Windows 8 to bring drastically reduced boot times

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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.

Windows 8 fast startup example using HP EliteBook...
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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.