Boot Files (What They Are and How to Open Them) GA S REGULAR Menu Lifewire Tech for Humans Newsletter! Search Close GO Software & Apps > File Types

What Is a Boot File?

By Tim Fisher Tim Fisher Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability Emporia State University Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on June 30, 2021 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email File Types File Types Apps Windows MS Office Linux Google Drive Backup & Utilities Design Cryptocurrency The word "boot" has different meanings in different contexts. You might be dealing with a file that uses the .BOOT file extension or maybe you're looking for information on when your computer boots up, like the different types of boot up options and how to use bootable files and programs.

How to Open BOOT Files

Files that end with the .BOOT suffix are InstallShield files. These are plain text files that store installation settings for the InstallShield program, which is an application that's used for creating setup files for software installs. Since they're text files, you can most likely view the contents with a text editor, like Notepad in Windows or an application from our Best Free Text Editors list. These kinds of BOOT files are sometimes seen stored along with similar installation files like INI and EXE files.

What Are Bootable Files

Bootable files have nothing to do with files that end in the .BOOT file extension and that are used by InstallShield. Instead, they're simply files that have been configured to run when the computers boots up. That is, before the operating system has loaded. However, there are two types that we need to cover. One set are the files Windows requires in order to boot successfully, that are stored on the hard drive. The other are the bootable files that are stored on other devices that run before the operating system starts.

Windows Boot Files

When the Windows OS is first installed, certain files are placed on the hard drive that are required to be there for the operating system to load, whether in Normal Mode or Safe Mode. For example, Windows XP requires that NTLDR, among other files, be loaded from the volume boot record before the OS can start. Newer versions of Windows need BOOTMGR, Winload.exe, and others. When one or more of these boot files are missing, it's common to have a hiccup during startup, where you normally see some kind of error related to the missing file, like "BOOTMGR is missing." See this page for a more comprehensive listing of the boot files required to start different versions of Windows.

Other Kinds of Boot Files

Under normal conditions, a computer is configured to boot to a hard drive that stores the operating system, like Windows. When the computer first boots up, the proper boot files mentioned above are read and the operating system can load from the drive. From there, you can open regular, non-bootable files like your images, documents, videos, etc. Those files can be opened as usual with their related programs, like Microsoft Word for DOCX files, VLC for MP4s, etc. However, in some circumstances, it's necessary to boot to a device other than the hard drive, like a flash drive or CD. When the boot sequence is properly changed, and the device is configured to be booted from, you can consider those files "bootable files" since they run at boot time. This is necessary when doing things like reinstalling Windows from a disc or flash drive, running bootable antivirus software, testing the computer's memory, partitioning the hard drive with tools like GParted, wiping all the data from the HDD, or any other task that involves manipulating or reading from the hard drive without actually booting to it. For example, AVG Rescue CD is an ISO file that needs to be installed to a disc. Once there, you can change the boot order in BIOS to boot to the optical disc drive instead of the hard drive. What happens next is that instead of the computer looking for boot files on the hard drive, it looks for boot files on the disc, and then loads what it finds; AVG Rescue CD, in this case. To reiterate the difference between boot files and regular computer files, consider that you could install a different AVG program, like the AVG AntiVirus desktop version, onto your computer's hard drive. To run it, you'd need to change the boot order to launch the hard drive's operating system. Once the computer boots to the hard drive and loads the OS, you'd be able to open AVG AntiVirus but not AVG Rescue CD. FAQ How do you delete your boot file for a clean Windows start? You can delete old boot menu options on Windows 10 using the BCDEdit tool. Open an elevated Command Prompt, type bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup, press Enter to create a backup of your BCD settings, then enter bcdedit /v to list the boot loaders currently on your system. Copy the identifier of the bootloader you want to delete, enter bcdedit /delete {identifier} replacing identifier with your own alphanumeric string, and press Enter to delete it.
Where is the boot file stored in Windows 10? Windows boot configuration data (BCD) can be considered a database for boot-time configuration data. The BCD Store file is usually located in the Boot folder of a Windows System Reserved partition. In many cases, it does not have a drive letter assigned to it.
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