Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux

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.

Comments

Vaporware!

[LostCluster]

It doesn't make Windows boot faster. It's just a stripped-down version of Linux which of course is going to boot faster because it provides far less functionality. If you want to get to full Windows, you'll have to wait out the remainder of the boot process you interrupted.

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

Re:Vaporware!

[mikiN]

But there is NEVER a reason to shut down a Windows XP computer (if you're not installing anything or changing settings).

There is ALWAYS at least one reason to shut down ANY computer: to save energy when you don't use it!

Re:Vaporware!

[gid13]

"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.

Re:Vaporware!

[xzai]

From hitting the power button to getting into windows I have a 15 second start time. Just gotta turn fastboot on.

Re:Vaporware!

[gordyf]

How do you install Windows Updates if you're not rebooting?

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

If you want to save as much power as possible turn it off.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[iammaxus]

If its been on for 92 days then you are surely vulnerable to a number of bugs whose patches require restarts.

Re:Vaporware!

[soloport]

Mine runs for about three months at a time, too, but I'm sure there will be 20,000 Slashdot "users" who are willing to claim that we're lying.

You're lying.

I, on the otherhand, happen to be sitting. No... Not on my other hand.

But what's your point?

Ok, and now we need 19,999 more like this post to fulfill this AC's dream. Yeeeeeaaaah! We're going to get a bunch of Slashdotters to fulfill this AC's dream!!!!!! And not only are we going to New Hampshire, we're going to South Carolina and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York. And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to fulfill this AC's dream! Yeeeeeaaaah!!!!!!

Re:Vaporware!

[mcpkaaos]

Maybe he was talking about all the wasted magnetism used to store that data on the disk.

Re:Vaporware!

[Tim C]

Quite a few updates don't require a reboot. These days (= for the last two years at least) reboots have only been required when you're replacing files that are in use, which is not always the case.

Re:Vaporware!

[AstroDrabb]

It is not pointless. Linux is USED for all the multimedia in the device and not MS Windows. The DVD, TV, FM, etc are all handled by LinDVD. This allows the device to boot really fast when you want it for multimedia purposes. If you want/need to do normal desktop stuff, that is when you boot up full MS Windows.

Re:Vaporware!

[rossdee]

"There is ALWAYS at least one reason to shut down ANY computer: to save energy when you don't use it!"

Its winter here in the northern hemisphere, the heat generated by a computer running warms the house. This heat would have to be made up by some other power source (oil, gas or electric heater) so turning a computer off doesnt 'save' any energy.

(Of course if its a laptop running on batteries things would be different.)

Re:Vaporware!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. On my machine (1.8Ghz P4) Redhat 9 and Windows XP Professional both take about the same amount of time from power on to CPU idle (ie: waiting for something to do). Windows XP is faster to present a login screen, but the machine is still not useable until quite a while longer after login.

Re:Vaporware!

[vrmlknight]

How bout suspend or hibernate? suspend uses very little power and hibernate uses none.

Re:Vaporware!

[aardvarkjoe]

so turning a computer off doesnt 'save' any energy.

A computer is hardly an efficient space heater. (An effective one, yes, but mostly because current systems use huge amounts of power.) If you want to save energy, turn off the PC when you're not going to be using it and use the furnace.

Re:Vaporware!

[ortholattice]

But there is NEVER a reason to shut down a Windows XP computer (if you're not installing anything or changing settings). My computer has been on for 92 days and is still as stable and fast as it was on day 1 (super fast and 100% stable).

Since you don't install the security updates (which require a reboot) I certainly hope your computer isn't connected to the Internet. Otherwise it's probably been turned into a zombied relay for spammers who are all too happy with your 92 day uptime.

Re:Vaporware!

[gid13]

That I'm ignorant???

Alas, I think there are plenty that do already. :)

Re:Vaporware!

[root:DavidOgg]

Not to mention the social vunerability that caused him to tell world + dog when his last update was applied :D

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

"Hibernate" IS off. It writes the RAM to disk and shuts down.

Therefore hibernating is shutting down.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[NemoX]

If you use your computer once a day, it is more energy efficient to just put it in stand-by. Most monitors take up more energy then the actual computer does. So, turn off your monitor, and stand-by your computer to be the most efficient.

Don't believe it? Electricity spikes whenever an appliance is powered-on. This is why many people rightfully recommend to turn your monitor on before turning your computer on, so to shield the computer from the electricity spike. That spike takes up a lot of electricity on its own. When I first learned about this in high school, I remember I did a test at home and had my brother turn on the vacuum at while I looked at the power meter on the house. It is true. That meter dial sped up like crazy for a few seconds, then dwindled back down to the vacuum's running electricity level (and of course slowed back down after it was turned off). As you know, it is that meter that determines your electric bill.

