Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8

Artigo
09/08/2011

When it comes to talking about "fundamentals" we want to start with boot time – no feature gets talked about and measured more. We designed Windows 8 so that you shouldn't have to boot all that often (and we are always going to work on reducing the number of required restarts due to patching running code). But when you do boot we want it to be as fast as possible. This is a very deep topic and we have a lot of folks focused on it. We made a bigger leap in this area with Windows 8 than we have in a long time due in no small part to cooperation across the whole ecosystem. Gabe Aul, a director of program management in Windows, authored this post (a first in what will be a series of posts on fundamentals).
--Steven

Few operations in Windows are as scrutinized, measured, and picked apart as boot. This is understandable—boot times represent an effective proxy for overall system performance and we all know the boot experience is an incredibly important thing for us to get right for customers. Data shows that 57% of desktop PC users and 45% of laptop users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep. Overall, half of all of users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep.

Qualitatively, people say they prefer to shut down because they want to have their PC completely “off” so that it uses no power – either to preserve battery life or to reduce their energy use. Hibernate is also a good option for this since it similarly has no power draw, and many people really like it. However, it’s clearly not for everyone, since one of the other things we’ve heard is that many people want to turn their PCs on and have it be a “fresh start” rather than running all of the stuff from their previous session. Sleep/resume is the best option for fast on/off transitions on today’s PCs, but it still consumes some power in order to preserve the contents of RAM, which means battery drain – even if it’s only a little bit on a well optimized system. All of this is happening with the backdrop of how we all use our mobile phones today, which is almost never restarting them, and always using what feels closest to a sleep-like state.

Our challenge then, was to design a way to meet all of these desires on today’s PCs without requiring some special new hardware. These were our goals:

Effectively zero watt power draw when off
A fresh session after boot
Very fast times between pressing the power button and being able to use the PC.

In Windows 7 we made many improvements to the boot path, including parallel initialization of device drivers, and trigger-start services, but it was clear we’d have to get even more creative (and less incremental) if we hoped to get boot performance anywhere close to fast enough to meet all of these needs.

Our solution is a new fast startup mode which is a hybrid of traditional cold boot and resuming from hibernate.

Before I go into exactly how it works though, a little background is probably helpful on how shutdown and boot works today in Windows 7.

Shutdown entails:

The user initiates a shutdown by selecting “shut down” from the Start menu, or by pressing the power button; or an application initiates shutdown by calling an API such as ExitWindowsEx() or InitiateShutdown().
Windows broadcasts messages to running applications, giving them a chance to save data and settings. Applications can also request a little extra time to finish what they’re doing.
Windows closes the user sessions for each logged on user.
Windows sends messages to services notifying them that a shutdown has begun, and subsequently shuts them down. It shuts down ordered services that have a dependency serially, and the rest in parallel. If a service doesn’t respond, it is shut down forcefully.
Windows broadcasts messages to devices, signaling them to shut down.
Windows closes the system session (also known as “session 0”).
Windows flushes any pending data to the system drive to ensure it is saved completely.
Windows sends a signal via the ACPI interface to the system to power down the PC.

And boot entails:

After pressing the power button, the PC’s firmware initiates a Power-On Self Test (POST) and loads firmware settings. This pre-boot process ends when a valid system disk is detected.
irmware reads the master boot record (MBR), and then starts Bootmgr.exe. Bootmgr.exe finds and starts the Windows loader (Winload.exe) on the Windows boot partition.
Essential drivers required to start the Windows kernel are loaded and the kernel starts to run, loading into memory the system registry hive and additional drivers that are marked as BOOT_START.
The kernel passes control to the session manager process (Smss.exe) which initializes the system session, and loads and starts the devices and drivers that are not marked BOOT_START.
Winlogon.exe starts, the user logon screen appears, the service control manager starts services, and any Group Policy scripts are run. When the user logs in, Windows creates a session for that user.
Explorer.exe starts, the system creates the desktop window manager (DWM) process, which initializes the desktop and displays it.

There are a lot more specific details here, if anyone wants to go deeper: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463386

The key thing to remember though is that in a traditional shutdown, we close all of the user sessions, and in the kernel session we close services and devices to prepare for a complete shutdown.

Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested).

Sample of test results from System Integration Test lab systems.
Click to see a bigger version of this chart.

It’s faster because resuming the hibernated system session is comparatively less work than doing a full system initialization, but it’s also faster because we added a new multi-phase resume capability, which is able to use all of the cores in a multi-core system in parallel, to split the work of reading from the hiberfile and decompressing the contents. For those of you who prefer hibernating, this also results in faster resumes from hibernate as well.

Representation of different phases between cold boot and fast startup.
Click to see a bigger version of this chart.

It’s probably worth mentioning quickly how we treat the hiberfile—if you read this and immediately went and did a dir /s /ah hiberfile.sys you would have found that it’s a pretty big file on disk. The hiberfile is sized by default at 75% of physical RAM. The file is essentially a reservation for hibernation data that will be written out as the system is dropping into hibernation. Typically much less space is actually used, and in the case of our fast startup usage, it’s typically ~10-15% of physical RAM but varies based on drivers, services, and other factors. The system also treats the hiberfile slightly differently than other files on disk, for example, the Volume Snapshot service ignores it (a small performance benefit.) You can disable hibernation and reclaim this space by running powercfg /hibernate off from an elevated command prompt. But be aware that if you do this, it will disable hibernation completely, including some nice capabilities like fast startup as well as hybrid sleep, which allows desktop systems to do both a sleep and hibernate simultaneously so if a power loss occurs you can still resume from the hibernated state. You can also run powercfg /hibernate /size and specify a value between 0 and 100 for the percentage of physical RAM to reserve for the hiberfile – but be careful! Specifying too small a size can cause hibernation to fail. In general, I recommend leaving it enabled at the default value unless you’re working on a system with extremely limited disk space.

Another important thing to note about Windows 8’s fast startup mode is that, while we don’t do a full “Plug & Play” enumeration of all drivers, we still do initialize drivers in this mode. Those of you who like to cold boot in order to “freshen up” drivers and devices will be glad to know that is still effective in this new mode, even if not an identical process to a cold boot.

This new fast startup mode will yield benefits on almost all systems, whether they have a spinning HDD or a solid state drive (SSD), but for newer systems with fast SSDs it is downright amazing. Check out the video below to see for yourself:

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One thing you’ll notice in the video was how fast the POST handoff to Windows occurred. Systems that are built using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are more likely to achieve very fast pre-boot times when compared to those with traditional BIOS. This isn’t because UEFI is inherently faster, but because UEFI writers starting from scratch are more able to optimize their implementation rather than building upon a BIOS implementation that may be many years old. The good news is that most system and motherboard manufacturers have begun to implement UEFI, so these kinds of fast startup times will be more prevalent for new systems.

Of course, there are times where you may want to perform a complete shutdown – for example, if you’re opening the system to add or change some hardware. We have an option in the UI to revert back to the Windows 7 shutdown/cold boot behavior, or since that’s likely a fairly infrequent thing, you can use the new /full switch on shutdown.exe. From a cmd prompt, run: shutdown /s /full / t 0 to invoke an immediate full shutdown. Also, choosing Restart from the UI will do a full shutdown, followed by a cold boot.

Boot work is mostly owned by our Kernel Platform Group, but a number of teams came together in Windows 8 to make changes across the OS to support this new mode, plus other exciting boot changes that we’ll talk about very soon. We’re really enjoying the boot performance of Windows 8 in our internal use, and are looking forward to you being able to try it for yourselves so you can let us know what you think.

