Boot Menu Displat Style (graphical vs text)

Have 8 partitions - 2 win7 2 Linux various win8 and win server versions. all is fine, BCDedit and EasyBCD helped in setting up win and Linux interaction to be smooth. Typically win8 has a graphical display of the boot menu, and win 7 a text type display; typically either the last OS installed or the default OS determines which style. No more. Last versions of win8 client & server are rtm; since them, I get graphical menu. The dumb hard dive has a system partition, nearly empty, with bootmgr and a few others; replacing that with the win8 bootmgr makes no difference. I can't find anything in BCDedit or EasyBCD that looks like a relevant setting. The boot sector may have nothing to do with it, could be elsewhere. ANY IDEAS?
 
I don't understand - do you want to get or do you want to remove the new graphical boot?
 
The W8 GUI is not really a boot menu. The W8 "fast boot" is not really a boot at all, it's an undercover resume from an undeclared state of hibernation.
If you force W8 into a "real" boot, e.g. by picking a different OS choice, then it can't resume the previous session, so it forces a complete reboot, POST, BIOS etc. and uses the part of the bootmgr which is common to W8 and Vista/7, the text menu.
Neither Vista nor W7 can be "fast" booted, so W8 has no choice but to abandon the pretend boot and do a real boot with the real boot menu.
 
HM. I do cold shutdown power off cold boot switch OS back and forth - for a long time the display of OS boot options was the one expected for the default OS, then it went and remained text; just installed Win8 Pro RTM (NOT a trial/time limited, the real one) now it is graphical again. STILL NO IDEA what governs it.
 
thank you Terry

Don't know - will check BCDedit. This sort of thing is what I suspect is the answer.
Are you using the latest EasyBCD ?
Previous versions didn't contain proper support for the fact that under W8, bootmgr is not the only module involved now.
See CG's blog comment
http://neosmart.net/blog/2012/annou...oting-and-more/comment-page-1/#comment-715638

Addendum

The discussion in the referenced post suggests that I might arbitrarily make SOME change using the new EasyBCDedit, save it, and so long as some version of win8 was default boot (I think there are three or four versions around this system lol), THEN the graphical style display would be restored/retained as the case may be. We will see. windows bcdedit WAS behaving that way, but ceased to somewhere around the time I installed win8 server trial. Graphics display currently back, as I since installed WIN8 TM (twice - the enterprise time-limited RTM trial and the real deal desktop) For use relating to A+ I MIGHT install XP Vista and similar on this box soon; that's why I remain curious about this...I purely hate it when MS, who care about marketing and therefor about how things LOOK, fuss under the hood and break one of their own iconic trademarks, the look and feel.
 
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