Windows 8 forum: Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows 8

The BCD store is not a problem as this is a special registry file containing Boot Configuration Data. It can be edited with Microsoft's bcdedit.exe utility. A better GUI alternative to EasyBCD is Visual BCD Editor. It can not only show but also edit the complete BCD. This is hardly possible with EasyBCD.

The problem is that Windows 8 installs its own bootmgr. This bootmgr is different than the Windows 7 bootmgr for several reasons one them being that Windows 7 bootmgr cannot boot Windows 8 ! Once installed Windows 8 bootmgr cannot be replaced very easy with Windows 7 bootmgr and so we cannot fully revert to Windows 7 boot environment.

The only way to revert fully to Windows 7 boot environment would involve deletion of Windows 8 bootmgr and re installing Windows 7 bootmgr. You should be an advanced user to do this !! The deletion of Windows 8 boot entry in BCD is not so complicated but again it involves some BCD knowledge - there are exactly 4 objects created for a Windows 8 loader - the loader itself, its resume loader, its recovery loader and the corresponding device options object. This can be done only with bcdedit or with Visual BCD Editor.