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Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux

Posted by timothy on from the linux-to-the-rescue dept.

BiOFH writes "TechNewsWorld is reporting that InterVideo has a solution for slow boot times runing Windows XP MCE. 'The new Linux-based InstantOn software -- designed to help Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs boot more quickly -- is aimed at taking advantage of the power of Intel's Pentium processors, not at fixing fragmented hard drives. The software integrates into the computer's BIOS and the operating system.'" According to this article, the software uses a small Linux partition on the user's hard drive. I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.

20 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. i want fast pre os booting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have an amd64 msi board which took 25 sec. just to show the grub prompt ...

    Everytime the stupid bios checks the whole system if there is new Hardware, oh and of course every sata or raid controller have to do the same .. guess what, i dont put in new Hardware every time i power it on!
    I wish there would be a fast option which just save your settings one time and when you dont boot with a special key it just skips all the rubbish i dont care about.

    troll? maybe ...

  2. Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! by adrianbaugh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought Linux also re-did (or had the ability to re-do) pretty much everything the BIOS did, purely to fix up cretinous BIOSes that didn't do their stuff properly. I can see why that would scare you as a BIOS programmer (not knocking your personal ability, you understand) but surely the simple answer is for the BIOS industry to improve its standards so that OSes don't have to incorporate numerous workarounds.

    --
    "'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
    - JRR Tolkien.
  3. Windows is already faster than linux by menscher · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Didn't we just (a few months ago) have a /. story about how to speed up linux boottimes (by parallelizing stuff) so it could stay competitive with WinXP? Somehow I don't think this is going to help.

    Meanwhile, my shiny new RHEL 3.0 box isn't mounting NFS filesystems on boot because the network hasn't finished initializing yet. Apparently it takes the network about 30 seconds to come up. Wonder if that's a gigE thing. :(

  4. The makers of LinDVD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    We've heard about them before in the context of LinDVD

    Someone should really ask them when LinDVD will be launched to the public. It sounds like a more stable player than Xine/VLC/Ogle/mplayer

    Seems to work, they've had it shipping on IBM Linux Laptops for a while.

    1. Re:The makers of LinDVD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've seen it-I took a basic networking class at the Hayward Adult School over a year ago, and the instructor demonstrated a fully working version of it on Linux Mandrake 8 with the film "Minority Report." He wanted to prove that Linux could do most things Microsoft Windows could to a Microsoft Windows-oriented group of students.

      I don't know if it's significantly better than the alternatives though. The GUI looked like their old WinDVD 2000 program from '99.

  5. This isn't the solution to the problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The solution to the long boot time problem isn't quicker boots, it's getting rid of the need to boot or reboot! Think about it, Handheld devices are designed so that they don't need regular reboots. Embedded devices are the same way. My Tivo takes forever to boot up, much longer than my laptop running Windows or Linux, but it doesn't bother me because the only time I reboot it is when it's moved! The solution to these issues is not faster on time, it's always on! This is where Linux has a big lead too, even though WinXP is much better than 9x in terms of stability it still can't beat Linux when measuring stability in weeks and months...

  6. Re:Vaporware! by gid13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Any CD-based Linux distro can achieve the a similar effect with far more functionality."

    Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I really doubt you can show me a live CD that can hand off to an installed Windows.

    Furthermore, live CDs, while great, are not the solution to slow boot times.

    And just cause it's related, I set up my VectorLinux (with kernel 2.6.1) to boot right into KDE, and timed it against Windows XP (on the same computer, so there's no hardware advantages). From pressing enter in Grub to being inside the WM, Linux won by about 15 seconds.

  7. Re:Common sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    BootVis forces a boot optimization defrag, which places boot files towards the fastest part of the disk. You can run this yourself without BootVis with the command:

    Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

    It's supposed to run every few days when your computer is idle anyway. Personally, I prefer Raxco's PerfectDisk which can handle this boot file defragging itself. BootVis is useful for figuring out the bottlenecks in your boot though.

