How to restore the Last Known Good Configuration feature in Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10

Last edited: 27.08.2017

In previous versions of Windows, there was an extremely useful feature called Last Known Good Configuration which allowed you to quickly fix a broken registry hardware configuration to the one when Windows last booted properly. It was very handy in the situation I've described above. Last Known Good Configuration stored a copy of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet key which contains information about all Windows services and drivers.

Selecting Last Known Good Configuration at startup from F8 options did 2 things:
- It restored the hardware configuration in the registry control set indicated by the LastKnownGood key instead of the default
- It restored the device drivers too of the last working configuration, should a newly installed device driver make Windows unbootable

In favor of new additions, this wonderful feature was disabled in Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The exciting news is that you can still enable it! Let's see how it can be done.

  1. Open the Registry editor
  2. Go to the following key: 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager
  1. Create a new DWORD value at the above key called BackupCount by right clicking in the right pane and choosing New -> DWORD value (32-bit) and set its value to 1 or 2, depending on the number of backups you wish to store in the registry. I recommend a value of 2. If the BackupCount value already exists, then simply double click it and set its value to 2.
  2. Now you must create a sub-key. Right click on the 'Configuration Manager' key in the left pane and select New -> Key called LastKnownGood. Then create a new DWORD value in the right pane called Enabled and set it to 1 (0 means disabled, 1 means enabled).

Now the Last Known Good Configuration feature is enabled and will start backing up your 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet registry branch at every successful boot.

How to access the Last Known Good Configuration

To access the Last Known Good Configuration, run the following command at an elevated command prompt: 

BCDEdit /SET "{Current}" BootMenuPolicy Legacy

The above command will enable access to the regular legacy boot menu via the F8 key. Now restart your computer and if computer begins to load start configuration, hold (sometimes not works) or hit on F8 key (several times), you will soon see the following image:

Make Your selection, how to boot. If You don't see this image, run command: 

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes

If You want to reset F8 to default settings, run command: 

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu no

You may be also interested in: Enable F8 Safe Mode Boot Menu