Why Windows 8 Boots so Fast?

You know that Windows 8 booting speed is fast, but have you ever considered “why it is so” and how Microsoft did it to give you the great PC experience ever. Microsoft engineers have done a great job on reducing the Windows booting time at its lowest by making several transitions and that’s why you can get into the Windows 8 and ready to use it in as less as 7 seconds.

Windows 8 can pass the power on self test (POST) screen, render BIOS to Windows and loads graphical window while keeping you at the manufacturer start screen or logo. Once you get into Windows, can choose the desired OS to start with if the system have dual copy of Windows or configure other settings from the same menu like system recovery options, command prompt, system image recovery etc.

Windows 8 is remarkably fast, and you might have no chance to interrupt the boot. Means, you may don’t see options like ‘Press F2 for setup’ or other similar options which can be seen and used in previous versions of Windows.

Below is the comparison graph to have clear idea about how fast you can boot in Windows 8 than Windows 7.

In most modern PC’s containing Windows 8, all you can see is the manufacturer logo for a very little time and then immediately taken to the Windows 8 desktop screen without seeing any BIOS message or Windows booting screen as in its predecessors.

What methodology Microsoft engineers employed or what has been removed/added to make Windows 8 so fast? Have a look on the below facts to explore the ideas behind Windows 8 fast booting.

Why so fast?

Windows 8 booting systems were moderated and redesigned in a way that it takes minimal set of hardware resources and battery energy or power drain. As a result, minimal set of input/output requests are made to access the required boot parameters.

In traditional Windows OS i.e., Windows 7, firmware interface tends to close the entire user sessions, kernel sessions and broadcasts messages to devices, windows services, drivers, printers and running applications to close down any running handles as Windows station is shutting down. If any running applications couldn’t be turned off properly, windows forcefully closes them down after saving any unsaved data on hard drive to make sure that they were not lost.

Where as, Windows 8 turn off only the user session and keep the kernel session running in hibernate mode. Unlike full hibernation, only the exact system state and memory content is stored on disk using ‘hiberfil.sys’ system file and Windows can easily restore them and reinitialize the drivers at very next time you begin using your PC. 

Below are the graphical differentiation between normal boot and Windows 8 boot model, hope you’ll have some clear idea from it:

Though, you can take more benefits of this great boot time by adding an SSD and placing windows on it as SSD reads and access data more fast than traditional hard drives. This great improvements in Windows 8 can draw many other benefits too and make you able to keep Windows running in standby mode over a week or so without having any speed difficulties.

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