Haiku is very fast at booting, but it seems Winows 8, did a good job.
Look at this video
Heh, that is amazingly fast.
But I’ll wait to see what kind of boot times actual users get before making any conclusions about Windows 8.
Its not booting… its hibernating the kernel only so drivers don’t have to be reloaded so basically this is a faster form of hibernation.
User pages are not saved only the kernel state… so some things have to reload but the fact is hardware initialization is slow so may as well skip as much of that as possible. also loading an entire system image from disk is slow… so compromise and load the kernel and reload the userspace fresh
Can the kernel hibernate with the power off? I thought that taking the battery out and putting it back in would prevent that kind of shenanigans, but I’m not sure.
But I certainly would be interested to know the specs of that machine. Specifically, if it is using a Solid State Drive. I don’t have one (or have ever had one), but I’ve read that they are amazingly fast – far faster than a regular hard drive. If the laptop is booting from an SSD, then it would be much more instructive to see it boot from the usual magnetic drive that has to spin up.
ok, cb88, I think I see what you’re saying…
If the kernel can be put into a special state (hibernating, or whatever you call it) so that at boot time, all that has to be done is load and start the kernel, and then reload a previously saved state, while skipping over the hardware initialization, then that could account for the amazing speed. And if that is how they are doing it in the video – and, of course, I don’t know that they are – but if it is, then the video is essentially fraudulent.
ah hell, it looks like it’s an outright fake anyway…
I was reading the comments on youtube and someone noticed something that I didn’t – there’s an edit at 0:30. It’s so subtle that it can easily be missed. But just stare at the lady’s head on the 30sec mark and you’ll notice a very quick cut. The alignment between takes is very good, but not perfect.
I dont think microsoft would do a fake, because anyway windows 8 comes soon on market. I think from such a big company it’s nearly impossible to expect fakes. I dont think that they can afford making fake videos.
To answer cipri, no I don’t think Microsoft itself would put out a fake video, but I wondered if a zealous supporter hadn’t engaged in a little bit of tomfoolery when posting it to YouTube. But I found the original video from MS, and it’s clearly not a fake, so I take that back.
Boot times on my PC
PC specs:
CPU - Pentium 3 Tualatin @ 1.3GHz
RAM - 2x 256MB PC133 SDRAM
GPU - ATI Radeon 9600 (AGP x4 slot)
Mainboard - MSI-6309
HDD - PATA 40GB 7200rpm
Windows 7 Ultimate boot time: 1min 57s
Windows 8 build 7955 x86 boot time: 1min 48s
Lubuntu 11.04 boot time 1min 12s
Haiku R1 A3 boot time: 31s
TinyCore Linux boot time: 28s
MS-DOS 7.1 boot time: 9s
ok, this should give the definitive answer about booting in Windows 8:
This includes a link to the original high def mp4 video. After downloading it, I could see that my original idea about the video being doctored was unfounded. Of course, the edit at about 34secs in (after the boot) is there, but that’s of no consequence.The other one that I thought I was seeing, at around 31secs, isn’t there. It was probably an artifact of the conversion when posted to YouTube.
As the doc outlines, they clearly are showcasing the new fast boot method which revives a previously hibernated kernel. The saved state is read from a file called hiberfil.sys. All the details are in the linked page.
As long as MS is up-front about what the video represents, that’s fine. But that’s why I think that the video they released is quite misleading. The lady making the presentation (Emily) should have clearly stated what was being shown – namely, the new Windows 8 fast boot sequence that resumes from a previously hibernated system, and that, furthermore, the laptop was a high-end machine with a SSD drive.
Those interested might also look at this MS blog, which has not only the link to the boot info page, but to other technical pages about Windows 8:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/
[quote=ribbonz]ok, this should give the definitive answer about booting in Windows 8:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx
This includes a link to the original high def mp4 video. After downloading it, I could see that my original idea about the video being doctored was unfounded. Of course, the edit at about 34secs in (after the boot) is there, but that’s of no consequence.The other one that I thought I was seeing, at around 31secs, isn’t there. It was probably an artifact of the conversion when posted to YouTube.
As the doc outlines, they clearly are showcasing the new fast boot method which revives a previously hibernated kernel. The saved state is read from a file called hiberfil.sys. All the details are in the linked page.
As long as MS is up-front about what the video represents, that’s fine. But that’s why I think that the video they released is quite misleading. The lady making the presentation (Emily) should have clearly stated what was being shown – namely, the new Windows 8 fast boot sequence that resumes from a previously hibernated system, and that, furthermore, the laptop was a high-end machine with a SSD drive.
Those interested might also look at this MS blog, which has not only the link to the boot info page, but to other technical pages about Windows 8:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/[/quote]
The method of achievement is largely irrelevant, if the user experiences power cycles this fast for most everyday use, it meets the expectation.I am wondering about cold boot performance but there seems to be little reason to expect that everyday use won’t achieve this goal with the hibernation idea.
also its no surprise that Microsoft wouldn’t put itself in the best light it could, slow boot up has been a complaint from users since windows 3.1