Gabe Aul

Comments

Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Can't wait for BUILD to see this in-person!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
It's unclear which tests, if any, are using SSDs. Could you tell us, since they also hugely affect boot times.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Increíble!!! esto será todo un mega hit!!!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Are there any new Power Configuration GPOs that we will be able to take advantage of with Windows 8?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This is going to be a great selling point for consumers! Excellent job, I'm also sure partners are drooling right now =D
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will existing drivers be compatible with the new load process or does this assume drivers updated to use a new driver model?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Was the laptop in the video using traditional HDD or SSD? If former, was it 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM? What AV was running on this thing :) ?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Excellent feature....really looking forward to trying it :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
In a corporate environment, with absolutely nothing being applied by GPO, boot times take 2x-3x longer for domain member computers vs. 'Workgroup' members. Are any improvements being made in this area ?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Holy heck that's fast! I cannot wait to get my grubby little hands on this! :O
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I wonder if the two columns of tiles in the start screen was a coincidence. It makes it look more like wp7 than previous previews.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Amazing!!! Keep it up Windows :))))
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Ok, now THAT was impressive. THIS is the stuff that will make people want to jump ship from Win 7.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Very good job, that's an amazing improvement... BTW, where you using SSD or HDD, and if it was HDD, which were the RPMs??. You're doing an amazing job with Windows 8. We are enthusiastically waiting for it to be released... Regards
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Are you using this on average hardware? Or optimized? That will make the difference for me. If it can start up that fast even on average PC from staples then I'm impressed. If it's like one of the better models with better hardware then this isn't exactly anything to be excited about. What would be nice if windows 7 could be that fast. A good thing is if you can make windows 8 eat up less resources than windows 7 or give us a service pack that makes windows 7 lighter and windows 7 boot faster.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I have the question that I don't see the boot screen on the video so it's already removed from Windows 8?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Windows 8 will be amazing! That's really fast!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Its getting better and better. So when will we get to review Windows 8?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Congratulations! Really impressive.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wow. Incredibly impressive. I want my Windows 8...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great news! The faster the system boots the sooner I can start wrestling with the incredibly-clumsy Desktop and Explorer...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I'll take one now please. No need to wrap it.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Are you doing more to improve corporate networks with domains and group policies?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
It’s an 8 sec boot. Amazing. My iPhone and iPad takes more than 25 seconds. WP7 20 Seconds. Chrome OS more than 40 secs. Whatever hardware it is, boot time is much faster than the other OS’s.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This is very exciting, I love the progress they have been making with touch and booting ..
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I doubt you would show this without it being amazing true. Wow I can't wait!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Scary fast! That's really impressive, and I appreciate that you explained how you got the system to boot this quickly. BUILD can't come soon enough :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
What's the advantage of this method over log out and hibernate?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
When we do Windows Update restart so the system uses fast boot or cold boot? I hope windows update from Win 8 requires less restart than windows 7?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great Achievement, But still do we need to restart to get optimal performance?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
:O Holy! If she didn't have the laptop battery removed, I wouldn't have believed her! That is AMAZING! Great job guys! Quick question: In the past, the boot performance of Windows PCs have degraded over time as applications are installed/removed and the registry is mucked up. Is this new boot method still vulnerable to this type of degradation? Will it still boot just as fast 5 years down the road? Have you done any lab simulations regarding this scenario? Keep up the great work!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will windows 8 get registry cleaner plus new icon and new UI for dating registry editor?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Good video, and nice that you kept it very short :-) faster!!! Also Windows 7 Laptop Power Transition pie chart percentages totals to 45 + 45 + 11 = 101 :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wow that was really fast. Keep up the good work!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This is very cool. Not only is Windows 8 booting fast, but I also learn about the start up and shut down process.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Well, that was a bit unexpected (especially at this time of day, usually posts come earlier). I do have a questions, however. Earlier Steven noted that the classic Windows experience isn't loaded at bootup. In light of that, I was wondering exactly how much of what we see in the video is due to booting into the Immersive environment versus hybrid booting and other boot improvements. Is there any way to get a 1-to-1 comparison booting Windows 8 to the classic desktop? Thanks
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
"Windows sends a signal via the ACPI interface to the system to power down the PC." ACPI = Advanced Configuration and Power Interface; "ACPI interface" is redundant.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wow! Amazing. Can't wait to get this. Also, can you guys add ways to quickly share these blog posts via Facebook/Twitter/Live?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
It's fast in the video but it seems to be CUT at the end. Don't you feel the same Emily Wilson?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Yeah!!!! :D
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
a more chrome live tile experience would be nice.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Thanks for sharing this. Really like the improvements under the hood as well as the UI
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I would buy Windows 8 for this feature alone. Nothing else needs to be changed. Currently, when my win7 computer comes out of hibernation, it takes about 20 to 30 seconds. That's with an SSD.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Ehsan - Tabari Do you know how stressful when a person face the camera recording? There may be something wrong and nervous reaction going on with her that force the recording to stop but since it's just a blog post video, doesn't have to be perfect as long as they successfully showed us the full new boot process before it was cut. I can say Windows 8 is way better than Windows 7 now--->Hope to see more posts with demo :)))
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
thats very good now give me the beta
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Hello Steven Windows 8 Needs alot of imrpovement in the Registry area,where the registry cleaners damage the usre expierence,we also need more information about the new file system. Thank you
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Woah...daaamn!!! Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Excellent work, guys!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
One of the main concerns for businesses is how to minimize power consumption since they have to have ALL computers on 24/7 for maintenence and updates sake. How will Win8 and Windows Server 8 be able to ensure that all Win8 PCs can remain in hibernate/standaby mode to drastically reduce power usage and be woken up for maintenence/updates and when anything needs to be pushed to them from the server?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Congrats!!! How will this experience look like on a bitlock enabled drives? I see my Win7 cold boot took longer after I enabled bitlock on the drive...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
We have heard this before....fast boot times....if i use hibernate Windows XP it starts in less than 4 secs on my old computers (nforce3). XP is still the OS that starts faster than any other later versions of the Windows OS'es.... I hear the words: blahblahblah....coming from the Windows team now - AGAIN ! Talk is cheap !
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Perhaps take the live tiles and make them a bit more rounded or make them into icons with info on the side but still in a grid layout.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I must add that all Windows versions are getting slower the longer they have been on a computer. Guess Microsoft had some hidden info on their site about that to some years ago after XP was released. It stated that XP needed to be reinstalled every 6th month. Vista and 7 are getting like chewing gum after 6 months..... XP don't need to be reinstalled that often, but both Vista and 7 have to. What does that tell us. Yes, exactly ! XP still rocks the socks off Vista and 7. Therefore 8 will be the same.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I'm curious: after the computer booted, there were very few tiles on the start screen. Does the number of tiles displayed alter boot time? I'm really loving what I see here. I hope we get a chance to test some betas after Build. Or not, that's cool too ;) coughbetacough
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Brian -- number of tiles doesn't matter.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This blogpost made my phone wake me up at 05:00AM. I couldn't help reading it and then start my laptop to view the video. It was worth it :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
30 Sec max is really a good number but will it really reach to that mark with all installation? My experience with Windows says this will give us lots of Don't Send errors or After boot it will take time to load application
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky Ahh cool. I figured as much, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any trickery afoot haha Thanks for the response.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I'm wondering the laptop in this demo used SSD drive or traditional hard drive to achieve that speed along with what processor?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Bring it on bit**h. Lets see it :-)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Insane congratulations. This is going to decrease the boot time in every situation. And as you have shown in the demo, optimized scenarios boot faster than you can flip the switch on your bluetooth mouse. A co-worker is now really sad he isn't going to BUILD with me next week.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Yeah, and my Mac already does it with normal HDD in that time. What an achievement...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Very impressive (shame we didn't get to see how long it then takes to load the full Windows "desktop". Being in IT I've noticed the Win 7 boots up faster than XP, but the shutdown often takes a very long time (not good if staff are in a hurry to get to a meeting or catch a train, etc). If Windows Updates have been approved, you literally have to wait around for 5-10 minutes (and as a result have had some staff members ignore the message and forced their laptop to turn off). Have you been working on improvements to this area as well?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Anyone noted that the demo video timing is <10s. But the graph shows a minimum of 17s for Win8 to power up. Why such a big diff?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I think in all this "THE MOST IMPORTANT" aspect is not to MIX the priorities of tech users and general users who use tablets. One size doesn't fit all. You should typically have Windows Standard version which will suit for tablet and so on... Hope you are not targeting .net development using visual studio on tablet.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
For folks wanting to know the machine Emily used -- it is an EliteBook 8640p (Intel® Core™ i7-620M, 8GB, 160GB SSD).
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Japaneese Soldier That's impressive, strange though that it seems to take longer for OSX Lion to just get to the login screen on SSD than your magical HDD macbook -- www.youtube.com/watch (that is, 10-12 seconds compared to the 8 seconds in the video above)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will the x86 plattform takes advantage of UEFI as well? Becuase in Win7 UEFI is only in x64.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I have an idea. Implement shutown/sleep/restart dialog using ribbon. That will make the experience better than ever before.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
IN that case could you show us the less optimal situation? As in the average staples computer that doesn't have that great of processor, a lot of memory or the solid state hard-drive? Are you guys going to make it the tiles a bit more interesting? They just look like boring flat squares at this point. Windows 7 needs an update so that it doesn't slow down in performance with time same with vista. Also it would be nice to not be as much of a resource hog.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Another great read. You guys rock. I'll be happy to read more about SSD optimization. I mean did you optimize Windows 8 to take advantage of SSDs? Thanks.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Japaneese Soldier@ Funny Mac boot times are slower than that.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
So far I am very impressed with every features that shown on the blog. WELL DONE. I can’t wait to get BETA.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Steven: "For folks wanting to know the machine Emily used -- it is an EliteBook 8640p (Intel® Core™ i7-620M, 8GB, 160GB SSD). " The i7-620M is a first-gen i-series CPU whereas the 8460p is a Sandy Bridge notebook. Did you perhaps mean the i7-2620M?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
It looks promising.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Gr8 job Steven. I am seriously considering allowing iOS & Win 8 dual boot on iPad 3. Will discuss it with Cook and call you.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Very good work!! Please get rid of the "Windows has detected your computers performance is slow" message, it appears too often when the pc is in a multi-video call or using too much virtual memory
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Some devices didn't worked properly after sleep resume in Windows Vista/7. Also there are a lot of resume of sleep triggers. Of course you can turn them off in 7. But it would be nice if you could select which ones to be ignored exactly. For example, I want my PC to turn itself on so Media Center records something from TV, but I don't want to get up in the middle of the night to investigate why the heck it resumes from sleep without any obvious reason... I hope you considered that in Windows 8. :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Windows 8 really fast boot amazing!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will hibernation work when windows is running on VHD ?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@steve jobs ___ lol.. aren't you retired? ------------- jajja very fuuny dude! (: ... AWESOME WIN 8 WORK!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky What is going to happen to WPF/Silverlight?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great Job! What happens if the hardware changes? I noticed that Windows 7 doesn't make any problems e.g. if you change the motherboard, unlike Windows XP. I hope you test that also, so that no one will see a bluescreen.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Ok, faster Boottimes sound great and I really like the Idea you are using here but: Is it going to be possible to move the hibernation file to another drive. Since I'm using a smal SSD (80) as systemdrive loosing aprox. 12 GB would realy hurt. especially if there are cheap TB available on the other Drives. Really looking forward to 8 :-)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Very Good performance I Like youre Windows 8 Blog very much hope to see more :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
For the shutdown command, I think /s should behave same as previous versions, means a normal (full) shutdown. If someone relied on a shutdown script works in previous version of windows in order to replace some hardware, the new shutdown command apparently will cause serious problem. Instead of /full, a /fast option means the new fast shutdown machenism should be added.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I am now waitin' for a press response on CNET and TOM's hardware. Gonna be fun watching the comments :D