  8. Re:Common sense by MrAngryForNoReason · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The bootvis page explicitely says that it's a poor choice of a tool by end users for improving boot times. So, um... what do you use it for that makes you impressed with it?

    It impresses me by shaving significant time off boot times. However Microsoft describe it bootvis can do a lot, depending of course on how fast your boot is already and the factor that is slowing it down. If you load a lot of services at startup then bootvis is a great help.

    Or didn't you realise that what Microsoft say, and what actually happens aren't always the same?

  9. Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design by cmacb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My recollection is that Windows boot times first started getting bad (WFW booted pretty fast comparatively) when publications like CNet were bending over backwards (or was it the other way) to show how much faster Office was than competing products. The benchmarking consisted of: (1) boot both systems, (2) start timers, (3) start application, (4) start benchmark series, (5) end application, (6) stop timers.

    Lo, and behold, more and more initialization work for Office, and then IE, started showing up in the Windows boot sequence.

    Merging applications into the OS is BAD DESIGN, but it won the poorly thought out benchmarks that many organizations used to select their "productivity" tools. Now Windows, and Windows users will pay the price. Serves them right.

    Sure, leave your Windows machines running 24/7 to avoid the boot delay. Linux and OS X users have that option too, but for them it is truly an option, not something they NEED to do.

    1. Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design by cmacb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, I DO know something about optimizing large systems, even though I don't work at Microsoft. Judging by your photo, most of my work in that area was done when you were very very young.

      In a character mode system you can put a prompt up for the user almost immediately. You don't actually have to be ready to process his input yet, just grab keystrokes. You finish initialization while the user is still thinking and typing. You don't need to initialize memory at all. Unless your code is buggy to begin with and you need zeros there for debugging, allocate space as needed and allow it to start out random. I know most modern systems don't do this, but it's been done.

      GUI systems are of course a lot more involved. Can the part of the system that draws the screen and all the icons be isolated so as to get that up before loading all the common elements from Internet Explorer, Word, etc (and NO, they don't show up as separate entries on the task list!)? Yes, they probably could, but as those components get more and more bloated they each have their own initialization requirements.

      I'm quite sure people at Microsoft don't sit around twiddling their thumbs and TRYING to make the system less efficient. They DO have a vested interest in making ordinary PCs less and less desirable each year so that the hardware upgrade cycle needs to continue. Every new version of Windows has a larger memory footprint and that has to do with putting more and more stuff on the critical path between turning the system on hand handling that first mouse movement.

      I was doing my OWN benchmarking of these systems during the NT 3.5-4.0 timeframe and I DO know what I am talking about.

  10. Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! by ctr2sprt · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I don't understand why it scares you, or why it gives MS any more control than they have now. If you more or less eliminate the BIOS, it means the operating system needs to do more work itself. Big deal. All modern operating systems ignore 95% of the BIOS anyway. It wouldn't be a significant change from the current situation, and OSes are much smarter than BIOSes anyway. They do a far superior job of resource allocation.

    Now consider the scenario where BIOSes get bigger. Remember that BIOSes are on a chip, which makes them damn hard for normal home users to replace or modify. If some DRM crap gets put in there, it's nearly impossible to remove. Now that's the part that's scary. The BIOS might refuse to boot unrecognized OSes, in which case you're SOL. But if it's the OS that's handling DRM, well, someone will have a crack for it a week before the OS comes out. Or you can uninstall the OS and run one without DRM, like Linux. Or you can install Linux and write some DRM software. Or whatever.

  11. Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! by runderwo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Some things that the BIOS does can't be re-done. For instance, Athlon 64 SMP configuration must be done by the BIOS and cannot be done after the kernel has been booted, like x86 MPS can. Other types of things absolutely have to be done at initialization time for you to even get to the kernel.

    LinuxBIOS project has the right idea by ideally cutting out as much cruft from the system firmware as possible and leaving it up to the OS to perform initialization, but in reality some tasks are forced onto the firmware by design.

