Windows 8 to bring drastically reduced boot times
 

No one wants to sit around and twiddle their thumbs waiting for a PC to boot, and with Windows 8 you won’t have to, according to Microsoft.
In a new post on the Building Windows 8 blog, the company shows off Windows 8′s fast startup mode, which has been optimized to fully utilize the multi-core processors found in nearly all modern computers. Fast startups also taps into the Windows hibernation file to trim boot times — by storing Windows kernel session data there (but not your user session as it does when you fully hibernate a system).


Windows 8 also saves time by not completely enumerating all of a system’s drivers every time it boots. Microsoft does point out that the fast startup process still allows users to “freshen up” drivers and devices. While Windows 8 showed reduced startup times across the board on Microsoft’s 30-system test, the improvements are greatest on systems with solid-state drives and those that utilize UEFI instead of BIOS during the POST process.





Want to see fast startup in action? Check out the Microsoft video below to get an idea just how fast Windows 8 can boot on a quality laptop. In this case, it’s an HP EliteBook 8640p — with an Intel Core i7-2620M, 8GB of RAM, and a 160GB SSD.


You can clearly see that the demo laptop boots to the Metro-style Windows 8 interface — but Steven Sinofsky was quick to point out in the comments that startup times are identical for both the traditional Windows desktop and the tiled start page.