Reengineering the Windows 8 boot experience

With continued innovation in the hardware ecosystem, the biggest shift in firmware in 30 years, and software changes leading to boot times of ~7 seconds on machines with solid-state drives (SSDs), we decided it was time to bring the PC boot user experience into the 21st century. In a previous post by Gabe Aul, we discussed how fast startup mode will make faster boot times a reality in Windows 8. You may have noticed from his fast boot video that boot felt different – not only was it super fast, it was seamless, from the time the power was switched on all the way to the Start screen. In this post, we will explore how the team has reimagined the complete Windows boot user experience to make that possible.

If you think about the experience of powering up a PC today, first, you most likely see several circa-1980 text console screens flash by as the computer enters the Power-on Self-test (POST) phase of boot. A few seconds later, rendering is handed from the basic input/output system (BIOS) over to Windows, and you see a graphical animation before landing at the logon UI. In Windows 7 today, all of this happens over a span of about a minute on average. Now, imagine all of that flying by on your screen in approximately 7 seconds – that’s a lot of transitions in a short period of time!