Johannes Franke - 2018-11-05

Hi all,

I am using VeraCrypt for some weeks now and it's pretty impressive. It runs on a Lenovo P50 notebook with two SSDs and a total of 3 partitions, encrypted boot partition included.
The notebook is used 95% of the time in a docking station with the lid closed. The monitor attached to the docking station only comes alive once the OS has booted up, and is not getting any signal before this point. This means I have to enter the VC boot password blindly which by itself is not a problem.
But sometimes, after the preboot authentication was passed, the OS does not start right away, instead the boot menu appears and prompts me to select the OS I want to boot into. However, there is just one so this step does not make any sense. This does not happen consistently but randomly.
As the preboot authentication takes up to 2 minutes, it is not clear during this entire phase whether the authentication algorithm is still doing something, or the OS is aleady booting, or everything is stopped due to the boot menu that I have to confirm with another [RETURN] key until the OS eventually loads.

I know, I can set up the notebook to use the discrete graphics chip right from the start so I would see preboot things happening on the external monitor. However, changing this option leads to a massive amount of changes in Windows, and messes up my multi-monitor setup (roaming between multiple docking stations does not make it easier). Because of that, I had to fall back to the mode where everything is hidden until the OS comes up.

So here is the actual question: can VeraCrypt override the boot menu in case it appears, and be pointed to one specific partition and bootloader that is used every time, so the boot menu does not come up?

I am not a specialist in partition layouts, MBR etc., actually I have no idea about these things and would like to avoid messing things up.
Here is what bcdedit is showing about my boot setup (sorry, part of it is in German)

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows-Start-Manager
---------------------
Bezeichner              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume3
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  de-DE
inherit                 {globalsettings}
extendedinput           Yes
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {6cb9017b-4918-11e1-9598-f0def1a28538}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 0
customactions           0x1000085000001
                        0x5400000f
custom:5400000f         {c25481d1-34c4-11e7-8abb-a434d97dbb02}

Windows-Startladeprogramm
-------------------------
Bezeichner              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  de-DE
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {c25481d4-34c4-11e7-8abb-a434d97dbb02}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {6cb9017b-4918-11e1-9598-f0def1a28538}
nx                      OptIn

It's all on the same physical drive (phew!), and I assume without any confidence that the first entry is the EFI boot partition. But what becomes evident here is that there is just one OS entry. I thought the boot menu is clever enough to appear only if there is a second selection possible at all. There is the "memory diagnosis" tool entry but if that counted, I would expect the boot menu to appear every single time after the preboot authentication is through, but as said above, it happens randomly, with about 50% chance.

Any hints on this?
Thank you so much!

Regards,
Joe

 

Last edit: Johannes Franke 2018-11-05