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Steve Jobs don't you have cancer and retired! Go die already. Anyway, Windows 8 is going to be awesome! Loving the new boot speeds.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wow. Seriously, wow. If you look in the video at the amount of time it takes after POST, it's about 2 seconds to the login (CTRL + ALT + DEL) screen, and less than 2 seconds more to the "desktop" screen. The longest part of the boot for this machine is something over which Microsoft has no direct control. Very impressive!! One thing I'm hoping you'll talk more about is the equivalent of Standby time for laptops/slates. The typical behavior seems to be something like this: Sleep Mode is favored for fast resume, and Hibernation is only triggered if the battery is nearly depleted (unless invoked manually--something most users typically just don't understand or do... they get confused when presented a bunch of different "shut down" options). That works pretty well, except that Sleep Mode typically still draws a surprising amount of power (significantly more than the competition). For what it's worth, on a Samsung 9 Series laptop, the cold boot times are actually noticeably faster than resuming from hibernation. Are there any improvements here as well? It'd be great to see a fast resume mode (like Sleep Mode) where you can pull out your laptop several hours or a day later, be up in a couple seconds, and not have lost 30-40% of battery. Also, perhaps reboots to clear out the errant application, reset memory utilization, and otherwise "freshen up" the system will be less necessary with Win8, but if not, it is unfortunate that this scenario is not helped much by the improvements here. That scenario is also not reflected in the graphs in this article. As someone else mentioned as well, shutdown times are not covered here, and those can sometimes be quite long when you are in a hurry. The boot time work is excellent. Keep it up!! Very excited for Build. :)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wow, pretty impressive. But i have to say, if people still shut down windows instead of hibernating/sleeping it's a user education or interface problem, not a call to make oldschool boot faster. Rebooting isn't necessary, teach people that and make it harder to find the shut down button, or less inviting. iPad and Macbook air for example brags about "instant startup" which is actually just sleep-mode. If you actually shut down an iPad it takes 30sec+ to boot it up again. Windows can behave exactly the same with sleep-mode. Rename hibernate to something more meaningful like "Pause windows and shut down computer" and sleep to "Put computer in quick resume standby". Hibernate vs Sleep is very confusing, the Swedish translations of it (Viloläge vs Vänteläge) are even worse, a more correct translation to english of their meaning is "Rest mode" and "Wait mode" - totally subtle difference. Might be the same for other languages too. Just giving you some hints that such an important difference for such a misunderstood feature shouldn't simply be "explained" by one word.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will all GDI resources be freed/reset when using the new boot? The shared and limited GDI resource space is still a problem in Windows 7. I've seen required reboots because no more GDI handles were available and display issues occurred after running Windows for some days and using programs with GDI resource leaks (the Start menu no longer displayed correctly, for example).
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
euh, yes but notice the cut scene between sec. 32 and 33 in the video...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I always turn off my pc or laptop when not in use to save energy. One of thing i like to when done installed windows is disable hibernate. The hiberfil.sys is large and big in size.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Sure, that looks nice for laptop users. I'd like to see some desktop user love too. The only time I turn my computers off is when I have to install drivers or feel like installing updates. I'd want to be able to do this without losing my user session. It's such a chore to re-open all the programs and files, and there's bound to be lost state in some of them, that I only install updates maybe once every 3 months or so, because a reboot is so disruptive. Moving more drivers to userspace helped a bit. And don't even get me started on installing updates on servers...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Impressive, I have the same machine with w7 on a 250GB SSD. this pc is able to cold boot in 8 seconds, don't know why it is slower if I hibernate it :-)
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky Steven, I'd like to know whether the Windows team is aware of performance degradation after Windows being used over a long/certain period of time, and this including the boot times as well. I mean I often saw this kind of explanations where the PCs circumstance/condition being used, such used in the "Win8 vs Win7 comparison" figure above, are actually NEWLY FRESH-INSTALLED Windows PCs where not much apps/drivers installed, have not been used for a long period of time, and importantly not reflect a real world PC usage scenario where a PC has been used a long period of time and a lot of apps/drivers installation/uninstallation involved. While the figure above itself represents a fact and a truly remarkable achievement, but I think it could also mislead people in some way or another. In a full spectrum period of time of a PC usage, I see at least two periods of time. The first period represents a newly fresh-installed Windows situation where one just installed it, including initial fundamental drivers and apps. Usually, people immediately notice how fast it could be, and of course be happy because of it :). But, this period only takes duration about 10% of the full spectrum. The second period, where this takes 90% of it, represents a situation where Windows has been used for long/certain period of time and a lot of apps/drivers installation/uninstallation, or even Windows reconfiguration, etc. Thus, improving Windows boot times in the first period is critical and excellent. But, is there any consideration also taken for the second period? I've personally used Win7 for more than 1 year and noticed that Windows performance has degraded over time, including the boot times. After I cleanly installed it, I notice it being snappier again. But the question is should I periodically perform a clean Windows installation just to experience an pleasant and acceptable Windows experience in term of performance? Well, I don't want to if I don't have to :). Also I've heard a lot of people complaining about Windows performance degradation over time. And I think that has already become a serious issue in Windows. So, what do you think about these all? Do I assume correctly about the Windows testing environment being used in the development? Is there any metric being used in Windows SQM? The best I can notice is Diagnostics-Performance in Event Viewer, but I'm not sure about how Windows team use it to tackle this Windows performance degradation over time issue. Thanks. P.S.: Sorry if I don't use technically correct terms above, but I hope you get the idea.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
a feature that would be useful for me is the ability to automatically log in on boot. currently it's a two step process with a wait after each step but for those PCs that are used mostly by one user it would be very helpful. i could turn it on and go make some tea knowing when i come back my desktop is ready. i know there are a number of security considerations, but auto login to a locked screen should help.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Wait until Active Directory, Norton AV, and Servie Pack X get a hold of this boot time.....should be back to 30 seconds + in no time.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Holly ModaF*ckin BATMAN!!!! How did she do that?!?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Francesco Without drivers, the machine won’t work???
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This is great news. Boot speed is important. Actually, if it's a single-user PC, why not have an option to load a session for the user in the background before they've logged on (i.e. log them on in the background but then, for security reasons, lock their session, prompting them for a password for security reasons)? That way, someone who turns on their computer and then goes to make a cup of coffee (which will hopefully be less necessary if booting becomes fast some day) won't still have to wait another 20 seconds after entering their password. Any plans to correct Windows' broken Backup messages? (I have a problem similar to this one: answers.microsoft.com/.../5bc27efe-9aaa-455c-996e-ff24c8931e85 ). Windows 7's "Programs & Features" is better than XP's "Add/Remove Program Files". I only have to wait 20 seconds for the list of programs to load, instead of a minute. But uninstalling things still takes too long.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
You have a typo on point 2 of what the boot entails. You say irmware instead of Firmware. Can't believe no-one else has mentioned it. Do I win a prize! Otherwise, nice job on the boot times. I love how it is a performance boost not requiring improved hardware. That's something that will really benefit people who are upgrading existing installations. I stick with hibernate on my laptop which is quick and avoids the longest part of the boot which is the "log on" process, i.e. from CTRL+ALT+DEL to desktop
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Fully. I might add. Effectively you're asking for safemode
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
的确快多了
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@Tom Staelens 9 Sep 2011 1:52 AM: That scenecut is after startup. Anyway,after beta release we get to see how it palys on our own hardware.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I am blown away by the video, it is so amazingly fast!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@uDonut Read what I wrote: "except for the ones which are necessary to the system".
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
So...instead of a full shutdown, you hibernate the kernel, tricking the user into thinking they've shut down the machine. But you haven't actually shut down the machine--which over half of users would prefer you do. And in order for me to do a real shutdown, I have to remember to turn on some cmd prompt shutdown switch? Am I supposed to remember that before swapping out a new video card?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great article and a really good insight. It is one of the more frustrating things. Machines get faster and faster yet the boot times always seem to lag behind. We know things should be fast and when they're not it only causes frustration... and in my case ultimate rage!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
How fast will it boot with items like SEP and other utilities? Most folks, albeit 99.9% of them, are not going to use Windows is a purely "clean" configuration.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
that was very interesting to see we hope for more development like that in the rest of windows wishing all the luck Prefect work
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great work... Seems like Linux and MAC OS are going see there doom in Desktop os.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
So if i use Hybrid Shutdown it is real off?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
So if i want to change my video card, i have to remember to make a full shutdown first? what will happen if i don't?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Seems to me this is yet more window dressing. Another fake result with fancy performances promises that will never live up to real world conditions.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
These are all great improvements, and I can't wait to get my hands on a beta! But even more important to me than faster boot times (my W7 laptop already boots in less than 30 seconds with an SSD) is the number of times I have to reboot. I actually totally get the point of rebooting for Windows and Driver Updates, but why do I still have to restart for a computer name change or joining/leaving a domain? What about enabling/disabling UAC? I hope these are two things that can be addressed in Windows 8.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I noticed that the video is using the new tablet-style touch interface. How comparable are the boot times if you're loading the classic, Windows 7-style UI?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Windows Is the Best OS in the world
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
the Beta,the Beta,the Beta,the Beta,the Beta,the Beta,the Beta,the Beta...
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Will we be able to move the hiberfile.sys onto another HDD? My primary is a 64GB SSD and I have 16GB of RAM. It gets in the way.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This is so great, it will put huge pressure on hardware makers to optimize their startup routines. If half the boot time is POST, people will start to question what the heck the hardware makers are doing.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I agree with Chen. You seem to be over-relying on user usage metrics. More people should be encouraged to used hibernate as it is superior to all other options. People probably don't use it because either they don't know about it and just choose the default, or because they have driver issues or IT admin has disabled hibernate.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
... another reason is also that the IT admin has disabled the ability to set the default action of the physical power button to anything other than shut down.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Nice article and work. Wouldn't it be nice to also be able to save snapshots (almost like a hibernate) at regular intervals and/or during reduced activity, so that in case of loss of power or blue screen the system can at least partially recover from a "backup" snapshot? Some users are more affected by others than this, and you would almost magically mitigate what has been a very frustrating computing experience (i.e. total loss) for decades. Also, I would love to see in your stats how many people leave their machines always running (24x7 or 24x5), and some data about the different durations of times for which a machine is powered on, but is unused. Perhaps such data could help understand these behaviors, offer an alternative, and create even "greener" systems.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Another thing: it'a a good thing a fast boot, but the problem is always the same, i.e. that after a few months the PC is slower and the boot takes longer.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Can i still access the Bootmenu, when i enabled HybridBoot? Becuse in Hibernation mode it is not possible.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
This all sounds like good progress. A related issue I have with laptop standby behaviour is that if I tell Windows 7 to shutdown/hibernate, and then shut the lid on my laptop, it will go into standby (as it would under normal operation). This even happens when windows has got to the final stage of shutting down 'Shutting Down'. Sometimes this means it runs out of battery or I have to wait for it to finish shutting down to start up again next time I open the laptop. It would be much better if it could set some flag once it starts shutting down/hibernating, which would (optionally) disable the close-lid standby behaviour.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Sorry we were told that vista would boot faster than XP on the same hardware, then we were told the Windows 7 would boot faster than vista on the same hardware. Maybe on a clean install, however when is the last time you have been able to bay a machine without 101 “free” add-ons that make the machine slower to boot then an older “clean” machine?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Sorry we were told that vista would boot faster than XP on the same hardware, then we were told the Windows 7 would boot faster than vista on the same hardware. Maybe on a clean install, however when is the last time you have been able to bay a machine without 101 “free” add-ons that make the machine slower to boot then an older “clean” machine?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Windows 7's boot on a netbook is faster than the one on a full powered tower PC of a friend of mine. That's because in the netbook it doesn't show the silly logo of Windows glowing animation. Remove it, so boot time will be faster everywhere... There are always silly and useless things in Windows that slow things down, you never learn and improve.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Awesome job and this will be a massive selling point for Windows 8. Can you explain a bit more regarding the hardware used? Was it HDD or SSD? If it was HDD what was the RPM? Is there an ETA on when we will be able to BETA test a Win 8 build?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Great boot up video but how long does it take to get to Google.com?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Faster boot time is always welcomed, great work! For me, however, the part that makes me waiting the most is after login. Even though I have only those programs in my autorun that I really need (antivirus, feed reader, IM client) I am still waiting 1-2 minutes until I can properly start browsers or other applications. A few years ago when I increased my RAM to 2gb, that had made a huge difference in startup time. But when I recently got a laptop with 4 gigs RAM and a significantly better processor, boot time almost remained the same. I guess the bottleneck is the hard disk. Starting applications while an IO-intensive process is running in the background (such as starting autorun programs or copying files) significantly slows down application startup. Therefore I think making more use of IO priority mechanisms (i.e. giving autorun programs a lower IO priority, performing file copies with a lower priority) should improve startup of programs.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
GIVE US Beta !!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@kejserdreng1 I tested it with a 5400rpm HDD and Windows booted in 12.7s ;) @cranberry follow my guide, maybe you have long WinLogonInit, ExplorerInit or PostBoot times.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Hi if i understand that right, the driver would initialized every start again, so a real refresh.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Note that you should read the text and not just watch the video: it's resuming from hibernation. now, its very fast, and its good. but its approx as fast as linux doing the same thing. Anyhow, congrats, thats a nice boost
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
How long is it then to shut down, i mean it has to write a memory file, hibernation file?
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Does this allow for resuming the last open session? One of the reasons I use sleep mode on my laptop is because I can let it sit for two days or longer, but then pick up exactly where I left off, and it's almost just as fast as the process in the video.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
@kejserdreng1 09-09-2011 3:27 PM How long is it then to shut down, i mean it has to write a memory file, hibernation file?

