Windows 8 will feature a faster new boot method, slashing the time it takes to get the OS up and running.
The new system will cut boot times by as much as 70 percent, with Microsoft showing off an SSD laptop starting up in only eight seconds.
"We designed Windows 8 so that you shouldn't have to boot all that often (and we are always going to work on reducing the number of required restarts due to patching running code)," said Windows president Steve Sinofsky in a blog post. "But when you do boot we want it to be as fast as possible."
To that end, Windows 8 will feature a new shutdown method, which is a "hybrid of traditional cold boot and resuming from hibernate", said Gabe Aul, director of programme management for Windows.
In Windows 7, a full shutdown closes the user's sessions as well as the services and devices in the kernel sessions, Aul said. In Windows 8, the user's sessions will still be closed, but the kernel session will merely hibernate.
"If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory," said Aul.
"Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitialising drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested)," he added.
Full Windows 7-style shut downs will still be an option when necessary, Microsoft said.
That's not the only improvement Microsoft is working on. Windows 8 will also use a "multi-phase resume" system that splits the restart work across all cores in parallel, speeding up the start time whether from hibernate mode, full cold boot or the new hybrid start-up system.
Microsoft is set to unveil Windows 8 at its Build conference next week - PC Pro will be bringing you all the news directly from the show.
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