Solved Can i boot an OS not listed in the windows boot manager?

Yesterday, I was trying to boot the Windows 10 prerelease from an iso on my hard drive using EasyBCD. It failed to boot and i made the careless mistake of removing my main os (Windows 8.1) instead of 10 from the boot manager on windows. i'm pretty sure that windows 8 remains on my hard drive it's just not showing in my boot manager, and with that am curious if there is a way to boot windows 8.1 even though its not showing in boot manager. Thanks.

edit:

How to use the BCDboot command in Windows 8/10 -> link

I can access the command prompt from the recovery options. Can I do this without using any installation media?

Hansausage said:

I can access the command prompt from the recovery options. Can I do this without using any installation media?

Click to expand...

Yes.

diskpart
list volume Note: Note the volume letter where the Windows 8 is installed.
exit

bcdboot X:\windows Note: Replace "X" with the volume letter of the Windows 8 partition.

edit:

Thanks! I'll try this when I get home tonight.

Hope you are successful at getting your Win 8.1 added back to the boot menu. I'm sure that is the solution you are looking for.

However, to answer your original question of "Can i boot an OS not listed in the windows boot manager?" the answer is, yes. You should be able to bring up the Boot Options dialog of your motherboard and select which drive to boot from just as if you wanted to boot from a CD or USB drive.

Thanks, everything's running fine now