with my old 5400rpm HDD it took 5s to write the data to the hibernation file. @Mike the old hibernation way still works. In this mode you can leave all programs running. The hybrid boot is used when you select "Shutdown" in startmenu.

Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Haha it's all well and done having a minimal screen popup, but how long does it really take to boot up...I suspect Windows is still loading even after you have logged in.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Very Nice! Let the Beta Testing Begin!!!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
I still think that the boot time will have a direct impact on what each user has as software. In Win7 I have various programs that need to start at boot, not from sleep and it adds the necessary time to load these applications. From what I see that will still have to happen. I can't wait to test this and see the results! Bring it on!
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
man this what we expect from microsoft.. not look.. great improvement
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Dear team. First of all, that's very impressive. The idea that hibernating and resuming a session without saving open programs can speed up things is intriguing. For me, the most attractive feature is it's finally multi-core optimized. Are existing power actions like hibernation also multi-core optimized? Also, if you are reading feedback and care to reply to my genuine concerns: (I know this a startup and shutdown related, but I will include logon related issues as well).

In Windows 7, there is no progress bar indicating the hibernation status. Really annoying. I want to be able to see a progress indicator when its hibernating and when its resuming. How hard is it to do that? We need a progress bar at least while it's hibernating if not while its resuming.
Shutdown menu with useful power actions has been removed from Task Manager. So if for some reason, Explorer.exe cannot load, is crashing or we are using a different shell, we can't quickly choose power actions. Even Process Explorer has those power actions. Please bring back the shutdown menu in Task Manager. Why was it removed?
Bring Hardware Profiles feature back. It was very useful.
How about a quick way to be able to use full shutdown without disabling hybrid shutdown? Like holding down Shift when pressing "Shutdown" to do a full shutdown? Such an idea was already there in XP. With Shift held down, Standby turned into Hibernate. Similarly, Shift+shutdown can do a full shutdown.
Do UEFI systems have any backward compatibility for older OSes which do not support UEFI? Meaning, can I get a UEFI system and use Windows 8 to boot faster but still occasionally boot an older OS from it without disabling UEFI even if it takes a bit longer to boot that OS? Or will buying a UEFI system mean my older OSes won't boot?
The stance Microsoft has taken on supporting UEFI only in 64-bit Windows is disappointing. Please support it in 32-bit Windows too.
No improvements to restarting when updates are installed? I hate the dreaded "Please wait while Windows configures updates" screen on logoff and logon. Why does servicing delay logon and logoff?
For workgroups computers, the classic logon prompt cannot be made to appear in Windows 7 (like it could in XP) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del at the Welcome screen twice. This makes it impossible to logon to a hidden user account while the Welcome screen is enabled (when Classic Logon is not enforced through Group Policy). This is not a problem for domain-joined PCs where pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del twice at Windows 7 logon screen shows the classic logon prompt.
Because of the classic logon being removed, domain names are no longer populated on the logon screen and cannot be selected from a drop down list.
In XP, autologon could be bypassed by holding down the Shift key. In Windows 7, it is not possible to override Autologon by pressing the SHIFT key before logon. The IgnoreShiftOverride registry value is ignored.
In XP, items in the startup folder were prevented from running after logon if the Shift key was held down. This was great for troubleshooting items that caused problem at startup. No longer works in Windows 7.
Logon screen no longer shows number of running programs and unread email messages.
Changing the KeepRasConnections registry key to remain connected after logging off from a RAS client is not supported.
Mac OS X and Linux distros allow users to boot into another OS when one OS is hibernated. Like with Boot Camp, you can hibernate Mac OS X and boot into Windows. Why can't Windows allow that?
Please stop setup from overwriting any existing Linux boot managers. Hope the relevant teams are reading this. But very impressive job with the fast boot.

Anonymous
September 08, 2011
i wanted to ask, how big will the hibernation file be, imagine i have 4gb or 8gb ram, and i don't use the hibernation feature much but still want to use this new hybrid shutdown and faster boot time while wanting to delete this hibernation file on windows, any chance we have a very small minimal hibernation file only for the new faster boot time instead of eating my HDD space, thx
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Install updates that doesn't require a reboot. How about that? http://www.ksplice.com/
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
That's so strange that people aren't using hibernate. That's mostly all I ever do. I still know some people who think that hibernate will draw battery power and don't use it. I also notice that it's the default button in the Windows 7 start menu, when really hibernate should be the default. Perhaps if the UI explained it better that hibernate wouldn't draw any power more people would use it. I never want a "fresh state", generally the only thing forcing me to lose my user session state is patch Tuesday.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Looks like Windows 8 is going to totally rock. WOw. www.anonweb.at.tc
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
How many people find when Windows comes out with a new operating system...ALL of a sudden, your older system starts booting slower and slower, and slower! Almost as if your Windows updates on your older system are creating bloat and dragging teh Boot Process..to frustrate you into buying a new system! .
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
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Anonymous
September 08, 2011
They should decress the quantity of time takes to update the computer, that would be cool
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
That is wonderful! I love it. Does this enhacement also improve boot times for VMs? If so, is it about the same 30-70% improvement?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
What your essentially doing with this new shutdown behavior is;

Close all apps and logoff all users. That is, elliminate all sessions > 0.
Hibernate Session 0.
Resuming Session 0 with multi-core optimized code.
Noting how fast this is, especially on a new laptop with a SSD (very rare). This is all very well, but the question is - fast, compared to what? The user now has to;
Logon
Open apps
Open files... Has the user saved time, compared to existing hibernate? I doubt it. Demo looks great, but if something looks too good to be true... ...Presumably this is occurring while some services (including drivers) are initializing, as the following statement would seem to indicate: "Another important thing to note about Windows 8’s fast startup mode is that, while we don’t do a full “Plug & Play” enumeration of all drivers, we still do initialize drivers in this mode. Those of you who like to cold boot in order to “freshen up” drivers and devices will be glad to know that is still effective in this new mode, even if not an identical process to a cold boot." Questions:
How do you hibernate the kernel, and reinitialize drivers on startup? Are you not saving the state of drivers in hiberfil.sys?
How does this effect boot time?
What happens if one or more drivers do not initialize without error. Presumably reboot will be required, because system state will be invalidated (sort of like a BSoD), and hibernation state will be lost.
Why is the reinit of drivers occurring at all? Is it so you can say to folks that they are getting their superstitious "fresh start", or is there a good technical reason for it?
Why will the public accept this sleep state, having not appeared to accept existing hibernate, or even sleep? Why will behavior change now?

Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler,

do you speak for Microsoft or only for yourself when you say the hibernation progress bar was removed to speed up the process? :) How do you know that was the reason or where it mentioned so? :) I think Microsoft write a decent progress bar implementation that works with WDDM/Aero. How about a "clear and confident" way to show to the user what's happening?
I just think servicing should be re-designed so it does not affect logon/logoff performance in any way. In-use files were always updated prior to Vista too without considerably delaying logon/logoff. The three slow stages of servicing are unacceptable as a user to me if it slows me down from getting to the task I want to do.
What is an annoyance to you is a feature for some. I am sure this blog values everyone's opinions. :)

Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I want to see how this performs with a computer that is running 100 processes and has a lot of applications installed. I know my Windows 7 machine has a lot of development software on it and it would be awesome to see the difference. Obviously based on the text on the view it clearly is an SSD lets see HDD performance.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
"Very fast times between pressing the power button and being able to use the PC." Stop using such technical mumbo jumbo!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Well almost assuredly the ones that are slower both before and after in the comparison charts are probably slower machines with slower HDDs. But you can still see the marked improvements. It isn't like Windows 8 will suddenly make a Pentium 4 run like an i7, but at least it continues the Win 7 tradition of extending the life of older machines. Personally, I will never recommend a non-SSD machine to anyone now, and certainly not once Win 8 is readily available. 160GB is plenty for most folks and the speed vs. price is well worth it. Further, if you're going to compare performance with tablets, every tablet has solid state memory. I hope more laptop manufactures start offering laptops with space for both an SSD and HDD. Booting & apps should be fast, but if I also want 350GB of my favorite pictures, photos, and movies. But then I guess I can always have an external USB 3 drive with Windows 8!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Windows 8 looks great and the boot is impressive. However, I would still shutdown to get a "Clean Start". It's like not changing your underwear the next day.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Well fast re-booting (not to be confused with restarting) is essential but still Windows has issues resuming from standby mdoe which is used as often as rebooting. Even on my beasty Macbook Pro (i7 / 500G SSD/8G RAM) it takes more to resume Windows 7 Ultimate x64 comparing to OS X Lion from standby mode.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@xpclient 9 Sep 2011 8:06 AM: "1) do you speak for Microsoft or only for yourself when you say the hibernation progress bar was removed to speed up the process? :) How do you know that was the reason or where it mentioned so? :) I think Microsoft write a decent progress bar implementation that works with WDDM/Aero. How about a "clear and confident" way to show to the user what's happening?" AFAIK it doesn't have to do anything with WDDM and has a lot of to do with batteries - they found that older batteries can suddenly jump from sufficent reported capacity to critical and emergency hibernation can failed as power drops out somewhere in the micddle of process.To workaround that Windows 7 will deactivate screen during hibernation. Unfortunate side effect is if a driver or something on HW side fails,resulting BSOD is not visible... (and not always recorded) It was written at E7 blog.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler not only log-on screen is better to show you unread emails and running tasks. it's better to show some time, calendar and battery information (well from what I see from videos are already included in W8)
Anonymous
September 09, 2011

I agree with qyqgpower
It's so strange to hear that people was a refreshed state. Up till now I've only heard people complaining about automatic update because it cleared their state. Plus, if someone wants to refresh their user session state, maybe Windows could introduct a relog option, where it logs the user off and relogs them in.