    --
    LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
  12. Fujitsu Lifebook by jmichaelg · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My business partner has a Fujitsu P1100 Lifebook. It runs on Windows and takes quite awhile to boot up but once it's up, she never turns it off. When she's done using whatever program, she just closes the lid and it goes to sleep. When she needs to use it, she opens the lid and 10 seconds later she's back doing whatever she was when she last closed the lid. She bought the extra large battery so it'll run for 7 hours or so between charges. It's pretty neat.

    The only downside is the screen is very small so if you're at all far sighted, it's hard to read. Not a problem for her so she's happy.

  13. Re:Memory images on disk by nacturation · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check out notes for the KeyKOS project:

    http://www.eros-os.org/project/novelty.html#persis tence

    There's an interesting story regarding Novell there. Anyway, that OS would take snapshots of the entire memory state every N seconds so that even if you pulled the plug out of the wall while the machine was running, you'd be back up to where you left off (minus some seconds) as it simply reloaded everything from disk again.

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  14. MS already has their own BIOS.. by T-Ranger · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In the XBox. Which is kinda-sorta a PC, but not quite, because it dosent have a compatable BIOS.

    If MS was to start producing BIOSes, which Im sure they could do, they would have to maintain compatability with the existing BIOSes of the world.

    There are pleanty of things that are not MS OSs that use the BIOS. Ghost. PXE. DOS before Netware (do they still do this?). Recovery CDs. And of course the OSS OSs.

    I have no idea how much the license for something like Phoenix BIOS costs. Less then a dollar per mobo, Im sure. Lets say that MS starts giving away their BIOS: How many PC hardware manufacturers are going to switch, to save pennies, at the risk of no longer making PC hardware? The hardware world has settled on using industry standards a long time ago. Not even MS can change that.

  15. Re:Vaporware! by kfg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes. S5 and/or pulling the plug was what I was alluding to when I said "turn it off," and you can't get through airport security (or at least you shouldn't be able to) with a hibernating laptop.

    I'm afraid I've been feeding a troll who came in yelling "moron," but who clearly has never measured current draw of computers in various states.

    If the computer consumed no power how would it be possible to Wake-on-Lan and/or without a full software reboot.

    Any form of "Instant On" is using some power for something somewhere. There aren't little power pixies hiding in the machine to take care of these things.

    For most people these little bits of power dribble are irrelevant, but if you're out in the middle of an ocean (or even a larger lake) on a small boat with no engine, completely dependent upon sun, wind and muscle for electricity generation you learn to completely disconnect anything you aren't intending to use for awhile.

    KFG

  16. Apple by bluewee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Last time that I was using an Apple Powerbook, it seemd to boot nearly instantly. How are they doing this? Parrell int scripts? I have tried to emulate this through using Hibernate, but it still takes 10+ seconds to get to a working state.

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    1. Re:Apple by BiOFH · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Boot time on my Powerbook has slowed over time (with the adding of more and more apps and assorted crap), but I know what you're talking about. With a fresh install it boots like a cat stuck it with a fork. But one thing that hasn't changed is wake-from-sleep. The damned thing is awake and ready before I get the lid all the way up.

      But, to sort of answer your question in a half-assed way, it's my understanding that there is a lot going on in the boot ROM, instead of from disk, that speeds up a New World Mac's startup.

      --
      - I am made of meat.
  17. Re:Vaporware! by egreB · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you put your computer in "hibernate" it is the same as power-off, which is 3 watts of energy.

    Your may very well be right, but what exactly is the 2 or 3 watts used for when the computer is powered off? I can put my (fairly new) Linux-laptop into hibernation (writing all memory pages to disk and turn off), remove its battery and go mountain climbing for a week. It will still power up and recover quite nicely. Of course the battery to keep the clock running is there, but in my experience it uses a great deal less than 2 watts, as it might be powering the clock for years. Same goes for my workstation. I have a good'ol AT power supply which physically turns the power off with the power switch. Doesn't consume a single watt from my power lines, to my knowledge.

    Come to think of it, newer motherboards than my workstation has LEDs on them, but I can't imagine them to consume more than a few milliwatts.