I am running Windows 8.1, and when I tried to use bcdedit.exe (for the first time on this install) it told me that:

'bcdedit' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.

I found this odd because:

  • My PATH variable includes C:\Windows\System32
  • bcdedit.exe is in System32
  • I'm running the command from an elevated command prompt (not through some other language)

I tried a variety of other things, including using cd to go to the folder and then putting in bcdedit.exe (instead of bcdedit). No luck. Anyone know what's going on?

2

3 Answers

Open an elevated command prompt.

You can use this to see if bcdedit is damaged:

sfc /VERIFYFILE=C:\windows\system32\bcdedit.exe

If the file is fine you will get an output like this:

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violoations.

If the file is damaged you can try to replace from backups using:

sfc /scannow

If for any reason that fails you could always try downloading the Windows 8.1 Enterprise trial, install it in a virtual machine, and copy the bcdedit.exe from it.

This could also be due to running a 64-bit OS, in which case you need to access BCDEDIT from C:\Windows\Sysnative\bcdedit

3

Specifically for Windows 10,

"On 64-bit windows whenever a 32-bit app attempts to access %windir%\System32 directory, the access will be redirected to %windir%\SysWOW64. This process is transparent to the application and it still thinks it is accessing %windir%\System32 directory."

%windir%\SysWOW64\bcdedit.exe does not exist, which causes the error