Some time ago I installed Ubuntu through Wubi for learning and testing purposes. After that, every time I start the PC the Windows boot manager shows up and asks me which OS I want to boot into - Ubuntu or Windows 7.
Since most of the time I'm using Windows, I'd like to know if there's a way to skip the boot menu when turning on the PC and boot straight to Windows by default but still be able to press a key and boot to Ubuntu if I want to on the next restart.
How can I do that?
If you set the Windows boot manager Time to display operating systems (timeout) to zero, making sure that Windows is still the default boot option, then the Windows boot manager will not be shown and it will boot directly to Windows. See here for details I don't believe there is any key you can press that will make the Windows boot manager show, but F8 is supposed to give you alternative boot options. So try that first.
Otherwise, you can set a one-time boot into Ubuntu at the next reboot by going to a command prompt (run CMD.EXE by right-clicking and select Run as Administrator) and then determining the GUID for the Ubuntu entry and setting it to boot once. e.g. (reference)
bcdedit /bootsequence {GUID}
Once you've got the GUID you could create a batch job (.bat file) to do this from the Desktop to make it more convenient.
To identify the GUID, run bcdedit and look for the Ubuntu entry e.g.:
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {1476af63-e5bc-11de-b180-0024543ae029}
device partition=C:
path \ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.mbr
description Ubuntu
The above shows the GUID as 1476af63-e5bc-11de-b180-0024543ae029 so you would run:
bcdedit /bootsequence {1476af63-e5bc-11de-b180-0024543ae029}
So you could then create a .bat file with the above line in it, and right-click on it and Run as administrator to set it to boot to Ubuntu at the next start.
This isn't a convenient solution, but it should do the trick.
