Return to Boot Runner from Windows Login

Since Boot Runner functionsin OS X, customers sometimes ask”how can I get the Macback to the Boot Runner selection screen if the last person to use it was running Windows?”

There are a few different ways to get Windows to restart automatically and return to the Boot Runner selection screen. How you approach the solution depends on whether the Windows systems arepart of a domain managed through group policyor are running in standalone mode. Managed Windows may already have global policies that could override any changes you maketo the individual machines, so make sure to contact the IT group that oversees Windows management for assistance.

To ensure that the Macs are booted into OS X and available formanagement over the network, you may want to configure Windows torestart after x minutes of idle time orrestart when a user logs out. These two actions can be chained together to log out of a Windows account after x minutes of idle time and restart at every logout. A restart will return the Mac to the Boot Runner selection screen.

Standalone Windows systems can be configured to run a batch script at specified events, startup, shutdown, login, logout, idle timeout, etc by editing the local GPOs.

See Microsoft’s documentation, knowledgebase and forums for methods of configuring automatic restart of Windows systems.