

Thanks, great fix!

 

Rolled it out as a group policy startup script.

 

Just for completion, this is the reverse

 

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes

Edited July 14, 2015 by zag

[Michael]

Thankfully this is no longer an issue since Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10, as the F8 menu no longer exists by default.

 

You can either change the startup behaviour via msconfig or by entering the command:

 

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

[ITGURU]

Here we have youtube etc blocked in our subnet policy so that if the policy settings don't apply for the student group, they still won't gain access.

Also have the script above in startup so that even if students hit the reset button it will just boot straight to windows again without the options and saying it wasn't shut down correctly.

[AXE]

If you want to turn everything off, safe mode, startup repair, advanced boot options, etc:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu false
bcdedit /set {default} advancedoptions false
bcdedit /set {default} bootstatuspolicy IgnoreAllFailures
bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled false
bcdedit /deletevalue {default} recoverysequence