Anonymous
September 09, 2011
No comment. Simply unbelievable. Heart attack ;)
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
W7 desktop power transition is very surprising for me... 1% of actions is "hibernate"? really?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Nice, but I think in time an pc upgrade to receive the full benefits of fast boot times etc. will be needed. Also it will force hardware manufactures to improve their lot, and not before time. Looking forward to beta.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
It is fast - but I would have liked to see an app start too - just to be sure it actually was fully booted including all drivers and stuff...
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
E como ficaria a bateria de um notebook? Estaria sendo utilizada?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Emily is cute. And that was an incredibly fast boot. I would love to see that demoed in a domain environment with GPO's applying, etc.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
And how would the battery in a laptop? Was he being used?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler I prefer UEFI on x86 as well, because when you have a Atom Tablet, which supports UEFI it would boot faster as well.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Steven, Gabe, thanks for a great post! While you mention that many users like to shutdown to "refresh" their session, one of the most frustrating elements of Windows for myself and most people I know is the shear number of restarts required from system updates. I appreciate that you commented on reducing these necessary restarts, but have you considered going even further and allowing restarts that return the system to the exact same state as before the restart? That would be an immense relief, both on my home computer and work PC.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Where's the logon screen? If it starts up that fast, how will I ever be able to tap F8 fast enough to start in safe mode?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Microsoft already has the "Restart Manager" since Vista for closing apps during MSI installs and restarting them. Why not extend it to persist across reboots and use it to restore open programs and documents as they were when the system is restarted? Close to Mac OS X Lion's "Resume" feature. (I say close because Resume apparently also saves the state of the apps themselves).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I am going to enjoy seeing it crash...
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
What the F! Amazing, Great! can't wait for the Beta : )
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Could you just add it to Windows 7 as part of an update. Thanks to think about this suggestion.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I rarely ever reboot (desktop machine) but it'll still be nice functionality for when I do. In fact I really like Stevesi's comments here "We designed Windows 8 so that you shouldn't have to boot all that often (and we are always going to work on reducing the number of required restarts due to patching running code)." One of the key reasons I can do this is because of how much more reliable sleep mode is on W7. So thanks for that!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Man I love these blog posts! Such awesome news in each one. Thanks Windows team, you guys are doing a great job!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Just please make sure that if I have my laptop set to hibernate when I close the lid (or in suspend mode, battery runs low, and hibernate needs to kick in), that no app for any reason ever can prevent this from happening. Too many times (meaning any time more than once - and it's happened a few), MS Office with a network file open has prevented this. I've closed the lid, so I don't see any notices. I pack up the computer in a tight space. And it overheats, loses all my open work in other apps, almost catches fire, and loses all battery. Unless I'm in embedded windows, never let an app interfere with hibernate / suspend!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Also it would be nice if windows provides a one click/touch button which kills all the other apps and just keeps the processes necessary for running the windows and of-course internet. Just like fresh new session. Its painfull to kills the processes manually when the windows freezes.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The problem is not just about boot fast. You have to learn or re make your registry system, there is a issue when you loggin on windows after 60 GB's in apps installed, thing wich doesnt happen on Apple or Linux even on BSD.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Please use shut down because no one has ever explained properly how hibernate works. It's only natural people want to turn off when they're done. Which is why Microsoft should've explained a long time ago, hibernate does just that too.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
We have seen some drastic improvements over the years from Microsoft for faster booting. Windows 7 is far better than Windows XP in booting and shut down time. Hoping Windows 8 to be far more superior. Still there will be some dependencies. [Read More - http://bit.ly/nhPiAy ]
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Impressive, can't wait to see what else the Windows 8 team can do.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Other than boot times, Microsoft needs to concentrate on number of clicks. The other day, I hooked up my laptop to the TV via HDMI. Took me a number of clicks and one right click to select TV as my audio source. This should be no more than 2, Microsoft!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Great read, have yet to see where everyone's GREAT questions have been answered.......I'll keep looking.....
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Please tell me there will be an PC x86 version
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
This is seriously awesome, thanks a lot!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
This looks awesome. I really hope that the "New Windows Experience" isn't completely different that the current windows platforms. The versatility of Windows 7 is amazing. This will be very beneficial for netbooks, and small laptops though.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
FINALLY!!!! People are going to be SOOOOOOOOOOOOO X1000 Happy :) ;)
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Guys, please focus on trying to find a way of letting people reboot their computers but come back to a desktop that has their programs and files open as though their computer has not been rebooted. Why is this an issue? In corporate environments (my team manages thousands of corporate computers) everyone has to 1) Leave the PCs on (wasting money, etc.) and 2) Reboot their PC and "lose their work" (that the term that the end-users use when they have to close out of 20 word/excel documents they have open or when an auto reboot happens). I know you guys are brilliant and can find a way to push down patches to PCs w/o having to reset the entire user sessions. This gets 100's of times worse on terminal servers. Even it was just Outlook, Word, and Excel hat support this it would still be a gigantic improvement.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Faster booting is nice and all but I'm far more interested in how quickly the system responds and how stable it is (i.e. not needing to boot/reboot very often). And the fewer times I'm required to reboot after installing/upgrading the happier I am.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I like it. Thank you for sharing.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I very much appreciate this. In Windows 7 too the boot time is very short, IF you dont have other applications coming up at boot time. I feel many a times applications are added to startup quite unnecessarily; in order to cut application start times they transfer the burden to what user believes operating system boot time. I understand everything after login is to be attributed to these applications. Is there anything you can do to prevent this? or bring about some discipline? or as in IE show a pop-up which says boot time could be reduced if this application is not loaded at start up - especially those which see no activity (which I am hoping can be detected from the OS).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Awesome work! I have a question though: When you mentioned that hardware changes require full shutdown, does that include peripheral devices? E.g. USB, eSATA, ExpressCard etc. When I shutdown my laptop, which is connected to a number of peripheral devices that stay in my house only, I cannot foresee if I would need to grab it and rush out of the door before the next boot up.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Actually, my Win7-64bit machine boots and shuts down faster than it can hibernate or restore. About 17 seconds from UEFI to logon screen. Could it be that when having a lots of memory hibernate is actually slower? I've got an SSD and 16GB memory.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I don't use hibernate because the majority of the time it doesn't work and never comes back from hibernation force a manual shutdown of the system. I've experienced this on several different computers at home and at work. Hibernation is flaky at best. I disable it as soon as I install the OS.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Many times when I shutdown my computer, apps like Outlook, are slow to shutdown and thereby prevent the computer from shutting down in a timely manner. Windows 7 has improved the shutdown process to add a message asking you to forcefully shutdown these slow or unresponsibv applications. However, the message does not say which applications are slow to shutdown and so I don't want to force shutdown a critical application. Please add information to the Force Shutdown dialog listing the names of the applications that would be forced to shutdown if I choose this action. Otherwise the dialog does not give me all the information I need to take an informed decision. Also, and by the way, why is Outlook even 2010 slow in shuttting down and always creates such issues? It should bhave been fied by now.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@s.bhatia Lazy ***. It's more organized with a right click. I don't want Windows like a dreadful Mac.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
when will there be a beta i can load on my ASUS EP 121 TABLET? I really want to give 8 a workout.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I think it just shows the underlying stability of the kernel, given that they are happy to effectively have it run continuously for potentially weeks or months at a time (without starting fresh).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I just realized... can't wait to see OS X vs Win8 startup vids on YouTube!!! The fanboys will be so mad.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler: without the logo animation my netbook only takes 2 or 2 and a bit full bar scrolling and immediately the login screen appears (I hope to be understood). I think the logo animation slows down the boot. I really think it's like that. Anyway, Windows used on tablets should have a faster boot to the login screen.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Great improvement however I can quickly see it slowing down heavily once apps start to open up, how about either delaying that process until later or banning apps from automatically adding themselves to this queue?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
So let me get this straight: you are going to essentially increase my shutdown time (because you are hibernating session 0) and you will decrease my startup time. That's fair, but the user probably won't realize that. The laptop traveller that hits the power/function button on the laptop expects a certain behavior, and is ready to throw the laptop (with spinning hdd) in the bag after about 10 seconds. It needs to be understood that this new behavior will not inherently save time in a net/net fashion or will it? Also -- what then happens with Session 0 if it becomes 'stale'? What runs in Session0 that could corrupt it's own memory footprint that would need 'refreshing' as you mention about Session1 (user).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Had to watch this multiple times. Very nice.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Incredible, this blog was a great idea!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Some people (me) don't like to waste space on hibernate and wan't their laptop/pc turn off when not in use. Besides i don't think you can instantly boot windows in no time without save works state/session to a hd. It have to be windows 9? With new file system, driver etc..
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Wendell: "If it starts up that fast, how will I ever be able to tap F8 fast enough to start in safe mode? Very good point. Rather than madly tapping away on F8 during startup (or Del or F2 or... to get to BIOS), there should be a way of requesting the boot menu prior to startup - like an indented switch somewhere, or via something like a BootCfg switch on keyboard that activates a small secondary LCD screen that displays boot options, or can activate an Administrator account using password for emergencies. @Jason: "Just please make sure that if I have my laptop set to hibernate when I close the lid (or in suspend mode, battery runs low, and hibernate needs to kick in), that no app for any reason ever can prevent this from happening. Too many times (meaning any time more than once - and it's happened a few), MS Office with a network file open has prevented this. I've closed the lid, so I don't see any notices. I pack up the computer in a tight space. And it overheats, loses all my open work in other apps, almost catches fire, and loses all battery." Again, a small secondary monitor might help with this, if it clearly indicated that open network file or whatever was preventing system from hibernating. @xpclient: "Microsoft already has the "Restart Manager" since Vista for closing apps during MSI installs and restarting them. Why not extend it to persist across reboots and use it to restore open programs and documents as they were when the system is restarted?" Agreed. Just adding the open apps to the RunOnce key would be helpful. @bradavon: "Please use shut down because no one has ever explained properly how hibernate works. It's only natural people want to turn off when they're done. Which is why Microsoft should've explained a long time ago, hibernate does just that too." Solution: Make the 'Shut down' button actually the Hibernate button. Add a 'Full shut down' button to the 'Shut down' button right-arrow menu. I would also have a Sleep button above where the 'Shut down' button is currently located. @Jeff Carlson: "So let me get this straight: you are going to essentially increase my shutdown time (because you are hibernating session 0) and you will decrease my startup time. That's fair, but the user probably won't realize that. The laptop traveller that hits the power/function button on the laptop expects a certain behavior, and is ready to throw the laptop (with spinning hdd) in the bag after about 10 seconds. It needs to be understood that this new behavior will not inherently save time in a net/net fashion or will it?" Exactly. Where is the net time saving - or are we just trading increased shutdown time for less startup time, only to have to reopen apps and files again also? Really what i think this is really about is;

Looking good compared to non-Windows tablets (the current flavor-of-the-month).
Not chewing up such a large chunk of expensive SSD space with hibernation file, while retaining some of the benefits of hibernation. By mid-decade, when SSDs are almost as cheap as HDDs, we can go back to using full hibernation (including full user state). Until then, a compromise solution is required.

Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Thinking more about this, I think that all the shutdown options are just too confusing to many users - most probably don't know what "sleep" or "hibernate" mean. I think you have got it badly wrong in interpreting the user metrics as saying that users prefer a clean new session every time - maybe in Windows XP I would have liked a clean session, but with the new Windows 7 taskbar I do not. A better solution is to simplify the options down to just Hibernate ( perhaps renamed to "switch off" or "shut down") and "Restart". Would this not make more sense? Surely with upcoming technology improvements such as SSDs the hibernate function can be vastly improved to at present?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Another technology that would also make "hibernate" the default behaviour would be new non-volatile memory technologies such as Magnetoresistive RAM. With such blazingly fast non-volatile memories, then volatile memories would be merely used as caches in any such new computer architecture.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Great work! And very interesting article. Thanks! I'm wondering why the machine in this video does boot much faster (8s) than any other test machine shown in the chart (all >15s).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Impressive speed! This would be a leap improvement in boot times. I wonder what HP laptop is that? I notice that there is not boot screen shows up, is it already dumped in Windows 8 and replace with blank black screen when using Hybrid Shutdown/Resuming Hibernate? I guess its just lightning fast that boot screen don't need to show up to avoid delays.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
when are you guys going to remove old APIs? what is the point of having TWO shutdown APIs? aside from being MORE code to debug, more code to compile, more code to load, more code to run, and more confusion for devs. when will you start dismantling the horders nest that Windows has become?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky IMPORTANT READ!: Dear Microsoft, This has nothing to do with the topic of this post, but I would like to talk about issues regarding the Windows Snap feature. As I've been reading other Windows 8 forums, I've noticed that many have been complaining about the 16:9 issue. Understandingly, Windows Snap should only be available for widescreens, but it doesn't need to specifically be 16:9 . Many believe that 16:10 deserves a chance for this new feature. Although this is a problem stated by many, believe that the statement could have been misinterpeted. Perhaps, as I thought I might have heard, that Windows Snap is available to any resolution above the standard 1365x768 resolution. Most WXGA+ 16:10 monitors are above that resolution (1440x900), so if that's the case, then their shouldn't be MUCH of a problem. If not, then you may want to take consideration into this. Thank you for your time. P.S.-If this not the right time to post a comment like this, then I can wait until the moment comes.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
lololol that was a laptop with 9999ghz and 99gb of ram xD (just kidding) i want to see how it works in my computers :O
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@TheTechFan & @Johannes Duschl – question on whether quad core vs. dual core makes a difference to Win8 boot. It totally depends on the combination of processor and disk capabilities on your system. We’ve seen either CPU or disk be the bottleneck. The one thing I’d say is that if you have a fast SSD (i.e. read times in the ballpark of 200 MB/s or greater), going from 2 to 4 cores improves Win8 boot / Hibernate resume times. The SSD is bringing in enough data to keep more than 2 cores busy decompressing the contents of the hiberfile.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Of course it is a Solid State Drive.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
it would be nice if everybody here stops blaming for everithing on here and start to give just an opinion or a advise of what would be better.. or just asking.. but... -_- omg ... it has too much ram thats why star faster, it has ssd thats why.. no way u wold do this on a normal laptop... arg!!! stop! ... well.. all i want to say here is... this is real work.. i know cuz programing a OS is not like drawing in paint... it's all about strong stress of programing.. and this is an evolution on boot times... no matter older windows or a mac or a linux... this is good work!... congratulations!! i hate people who just say. i want that that that and that and if u don't have it u fail!... ¬¬' it's not a cake.. OMG!!!! ¬¬'
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
This is the computer used in the video: EliteBook 8640p (Intel Core i7-2620M, 8GB, 160GB SSD).
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
it is assumed they were using an ssd in the laptop from the comment "This new fast startup mode will yield benefits on almost all systems, whether they have a spinning HDD or a solid state drive (SSD), but for newer systems with fast SSDs it is downright amazing. Check out the video below to see for yourself:"
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
If the boot in my computer with a hard driver 5400 RPM , i5 ,2,93 and 4GB DDR3 and antivirus ( that takes 30 seconds to load) will be 30 seconds i'll be happy.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
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Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Pretty cool, definitely improvement where S3 standby is not viable and there's lot of memory to hibernate. But I'd also like to see creative improvements on application startup times, ability to make superfetch more aggressively load used apps after cold boot on 6+ GB systems and especially improvement on explorer file name search speed when you are searching files or folders by name only. It takes explorer in Windows 7 ten minutes to search through couple cheap & common multi-TB hdd's with tens of millions of files. In comparison, open source NTFS MFT search can perform this in seconds. What is being done about this?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
@6205 I quote every word. and i will add; if OEM's wants give us their software, they can make a dvd-rom to sell with the pc, in addition of the windows dvd-rom (i don't want to create a recovery disc at the first time)... i think that way to make faster the boot of the SO is interesting, but i don't think it's the best way.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Many are not using Hibernate option,windows behaves oddly after a hibernate,and i have experienced many crashes after a hibernate when IDE programs like eclipse with android emulator are running...it is good to hear that boot time is reduced,i would be happy if the boot time on a HDD was less than 30 sec(i mean least)
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
From my perspective it is very important for you to keep the Windows 8, 9, 10 naming convention - to identify in people minds that from the very solid foundation of Win 7 that thing are going to continue to evolve as a grounded product rather than take detours on odd naming which dilutes and resets the momentum, Please allow the colo of the tiles to be changed - but don't just add a palate of several colors to choose - I find this very irritating in One Note that the tab colors are set and they are not ideal shades - all a 'more colors' option - it would be nice to have background images and 90% transparency on a tile.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Boot speed here is pretty fast – well done. What are you doing specifically to help me get into Outlook and an internet search quicker form boot? what are you doing about bloated and messy registry and start up services killing a computers performance, leaving uninstalled application assets and dramatically slowing ‘boot to work’ time - this is where you need to invest the most effort.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
This is Awwwsomeee,can't wait for build.I love Windows 8.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
excellent! but how soon can I start an application after a quick start? upload the windows quickly, but the loading of other programs, all of which are usually crammed in, accelerators Internet, wireless network managers, and other accompanying software that is loaded into the normal working of the operating system? Show more movie where there is a launch windows and open Internet browser, connect to the network and the opening of the office. Fresh operating system I run as fast now, and windows XP to be started almost as fast as before.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Please guys make this version compatible with 5-6 years older PC's I have an old PC which I have not used for a long time & I really wish that Windows 8 will be able to give a new life to it.The specs of that old PC are :Intel Pentium 4 processor,Intel 81845GV onboard display,1GB RAM.Windows 7 doesn't run properly on it whereas Windows xp runs fine on it.Please find out a way to run AERO on older Intel onbard video cards which didn't have any Pixel Shader & please make Windows 8 run fast & work properly on older hardware,this will make more people who still use Windows xp move on to Windows 8.Please guys & u guys rock!!!
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
Please remove the option "System reserved partition 100MB", when creating partition during windows 7 installation. Let us control how windows should be install. I have to use diskpart to create partition manually.
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
I would like windows to have a feature which is very essential. This is a program which can copy the names of only the folders, or folders and sub folders and files names within a drive and prouduce it in a word document. suppose i have a 400 movies in a drive. i simply would like to generate a word file or excel file having the names of all these movies.....this application or program if inbuilt will be very useful.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
WOW
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
This looks great... another timing issue in Windows 7 that really needs to be discussed is install time. While typically the installs happen very quickly, I am constantly left waiting for the User Account Control popup that asks for permission to change my computer. This dialog can take up to 10 minutes to pop up!!! I run several Windows 7 machines, and this is a common experience on all of them. It really is the single biggest usability problem in Windows 7. We have all this fancy modern hardware able to install huge programs in seconds, then are left waiting 10 times longer for a popup with a button on it.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
very nice, so will hybrid boot also allow dual booting to be carried out at before?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
very nice, so will hybrid boot also allow dual booting to be carried out at before?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I hope that we will have the opportunity to FORCE a cold boot just after turning on the computer, say by pressing F8 or something like that when the PC is starting up. Exactly like we already do to start windows in "safe mode". I think this could be usefull when something is going wrong with some device driver.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
