How Do I Restore Windows 8 as default at OS Selection Screen?

Question

After a long process of getting Windows 7 Pro installed on GPT/UEFI hardware to dualboot with Windows 8 Pro, I have ran into one minor problem.

After Windows 7 was installed, it was set as the default OS. I changed that through MSconfig. During the restart process Windows 7 boot manager was displayed instead of Windows 8 OS Selection. Windows 7 notes it's 'EMS Enabled'. I'm trying to revert it to 8's boot screen.

In case this helps: HP Sleekbook 6 preloaded with Windows 8 Core. HDD wiped clean with purchased Windows 8 Pro as fresh install.

DISK 0

OEM Partition
EFI Partition
OS 8 Pro
OS 7 Pro

As a side note: I previously had Ubuntu 12.10 AMD64 as the second OS. During the OS selection, Windows 8 was the default boot loader. From there I could choose Windows 8 or Ubuntu. I had manually added Ubuntu through EasyBCD. Worked with no errors. Got rid of Ubuntu due to incompatible hardware.

Have you tried running Automatic Repair from the Win8 Setup media? — Karan, May 24 '13 at 23:50
It only offered to do a System Restore from the many available. — , May 24 '13 at 23:52
Under Repair your computer / Troubleshoot / Advanced options don't you see the Automatic Repair option? — Karan, May 24 '13 at 23:54
Yes it's there on both installation media and through the loaded OS. — , May 25 '13 at 00:01
Have you tried the solutions listed for http://superuser.com/questions/499675/how-to-restore-windows-8-gui-boot-loader-after-installing-windows-7, http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader etc. already? — Karan, May 25 '13 at 00:12
I have tried this option http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader and it did not work, but I will try the other you listed. Thanks. — , May 25 '13 at 01:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

Problem:

Installing Windows 7 rewrote the Windows 8 graphical bootloader.

There are several different methods you can try to restore the Windows 8 Bootloader as the default one.

Method One: Command line withing Windows 8

Open an elevated command prompt inside Windows 8, you can do this from opening the context menu of cmd.exe and clicking Run as Administrator
Then run the following command:

bcdboot C:\Windows

Where C is the partition Windows 8 is currently located on

The 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.

Method Two: EasyBCD - GUI method

There is a GUI tool directly available here - You could try setting Windows 8 as your default OS - From what I understand, you've already done this using MSConfig, but you could retry this from EasyBCD, it's worked for me before.

How Do I Restore Windows 8 as default at OS Selection Screen?

1 Answers1

Problem:

Method One: Command line withing Windows 8

Method Two: EasyBCD - GUI method