little secret of msconfig.exe

This post doesn’t include anything ground breaking, but is just yet another attempt to describe/document less-known command line arguments of many known, often native to the platform, Windows programs.

When you launch msconfig.exe it shows a well-known configuration dialog box:

It turns out the program accepts less-known command line arguments f.ex.:

  • -/auto
  • -/basic – seems to be selecting some GUI controls on UI, but need to explore more
  • -/commit <number> – where <number> is a tab on the GUI shown above
  • 1 = General
    • no action is taken
  • 2 = Boot
  • 3 = Services
  • 4 = Startup

All these options make the program write some Registry settings that don’t seem to be too important per se.

For example,

msconfig /commit 2

writes

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig\state\bootini = 0

to Registry. It’s not really that interesting.

Still, worth documenting.