We previously told you that Windows 8 could manage a cold boot in eight seconds flat, and that still holds true, but now there are reports that an SSD-equipped PC can manage it in under seven seconds. It’s not a huge difference in boot time, but it does create a minor and rather curious problem. Mainly, the user no longer has enough time to interrupt the boot menu.

Chris Clark, program manager at Microsoft’s User Experience team, explains in a Building Windows 8 blog post that a mere 200 millisecond window is all the time available to users if they want to make changes to a PC’s boot setup.

A new method

Since the Windows software and general computer hardware have become too fast for us puny humans, the days of reading “Press F2 to enter setup” are over and Microsoft recognizes the need to offer an alternate way of accessing the familiar boot menu. They found their top tappers could only manage about a 250ms frequency and catching that elusive 200ms opportunity was based a lot on chance. In other words, the added speed became the opposite of user friendly.

In response, the team came up with three solutions that work together to solve the issue. Clark notes in his post that “no one should need to learn how Windows is built” and the team wanted the new boot options to “just work”. A refreshing choice of words as Windows is notorious for requiring complicated work arounds for simple problems depending on hardware, software version, and general computer skills of the user. But keeping with their new, simplified design aesthetic Microsoft has decided to make a single menu for every boot option.

How it works

Microsoft’s solution is a three-pronged approach:

1. The various boot settings that have previously been scattered from one end of Windows to the other will now be available in a single boot options group
2. The menu will automatically appear whenever Windows is prevented from booting up correctly
3. Microsoft is providing the user with plenty of different ways to bring up the new menu at will.

Basically, although you will no longer be able to access the boot menu from the start up screen, you’ll still be able to check it out once your PC has finished booting up. Specifically, you can bring up the menu through Advanced startup on the General tab of your PC’s settings. From there, you can choose to Restart now and choose a new start up volume during a reboot.

There’s an even quicker method built-in, simply holding down the Shift key while click Restart in your computer’s shutdown menu will cause Windows 8 to reboot into the boot menu as well.

One important note is that these changes are only applicable to newer PCs with UEFI BIOS. This exclusion, according to Chris Clark, can be chalked up to the speed restricitions of older hardware, meaning they will spend enough time booting up for a user to interrupt with the F8 or F2 keys.

The post Windows 8 Boots Too Quickly to Be Interrupted first appeared on Techerator.

Praise be to whoever made this miracle happen, because Windows no longer takes an eternity to load. Now it takes 8 seconds. Yes. I’ll repeat that. 8 seconds. There’s proof in the video below. From fully powered-off to fully powered-on in just under 8 seconds. Even Apple can’t touch that.

Windows 8 has changed the way your computer shuts down. In Windows 7, everything (including the services and devices in the kernel session) are completely turned off. But in 8, the kernel session is put into hibernation mode, rather than being shut down. This allows Windows to avoid restoring the kernel session at every start-up. It’s a change that has improved boot times of PCs by 30-70%.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcH8n_oFf0c

And that is not all folks. The boot process is also going to look better, a detail that may not seem that important until you boot up a MacBook next to a current version of Windows. With Apple, you see a nice spinning wheel with an Apple logo above it, but with the PC, well you’re going to get a mess. Scary scrolling text, jarring screen changes, and finally a couple of graphic screens.

But that’s all changed. Windows 8 will now show the logo of the company that made your computer and follow that up with a graphic windows bootloader. Clean and simple. Two adjectives that Windows have been lacking for a large amount of years. You may have noticed the improved boot screens in the video as well.

But what if you need to do something else during boot up? Like booting into a different operating system? They’ve got a simple user interface for that. They even beautified the screen that allows you to choose which attached media to boot from. Using Windows 7 is starting to look a lot like living in the dark ages. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the ugly, ugly interface that makes up the command prompt. When will this be fixed? Nobody knows. Anyway, I know you don’t believe me, but there is proof in this video:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_PXsY9E3lc

The post Windows 8 Can Do A Cold Boot In 8 Seconds Flat first appeared on Techerator.

This guide will show you how to use the Recovery Console feature provided on the Windows installation CD to repair your system files and get your computer working again.

Potential Symptoms

The computer turns on, but:

• Windows begins to load and then immediately restarts.
• An “Improper Shutdown” message is displayed with the option to boot into Safe Mode, but the computer restarts when this is selected.
• The “Blue Screen of Death” (as shown in this article’s picture) is displayed when starting the computer.

Prerequisites

1. You must acquire the Windows installation disk for the version of Windows you are currently using.  This may be different than the “recovery disk” that your computer manufacturer may have provided with the computer, so it is possible that the steps below may not apply to your CD.  Contact your manufacturer if you are unsure.

• Warning: The system recovery disks provided by the manufacturer may restore your computer to its original factory state!  This would result in the loss of your data, so please be careful.
• Note: If you have Windows XP SP2 or SP3, you cannot use a Windows XP SP1 CD to run the recovery console.

1. You need to know the Windows administrator password for your computer (if you have no password, this will be blank).

Procedure

1. Insert the Windows installation CD and reboot your computer.  As the computer restarts, look for the message “Press any key to boot from CD” message do so immediately.
2. After loading, you will see a blue screen with some options.  Press the R key to enter the recovery console.
3. Select the Windows installation you wish to log onto (you may only have one).
4. You will be prompted to enter the administrator password for the computer. If you do not have a password, just press enter.
5. You will now see a MS-DOS console screen where you can enter the following commands to repair your system:

• Type fixboot and press enter.
  • This will re-write the Windows boot record. This can resolve problems if your computer cannot locate the operating system.
• Type chkdsk /R C: and press enter.
  • This initiate a disk checking function and repairs damage it encounters.
  • If this test completes successfully, reboot the computer to see if the problem has been resolved.
• Optional: If the above two commands didn’t work, you can try typing ‘fixmbr’ in the recovery console and pressing enter.
  This can potentially cause damage to the system’s partition table, so use this only if all other options fail and you only have a single partition on the disk.

If you follow these steps and the problem still persists, you may have to check for  malfunctioning hardware or reinstall your operating system.  Have any extra suggestions to help with Windows system problems?  Share them in the comments!

The post Windows Won’t Boot? Try The Recovery Console first appeared on Techerator.