Windows 8 boot time is nearly instant.

[kleinma]

Check out the video in this link. They don't get into the details of the hardware, but looks to me like a standard issue available today HP laptop (although wouldn't be surprised if they had an SSD in it).

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2...windows-8.aspx

[baja_yu]

That's impressive, but it will be interesting to see them explain their way out of it when the shipped product does nowhere near as well. I hope I'm wrong.

[kleinma]

I think it likely will only get better, as performance tends to increase as the beta goes final, not decrease.

Considering the chart in that post where they show they did testing on 30 different PCs, likely of varying configurations, the times are impressive across the board.

I guess the real question is will it work well with machines that have a bios, or does it require UEFI on the system board to take full advantage. Most machines shipping today still don't have UEFI capabilities.

[baja_yu]

I'm sincerely hoping they make it. Boot time is one of a few reasons I never turn my computers off.

[Justa Lol]

I'm sincerely hoping they make it. Boot time is one of a few reasons I never turn my computers off.

agree, and as soon as its released i'm probably gonna buy, getting tired of vista

[Nightwalker83]

agree, and as soon as its released i'm probably gonna buy, getting tired of vista

Same here! Vista is really annoying.

[akhileshbc]

That's cool...

I'm planning to buy a new desktop as well as a laptop. And was thinking about getting Windows 7 for both of them. But will give it a try if 8 releases in this period.

[SJWhiteley]

Boot time is the only time some people go <afk>...

A faster boot will make my computer a lot more friendly. I think a lot of people do 'turn the computer on then go <do something for a while>'.

[kleinma]

In addition to programming, I own and operate a computer repair business here. I have to boot and reboot computers constantly all day long, sometimes waiting a good while just to be able to start work on one. The record holder was a machine with tons of viruses and a failing hard drive on an IDE channel stuck in PIO mode. Took over 30 minutes to actually boot to desktop. Of course when I gave it back, it was down to about a 1.5 minute boot time, but in my mind, that is still too long.

[Shaggy Hiker]

One of our offices, for reasons I do not know, has a situation where ALL computers take about 30-40 minutes for the desktop to come up. Therefore, nobody EVER turns off a computer unless specifically required to. That would drive me nuts.

By the way, one thing that I wasn't entirely clear on from their writing is whether or not this fast boot speed requires some power level. They talk about very low watt requirements, but from the description, it sounds like they are basically saving an image to the HD during shutdown. and restoring that image for fast start times. If that is the case, I would expect that it would be 0 watt requirements, so I'm wondering what they meant by low watt requirements. The reason I am wondering is that I don't just shut down the computer, I shut off the power strip it is attached to, so there is no standby power consumption.

I got into that because I was curious as to whether my treadmill was drawing so much current on the circuit that it is on that I couldn't have half a dozen computers sharing the circuit. That got me into looking at the normal power usage of the treadmill and the computers. I realized that, with all the items I had plugged into some circuits, the draw was still pretty substantial even when all the items were turned off. The standby power on one of the circuits would be like using one computer full time. Trivial, to be sure, especially in one of the cheapest power regions of the country, but what a waste.

[oceanebelle]

That would be pretty cool since waiting more than 30 seconds for a computer to boot makes my mind wander and move on to doing other stuff. At work, i rarely if ever turn off my PC due to the horrible startup time, not to mention that it's loaded with a couple of crap software that I can't be bothered to wait.

The worst of all is when updates are installed pre login screen, sometimes those take ages! I could go and grab a coffee and back and it'll keep going. Hopefully they get that sorted as well.

[dilettante]

I thought the description was pretty clear: people are failing to use Hibernate or Hybrid Sleep modes, so they're getting around prejudices by force-feeding you Hibernate at the Kernel level. That makes it pretty clear it isn't a powered Standby.

If your desktop system runs crowded with junkware (3rd party firewalls, .Net forced preloading, SQL Server, etc.) a boot is still going to take a while. All of that startup activity is a killer and some SQL Server versions (2005 and beyond?) even load up a second custom CLR.

Standby is not powered off at all, just power-reduced. Many "powered off" PCs of any recent vintage are "on" at a level permitting Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Ring, etc. by slowing the clock, spinning down drives, and turning off some Video hardware. That varies a lot though, and some PCs can be set to wake even from the G3 power state ("Mechanical Off") where little more than the NIC remains powered.

[abhijit]

I have seen solid state drives improve boot up time and also battery performance on the laptop.
If windows 8 is loading really fast on a standard disk, I can't wait to try it out on a solid state drive.

[dilettante]

I'm not sure if it is just my target machine or if this fast booting causes it, but...

I wanted to reinstall Win8 clean over a Win8 partition and I had one heck of a time banging F2 fast enough to get back into BIOS setup to change the boot sequence. I had changed it before installing the 1st time (and set F12 as "bring up boot menu") but the 1st Win8 install seemed to wipe those settings.

I ended up having to corrupt the boot partition to get in and reset USB CD/DVD as 1st boot device.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I wanted to reinstall Win8 clean over a Win8 partition and I had one heck of a time banging F2 fast enough to get back into BIOS setup to change the boot sequence. I had changed it before installing the 1st time (and set F12 as "bring up boot menu") but the 1st Win8 install seemed to wipe those settings.

That's all hardware stuff, the F2 to enter the BIOS all happens before any OS even starts to load or anything. It's your machine, not Win8 doing it.

[dilettante]

You'd have to prove it to me! I've gone back and forth reflashing the BIOS and putting Win7 back on and then installing Win8 again. Happens each time.

It isn't "hardware" at all. The BIOS is in EEPROM and can readily be changed from within Windows with the proper operations. Nothing says Windows can't make changes during installation itself, though it seems pretty unusual.

Let us know after you've tried it yourself.

[JuggaloBrotha]

Will do, as soon as I can afford it after release. And as long as the classic desktop is still part of Windows come final release too.

[Nightwalker83]

Windows 8 boot time is nearly instant.

Not on a virtual machine running on my pc or laptop it is not! It is as slow as a wet wig.

[Justa Lol]

Not on a virtual machine running on my pc or laptop it is not! It is as slow as a wet wig.

if you install it directly on the computer, you'll see its a lot faster, since your current OS, and all the programs running, including virtual machine are taking up a lot of memory.

[Nightwalker83]

if you install it directly on the computer, you'll see its a lot faster, since your current OS, and all the programs running, including virtual machine are taking up a lot of memory.

Do I dare make my pc a tri-boot!

[Justa Lol]

Do I dare make my pc a tri-boot!

lol i didn't mean like that, i was just saying why it was booting so slowly

[Nightwalker83]

lol i didn't mean like that, i was just saying why it was booting so slowly

Oh, well that would take the fun out of it! Triple boot here I come (maybe).

[dilettante]

Not a reliable source, mostly speculation, and it wouldn't impact BIOS-machine users, but:

Windows 8 secure boot would 'exclude' Linux.

[techgnome]

Seems the quick boot comes with a cautionary tale....
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...t_loading_tech

-tg

[dilettante]

Win8 boots very fast even on conventional-BIOS systems that secure boot has zero impact on. It is an entirely separate issue, and optional.

[kleinma]

If you take the number of OEM machines sold with windows on them, and then you take the number of those machines where people format it and install linux instead, that number is a tiny, tiny percent of the market. You will still be able to build your own systems using boards if you want to run linux. I see the only place it really being an issue is on laptops, since people do not tend to build their own. Virtualization may play a role there to allow people to run virtual linux machines on the hardware though.