@Massimiliano Ferrari Just saying thats an amazing idea.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
@Massimiliano Ferrari Just saying thats an amazing idea.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Looks great, and very interesting to see those stats. Suprising to see how few people use hibernate though. I think the biggest issue with shutdown/startup in Windows 7 is when it comes to installing updates though. Being able to install and then shutdown is great, but while I understand why it's done, it's really annoying when you then start Windows and it has to sit there for ages completing the installation before you can use the computer. Personally I'd love it if after the initial installation completes Windows rebooted instead, completes the final install process and only then shuts down.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
My friend says : "Regarding the fast boot time article, i think it's a good thing but it shouldn't be a priority, because users turn the pc on one or two times a day, tops. So it's not that big of a time loss, although i understand the average user doesnt want to wait. But Win7 is already fast at boot, if you use a lightweight AV. Qo, ok, good, but not top priority IMO." Nice article by the way: How Maintenance For Microsoft Windows Has Changed Over The Years | PCMech - www.pcmech.com/.../how-maintenance-for-microsoft-windows-has-changed-over-the-years Quote from link above: "Free space = Faster Windows"
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
look's great. just one thing, PLEASE PLEASE oh PRETTY PLEASE do not overwrite linux boot managers, or include an option so that your bootmanager can let the user select partitions he or she wants.. ext4 partitions included :p
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I agree with 6205. I hope you guys would prevent PC manufacturers to not load bunch of their softwares and maybe have them all be in the marketplace instead. I absolutely hate all the pre-loaded softwares. I just bought my aunt Windows 7 PC and the first thing I did was getting rid of all the softwares that have functions which Windows already has, or that my aunt would never use. And these softwares are also in the start-up list that I went in and disabled them. Clean Windows 8 for any new computer would be fantastic.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Great work. we are ready for Build conference.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
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Anonymous
September 10, 2011
@Vinodh: One way to achieve this is typing "dir /b /s > filelist.txt" in the command prompt. This creates a text file with all files and folders in the current directory (and subfolders).
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Hi, I have an idea (implementation) for Windows 8...... I'd like to have a super bar like that in this link, that we can enable/disable with a combination of keys.....Or a way that put this super in background an when we want with the combination it returns.....the link is this desmond.imageshack.us/.../scaled.php Please I really like this way to organize my files/programs and it can be useful for tablet pcs, for example these icons can rotate with the rotary movement of the fingers in the touch screen....thanks for listening to me, I really hope that there will be this function
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I don't understand why there isn't already a downloadable program that just hibernates the kernel on shutdown for faster boot times
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
WOW! That is extremely impressive. I am not entirely sure I actually believe what is was I saw. Keep the good work up Windows Team. I am both a Windows 7 and OS X Lion user, but I must say Apple are going to need to get there cold boot skates on with this one!
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
That is excellent Steven Now we need to see what are the improvements in the registry,and it is guilty of many windows problems. Will Microsoft take our the registry and implement something much better? We also need to know if NTFS will be replaced for something that doesn't let the files fragment.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
intergrade microsoft lync to windows 8?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
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Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Would like to see how does Microsoft make the companies that just finished massive upgrade to windows 7 to move to another new OS? more server, advanced features plus compatibility for business software?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Holy... wow, simply amazing. Especially for a desktop OS. I think I can truely say that this is something no Linux distro nor Apple OS has ever come close to accomplishing.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Last post before BUILD please!!!!
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Waiting for Win8 desperately ............................
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Very nice I almost always hibernate Faster Is Better. Keep up the Great work!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Very nice I almost always hibernate Faster Is Better. Keep up the Great work!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
@Lynn Devore -- Interesting comments. I don't think this technology will make any difference to the sort of bad luck you have suffered. Sounds like you need a PC that runs on batteries, 24/7. I think it's poor engineering that desktop systems don't at least come with a battery backed power supply as standard. Unfortunately there is very little innovation in the PC hardware space (unlike the competition). Microsoft could be pushing for improved hardware via their logo program, but seem more interested in consumers having vast choice. That is, lots of hardware vendors selling minor variations on a decades old theme. However this is not necessarily surprising considering the number of cheerleading comments to this post, which is essentially about a half-baked version of a power mode that no one currently uses. These folks are easily impressed!
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Allegedly windows 7 boot up about 30 seconds. My fresh and first-turned-on windows 7 (that I buyed because the before, laptop manufacturer's windows 7 was very slow and boot up time was critical, over 3 minutes), then it booted up about 1 minute. I'm now using this (since 2 months) and its boot time about 2 minutes. I really hope windows 8 will not like this, because windows 7 not as fast as say it... I hope in service pack 2 for windows 7, you do something for boot up because really slow for me. I often go to drink or wash my hands (without joke!!!) while my windows 7 start up. Often after those still booting up! I can't do anything, I tried every antiviruses and performance optimalizer but... those don't good. If windows 8 will boot up after 3-4 months like this (or 4-5 seconds later) it will be perfect. I hope it.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
DOS is pretty fast too !! it backs to what you actually want the computer to performs DOS 64bit real mode is what the world need.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I'm not paying for that. My system already boots in 10 seconds and if I use hibernate it takes 5 seconds. I think releasing a demonstration video with no real-world applications, like workgroup login, or system details is simply false advertising.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
I second the the idea of having the system auto-logon and lock so that post-boot operations can take place while I'm getting my coffee. I also think that the default option for shutdown.exe should remain as it is and the switch should be used for enabling the fast shutdown so as to not break existing applications.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Don't be fooled Windows 8 will not be faster..., the hardware is, UEFI+SSD and de reinvention of sleep/hibernate nothing new you can do this with Windows 7 to. I wonder how this will work in real life situations like business networks and so.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
So if I have a device driver that has a memory leakage, since it will not be shut down and reloaded from scratch the leakage will continue?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
So if I have a device driver that has a memory leakage, since it will not be shut down and reloaded from scratch the leakage will continue?
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Can you do a topic on reboots and what your doing to cut down the ammount needed when updates etc are installed. thanks.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
Can you do a topic on reboots and what your doing to cut down the ammount needed when updates etc are installed. thanks.
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 10, 2011
If Windows 8 will integrate more software, like Hybrid-V, windows media player with all video support (mkv, flv, mp4), a desktop recorder, an audio/video converter, a better bluetooth organization and connection/reconnection, a better development in paint (add please support for trasparent background) (for example add an option to use it for basic users and professional users), a better benchmark tool and a software that control the temperatures of the hardware, Windows will don't need of too many external softwares that make windows slower, and the speed will not be too much serious.... But for now very good results ;)
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
però dal video non si vede, l'avvio del BOOT, o mi sbaglio?
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
What about SSD s? did they test it with HDD or SSD?
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
It would be nice if you could integrate the dictionary into Windows 8. That would be awesome. Mac has it,, why not Windows 8? It's simple feature but it's very useful and nice to have. :) Keep up the good work!
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
There should be only on version or edition of windows 8.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Its unfair to hide the configuration details of the laptop(like processor, memory, model etc) and also the programs installed on it :( !! I would like to stand in ovation if the laptop has a most commonly used configuration (cost <1K $) :) !!
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
@zorro, Shahriar the data were posted in a comment. The laptop uses a SSD. @Mark yes, run poolmon or xperf to get the causing driver and update the driver to stop it ;) @LongARM I posted a guide to trace slow booting. @AHS0 this is a inflammatory statement which is not true. which kind of slowness do you have? @BumbleBritches57 since XP, the registry is no longer completely loaded in the RAM (only some hives) ;)
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Gotta say that's it's great that we've had no major leaks this time, makes for a much more interesting reveal at BUILD, I personally can't wait to see what the guys have been cooking these past 2 years. Hopefully we also get a preview as well like all the reports suggest, else we might have to phone up them leakers again :P
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
I have a few questions not addressed in the blog :-

