12th Sep2011

Faster Boot Times in Windows 8

by Skibs

The first in a series of Windows 8 “fundamentals” has been posted on the MSDN blog. This entry is concerned with improving the “cold-boot” speeds of machines running Windows 8. The new boot scheme needed to achieve three goals: 1) Effectively zero watt power when off 2) A fresh session after every boot 3) Very fast times between pressing the power button and being able to use the PC.

With this criteria in mind, a “fast startup” modification was proposed which replaces with the lengthy system initialization phase of the boot process with a load of a hiberfile created exclusively of the kernel session followed by driver initialization. With this new scheme, the new OS boasts boot-up speeds which are, on average, 30%-70% shorter than would be had on Windows 7.

[Source: MSDN]