Last Updated: February 25, 2016
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9.426K
· donearm

Prevent Windows8 to register itself as default boot entry in UEFI systems

As I have recently installed Windows8 on a UEFI+GPT system, I discovered that it has the typical Windows habit to put itself as the first boot entry in the UEFI, named "Windows Boot Manager", after every reboot/shutdown. As I prefer Linux and only occasionally use Windows, changing the UEFI boot order every time I wanted to boot Linux was a chore.

Thus, I looked and found a solution. More a workaround actually, as there seems to not be possible to completely stop Windows8 to add a boot entry for itself:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi

this, run from Windows of course, makes rEFInd the "Windows Boot Manager" entry instead of Windows' own so I can choose to boot Linux or Windows with it. Change the path with your Grub/SYSLINUX/Gummiboot/whatever if you don't use rEFInd.

2 Responses
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You can change the "Windows Boot Manager" description with:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} description "rEFInd Boot Manager"

over 1 year ago ·

Thanks. I thought there was a way to change the entry's description but didn't care enough to look for it.

over 1 year ago ·