Are more services being set to trigger to achieve this? What is the time when the desktop is completely usable (fresh Windows 8 install on a new pc)?
What happens if I shutdown the pc, install new hardware, and power on? From what you said, since I did not use the option to do a cold shutdown, the hardware will not be recognized, right? This is unacceptable - at the minimum, Windows should detect new hardware and discard the hibernated session if it finds any? Hw enum should not take too long.
Are there any other scenarios where hibernating the kernel session is going to cause problems? Like others have said, hibernation is not exactly foolproof.

Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Shall be among the first to download the beta.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Shall be among the first to download the beta.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Shall be among the first to download the beta.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Shall be among the first to download the beta.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
and I want to try, when the public beta
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Why does HP discourage its customers to enable UEFI? img190.imageshack.us/.../hpuefi.png
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
My legal team is eagerly waiting for Win 8 beta so we can figure what to sue in Win 8.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Is windows 8 beta available on September 13?
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
What's new? We have Windows Embedded 7 (not CE) boots in 6 seconds on old Atom board? www.youtube.com/watch
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Nice job there! Looking forward to seeing the reduced boottime in Windows 8.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Gr8 Job guys. Is this applicable for Win8 Server? Coz after connecting WS08R2 to Corporate domain/any other domain boot time increases 3-4 times. It would be really gr8 if Win8 Server take less time.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
yes of course, but lets see at the end maybe its another winfs promise
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky Please don't punish existing customers by locking out features from current hardware. I explain what I mean in this blog post. www.tabletslatepad.com/.../windows-8-widescreens-tablet-pcs.html
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Did you remember that ? When you first time finished install windowXX(not matter which version all the same) , first boot is very fast but after days after days ! when your software had installed a lots in it ! then it will become slow and slow ! that is the problem of window system ! so ...no matter which version it is the problem still unable to found solution !
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Monday morning. Time to fly. Hope to see many of you at BUILD.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
Looking good! If this is delivered, Microsoft is back on top!
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
I have been using MS OS products since DOS 1.0 and Windows 1.0. As Windows has grown, boot times have noticably declined, even with increased CPU "horsepower." This will be a very welcome change. The faster the better, so we can get to work! It would be terrific if the same concept could be backwardly migrated to Win7! I have beta tested almost every new Win release. I look forward to beta testing Win8, when it finally arrives. I don't yet have atouch screen for my desktop or laptop and probably will not for some time. So, it will be inetresting also to see how and whether the new Win8 UI allows us "old timers" to revert back to some "power user" mode that relies on the traditional menu struture, rather than pictured tiles. Tx.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
I think that in W7 the boot time was nice improved from previous versions (since Windows 2000 at least). Get better boot time in new Windows version will be a really apreciated stuff, but the main question here is about the performance time to run weights process.
Anonymous
September 11, 2011
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Anonymous
September 12, 2011
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Anonymous
September 12, 2011
Guys, Guys, don't get so excited. It most probably doesn't boot the entire OS. It's just a start screen. to make it fast they first will load the kernel itself and the application you have chosen, then the rest of it... it's impossible to load the entire OS this fast!
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
@Brian Amstutz - Yes, when users select "Shutdown", Windows 8 has the new behavior described above by default. After completing shutdown on Win8, yes, it’s safe to unplug a desktop machine. @Behzad - The mechanism described above loads/resumes the kernel, session 0 services and other infrastructure to get to the login prompt. I.e. you can think of the Win8 boot process as having as many pieces of the OS loaded/initialized as Win7 does when you're at the login prompt after booting.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
Are we going to get a ARM compiled .net framework 4.x with the Windows 8 ARM version??
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
AMAZING!!!!! Congratulations Windows Developer Team!!!!
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
I can guarantee you that unless they popularize Sleep mode, people are going to start telling you that it takes longer to boot than iPad.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
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Anonymous
September 12, 2011
@Steven Sinofsky - Can't wait for the pre-release....good luck with the keynote at BUILD :)
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
i have been using an html5 OS for a couple of months now, not knowing that win8 will be similar in concept, and it would be a blast to try it out, so when will we get a beta release?
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
give beta tomorrow? is talking too long
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
@SCOOBY_666UK thank you very much!
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
As i believed, this is a lie, at least for those people with BIOS and a HDD. Thanks Microsoft for, yet, another lie !
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
hiiiiiiiii i am miachel and i am the big fan of this site
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
@Steven Beta beta beta beta beta beta pls pls pls pls pls pls. Do not make us wait any longer !!!!
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
Still problems with getting comments showing up here.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
Lets see when she is released what we really get in practical use.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
No meaning to write here anymore....they have already decided the most things about Windows 8 according to some sources i have. Windows 8 will f.ex be released with the same versions as Vista and Windows 7, no more no less. Whatever we demand they don't care about. If they did listen Windows 8 shouldn't be Windows 7 SP2...as it seem to be. No, it would go further back to like 2000 or XP, the versions people really love.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
Yes, vey nice, Windows will be up in 10s! However, let's not forget that you need to use the apps , not just the OS. If the app and user session is fresh, the loading of those will be similar. You essentially save up in driver loading time. Driver re-initialization i still performed. If Windows 8 uses the app pre-fetch feature similar to Windows 7, you will have a loaded OS but you will still be waiting for the fetching of the applications which is, in fact, what you need to use a PC. Summary: Marketing, you load Windows very fast. It does not mean you are able to use the system yet, though.
Anonymous
September 12, 2011
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Anonymous
September 12, 2011
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Anonymous
September 13, 2011
@Bill Karagounis: Thanks for the clarification.
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
Hello, I don't see really why this couldn't be part of a service pack for windows 7. All elements seem to already be part of the OS. Am I wrong ? Also can anyone reply to Paul Thomson questions ? Thanks!
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
BUILD! Watch the keynote. http://www.buildwindows.com/
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
My first greatest excitement was WinXP, then nearly a decade later, Win7 wow'd me. Win8 is looking to be yet another huge push in the right direction. I don't know all of what has changed at MS, but I'm feeling like it has gotten a renewed breath of creativity.
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
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Anonymous
September 13, 2011
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Anonymous
September 13, 2011
This boot time is with SSD's or not ?
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
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Anonymous
September 13, 2011
SSD i'm sure and Windows 8 is Awesome here with the boot times.
Anonymous
September 13, 2011
My company laptop has Bitlocker full disk encryption. It has to be shut down completely when not in use so that the encryption key is erased. The key is re-loaded from USB memory stick at next startup.
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
Great news, indeed startup time is an essential measure for a computer and OS performance, the video is amazzing. It makes sense to hibernate the stuff doesnt change often on a typical system. Regards
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
I am testing this on a fujitsu q550 with an ssd. I am getting a 30 second boot time. I am going to continue testing it and hope this time goes down.
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
Currently downloading the developer preview, and looking forward to tests on both an Acer Iconia Tab and my Sony Vaio. The Acer has an AMD x86 processor, while the Vaio has an Intel Core i5. It will be interesting to compare the differences between how the new software affects both hardware platforms, though I wouldn't say the machines are equivalent in any sense of the word. My Vaio is a power-house compared to the Acer tablet, but I'm looking forward to testing out the new touch interface compared to the regular old mouse and keyboard. I thought I'd have to wait a lot longer for this!
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
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Anonymous
September 14, 2011
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Anonymous
September 14, 2011
Yes, I'm agreed with the majority - Hibernate is out out out! :) Windows 8 looks great too. (As seen on TV this AM). All the best.
Anonymous
September 14, 2011
If Windows 8 is going to be using EFI or BIOS have you already been working with the System Center team on the changes to SCCM? When you use SCCM to build it tags the system based on the BIOS ID. One issue you have with using SCCM to put a windows image on Mac hardware is that EFI has no bios ID.
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
Oh PLEASE! How many needed resources loaded during this boot? You can't begin to compare this with Lion.
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
@Steven Hi, I have an idea (implementation) for Windows 8...... I'd like to see a super bar like that in this link, that we can enable/disable with a combination of keys.....Or a way that put this super in background an when we want with the combination it returns.....the link is this desmond.imageshack.us/.../scaled.php Please I really like this way to organize my files/programs and it can be useful for tablet pcs, for example these icons can rotate with the rotary movement of the fingers in the touch screen....thanks for listening to me, I really hope that there will be this function
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
@Steven Excuse me for double post, this is the link where is painted the super bar desmond.imageshack.us/.../scaled.php
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
Found this on youtube an admittedly slow computer: a 2.6 Ghz Pentium 4. it still takes around 3 min. to load windows 8 www.youtube.com/watch
Anonymous
September 15, 2011
I installed windows 8 on DELL 1720 laptop, 4 year old machine with 5400 RPM hdd and 3 GB RAM, core 2 duo T7300, it boots in 11.1 seconds. I really appreciate the work done by windows team on this. And for those who feel slow boot on their existing win Xp/Vista/7, type msconfig on run, then disable unnessary services and programs to start with windows, your system will boot fast. For example, my DELL 1720 laptop with Win Vista buisness with 130 GB of program installed boot in 33 seconds. That is pretty good.
Anonymous
September 16, 2011
I installed it on a HP g50 core 2 duo 5800, 3gb ram and 5400 rpm disk. Windows 8 boots in about 20 seconds!!! It's great!!!! Great work windows 8 team!!!!
Anonymous
September 16, 2011
I installed it on a HP g50 core 2 duo 5800, 3gb ram and 5400 rpm disk. Windows 8 boots in about 20 seconds!!! It's great!!!! Great work windows 8 team!!!!
Anonymous
September 18, 2011
can you please tell me after un-instillation and instillation of driver or application should we do normal reboot or is there separate reboot for clean restart?
Anonymous
September 18, 2011
OMG THIS is the best tecnology i can`t tell what i mean
Anonymous
September 19, 2011
A major problem with the Windows 7 shutdown sequence is the screen that comes up saying which applications are not closed. The problem is that it comes up way too quickly. In Windows XP, if an application needed my input before closing (e.g. to save a file), I could switch to it, give my input, and then the application would close and the shutdown process would continue. In Windows 7, if an application is waiting for input and doesn't close almost immediately, then the screen comes up saying that Windows is waiting for the application to close, but I can't switch to it to give my input to allow it to close! I have to cancel the shutdown process, switch to the application, give my input and allow the application to close, and then restart the shutdown process. If there was another app that also needed my input, I have to do it all again. It is just a huge waste of time. Please remove this behavior and return to the Windows XP application shutdown process.
Anonymous
September 19, 2011
Great one. The previous one, Windows 7 is comparatively better in booting process. We appreciate your interest to fast up. Eagerly waiting for the new Windows for us. Ahsima http://www..m6.net
Anonymous
September 20, 2011
نحى ميكروسوفت على هذا الوندوز المتطور
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Impressive! Looking forward to it.
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Impressive! Looking forward to it.
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Will you be implmenting wake from sleep via RDP for Windows 8?
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
post used to be slow mainly due to memory testing, and enumeration of devices which have set timeout values for response. UEFI is no big deal, just marketing has begon. Other things boot up instantly (1 second) from scratch, so MS is 15 years behind other boot technology.
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Great work! And very interesting article. Tnz itz really really amaizing still i cnt belve my eyes
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Great work! And very interesting article. Tnz itz really really amaizing still i cnt belve my eyes
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Great work! And very interesting article. Tnz itz really really amaizing still i cnt belve my eyes
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
Well, eventhough it makes this O/S faster to boot, I question: then all of those that uses windows 7, would be given the right to make that O/S becomes windows 8? Or would have to pay for that? I'll see how fair-ness works in Microsoft.
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
I would have to try it and see for myself and almost was said about windows vista ,and windows 7 but what gliches is going to have and or how much different it`s going to be than all the older versions of window
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
I would have to try it and see for myself and almost was said about windows vista ,and windows 7 but what gliches is going to have and or how much different it`s going to be than all the older versions of window
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
I do see this being a big advantage on older PC's
Anonymous
September 21, 2011
We are waiting to see new OS: Windows 8 on our PC's.
Anonymous
September 22, 2011
Sell the XP Pro code to someone and let them purvey it please.
Anonymous
September 22, 2011
Well, it looks like I will be transitioning from win7 to win8 as soon as its available.. Need a beta tester?
Anonymous
September 22, 2011
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Anonymous
September 22, 2011
now i'm using windows 7, but i can't waiting for windows 8............ can u give a beta copy or when it'll be published...................
Anonymous
September 22, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 22, 2011
When's the beta out or is there an alpha?
Anonymous
September 23, 2011
All not what. But I faced other problem. When I have flooded in process of the work Windows эмейл and password on mail Windows Live ID,that me was pleasantly and comfortable work with OS and интернетом(all available and before nosom),but suddenly I his(its) has accidentally switched off and has rerun and I here speak the machine that нада enter the эмейл and password of the mail. I entered,but back has forgotten that after rebooting internet is switched off and from the very beginning work Windows not включеш. Searched for the way of the pass-by of such casus,but without результатно and happened to переустанавливать Windows. So here is me and came the idea-offer about alternative of the loading internet контента at the beginning initially started process Windows. But тоесть-give several buttons on determinations relationship with интернетом before entering the mail or password in system,or button for acknowledgement of the automatic connection internet контента not so-so before entering the password. And to become,such here is remark-define the list obligatory combination buttons for usual PC (primer-win+q,Win+R,Win+U,Win+P and etc and publish these positions of the buttons.). These pair(vapour)s of the buttons with plus in work will provide that a few function for PC that are submitted for flatbed PC,mobile telephone and etc that with touch дисплеем. And these buttons will подрожать such actions. Though such and are present,but not on all actions.
Anonymous
September 26, 2011
What's the system specs? From a cold start my laptop (running Fedora 15 Linux) is 45 seconds. 22 seconds using hibernate... My Main desktop (again Fedora 15 Linux) is around 20 seconds from cold start... hibernate never tested. Curious to know the comparison but without the system stats it's meaning less. 8 seconds with what?
Anonymous
September 26, 2011
It doesn't matter how fast a vanilla Win8 (or Win7 for that matter) boots up. Once your IT department gets their hands on it with their ultimately efficient scripting skills, the effective boot time will again be in minutes.
Anonymous
September 28, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 15, 2011
A question. Will the Boot splash screen be user customizable (or at least let the user select the background color)? Or will MS make it the same uncustomizable screen with a black background color? Also is this thing about not allowing the user the possibility of modifying that screen because MS want to keep users from changing the background color to something other than black, white or gray and/or changing the animation to something other than the windows logo? Check my previous post about it here: blogs.msdn.com/.../engineering-the-windows-7-boot-animation.aspx
Anonymous
October 17, 2011
Like others have said, I wonder how Win8 will perform with a bunch of applications installed, increasing the size of various databases that have to be verified every boot, creating drive seeking which can decrease throughput up to 90%.
Anonymous
October 17, 2011
complete report on windows 8 & ppt including features,development , language usedand all techinal aspects
Anonymous
October 17, 2011
complete report on windows 8 & ppt including features,development , language usedand all techinal aspects

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Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8

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