How to restore windows 8 GUI boot-loader after installing windows 7?

Question

I have installed window 7 after installing windows 8, so windows 7 boot-loader is now the default boot-loader

But i want to restore windows 8 graphical boot-loader back again

so what to do ?

Solution 1

The actual presentation (graphical or text) depends on many properties that can be set to the entries in the BCD store. An easy way to restore the defaults for Windows 8, effectively restoring the graphical boot menu, would be the following:

1. Open an elevated command prompt inside Windows 8, for example via +X and then A.

2. There run the following command:

   bcdboot C:\Windows (C should be the letter for your Windows 8, change it if it's not)

That command will replace the boot files with the ones from Windows 8, set the Windows 8 menu entry as the default one and set the parameters in the BCD to the default ones hence next time you reboot you'll see the graphical menu.

---

If for some reason you want to change and use Windows 7 boot menu you have at least 3 ways:

1. Changing the default entry to Windows 7:

   That you can do graphically with e.g. EasyBCD under the "Edit Boot Menu" section:

   

   Or manually in an administrative command prompt:

   1.1. Execute bcdedit /enum, you'll see something like this:

   

   1.2. Copy the identifier of your Windows 7 entry, in this case it'd be:

   {bd47b8fe-2713-11e2-a631-bc02f01697a2}

   1.3. Execute the following command (you'll receive confirmation afterwards):

   bcdedit /default {id}

   E.g.: bcdedit /default {bd47b8fe-2713-11e2-a631-bc02f01697a2}

2. Set displaybootmenu to yes in the boot manager entry (which as of now makes use of the textual menu without changing anything else):

   bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes (in an admin cmd, like before)

3. Delete or set bootmenupolicy to legacy in Windows 8 entry:

   bcdedit /deletevalue {id} bootmenupolicy ({id} is the one for Windows 8 this time)

After that when you reboot you'll see the classic boot menu, the later 2 ways allow you to have Windows 8 as the default entry.

Solution 2

1. Open the Start menu
2. Type msconfig in the search box and press Enter
3. Go to the Boot tab
4. Uncheck the "No GUI Boot" option
5. Click Apply and reboot to see the changes.

Solution 3

1. Start from the Windows 8 installation medium.
2. Optionally, choose your keyboard settings.
3. Hit Shift+F10 to enter the command prompt.
4. Execute bootrec /fixmbr to update the main boot record just to be sure, partitions will remain.
5. Execute bootrec /fixboot to update the boot sector of the system partition.
6. Execute bootrec /scanos to add known OSes to the boot configuration data.

Comments

[Moab]

will this show W7 on the W8 boot menu when done? or are there more repairs to be done.

[Yorkziea]

Are you 100% sure that the second part of your answer works ? Have you done this yourself ? There are more elements causing text style boot menu display. Do you know them ? Please visit windows7boot.blogspot.com for details. Even that blog post does not mention all BCD elements causing text style boot menu for Windows 8 as default.

[Xandy]

Of course, I tried the procedure as I was writing the answer but I verified it again right now. To have the text style boot menu setting the Windows 7 entry as the default or deleting (or setting as Legacy) bootmenupolicy in the Windows 8 one is enough. There may be more ways, for example setting displaybootmenu to Yes in the {bootmgr} entry is another, I just mentioned two of them.

[Yorkziea]

It would be nice to have complete answers as some user might wonder why his/her setup does not work as expected after following some answer/guide. What about displaybootmenu=yes and bootmenupolicy=standard the result is ..? Microsoft has put some traps here or is this an implementation error ?

[Xandy]

I'd say the answer was pretty complete, after all the question was about restoring the graphical menu (and the solution would besides copying Windows 8 boot files update the entries in the BCD store with the default values), I added the second part just in case. As of now if displaybootmenu is set to yes you get the textual menu independently of the bootmenupolicy value, but I'm unsure if that was the intended behaviour or a coding error; I'll update the answer anyway.

[Inari]

This answer doesn't appear to answer the question asked, which was to restore the Windows 8 graphical boot menu.