Oh yeah, and there are reasons to shut down XP...like when it crashes, and the only thing to do is to power it off, because not even reset works! ;)

Re:Vaporware!

[line.at.infinity]

Its winter here in the northern hemisphere, the heat generated by a computer running warms the house.

That's great, but the power supply fan is really loud. So off it is.

Re:Vaporware!

[kayen_telva]

not all security updates require a reboot and you act like no one has ever heard of firewalls, mozilla, and ICF.

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

Ok. I'm willing to learn. What's the difference between "saving state and shutting down" and "hibernating?"

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[kayen_telva]

please post links to a CD based distro that can boot to a full GUI in 10 seconds. or 20. or 30.

Re:Vaporware!

[ETEQ]

How is XP 64-bit? As I understand it, they had to develop an entirely different version to enable 64-bit functionality... (hence the "Windows XP 64-bit edition")

Re:Vaporware!

[bluGill]

Apperaently you are not a programmer... Okay, the system was windows 2000, but from all accounts it should be just as stable. I used to regularly crash them just by inserting a special CD.

Eventially I figgured out what I had been doing wrong with the ISO9660 filesystem I was writing, once I fixed those bugs I didn't have to reboot. However I no longer belive anyone who says windows is stable. Windows is table only under correct inputs.

I never got to try those CDs under linux/freeBSD, I always wanted to, just to see how they stood up.

Re:Vaporware!

[Rasta Prefect]

But there is NEVER a reason to shut down a Windows XP computer (if you're not installing anything or changing settings).My computer has been on for 92 days and is still as stable and fast as it was on day 1 (super fast and 100% stable).

You know, when you're not using your computer for long periods of time (say, 92 days) you should shut it off. Needless to say, my experiences with XP's stability have been a bit less sterling than yours. (Generally after a few days it's good and ready for a reboot. If I'm developing, once a day minimum).

Re:Vaporware!

[Schmucky The Cat]

Most modern machines can only be completely shut down by pulling the power plug.

Hibernate is called the S4 sleep state. It is still using power because some peripheals can wake the machine. Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Ring, etc.

Re:Vaporware!

[jrockway]

I call BS. On my family's XP box (a P4@2.6 GHz) it takes about 20 seconds from the "login" screen to when icons actually appear on the desktop.

My linux box is started up 8 seconds (with services) after LILO passes control to linux. My BIOS takes a bit of time to init, which is why I doubt your 15 second number. My old motherboard took exactly 15 seconds from power-on to taking the monitor out of standby. The new one takes about 3.

Anyway, I think you're lying. To be fair, though, starting services, etc. is going to be time consuming unless you happen to be using a RAM-based disk (which you're not :), no matter what OS you use. At least Linux tells you what it's doing, though.

Re:Vaporware!

[BuckaBooBob]

There are a Variety of Reasons to reboot a Windows XP Computer... MS Even Says so when you Add a Patch.. and thats Quite often...So 92 days your system has been up.. That means your most likely running a insecure computer on the net.

Other good reason... its 108 in my Apt cause my Air Cond is dead and my Boxen is still overheating even when its not over clocked.

Also I have had Xp Freeze up on me several times (Running a Stable Hardware Platform)... And don't Whine about it being a bad App... Linux can handle Bad apps without a Shutdown.

Re:Vaporware!

[RajivSLK]

A computer is hardly an efficient space heater. (An effective one, yes, but mostly because current systems use huge amounts of power.) If you want to save energy, turn off the PC when you're not going to be using it and use the furnace.

Utter Nonsense. A computer is a 100% effcient space heater, just like any electrical device. Your 300 watt computer is going to produced as much heat as a 300 watt heater.
If you are using standard electric heating your are not saving any energy by turning off your computer, tv, stereo, fridge or any other electrical device. (During the winter ofcourse).

Do people throw around mod points like candy? penny candy? mmmmm candy...

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

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

Re:Vaporware!

[mcpkaaos]

I'm assuming you're kidding.

No way man, I'm protecting the rights of all indentured magnetic forces needlessly doomed to an existence of unnecessary data storage.

Come on people, where is your sympathy? Bring back the punchcard!

I'm assuming you're kidding.

Okay, I was kidding.

Re:Vaporware!

[xzai]

it was a option in my bios also in the boot.ini add /fastdetect /noguiboot

Re:Vaporware!

[Schmucky The Cat]

Yeah, I saw the troll so I chimed in.

Happy sailing to ya. I worked with a guy who had a minimal lifestyle. He'd work 4-6 months a year on a contract and sail the rest of the year. Back in 1995 we had a discussion about the importance of power management.

Re:Vaporware!

[GigsVT]

Most people use heat pumps, which are far more efficient.

Re:Vaporware!

[operagost]

Utter Nonsense. A computer is a 100% effcient space heater, just like any electrical device. Your 300 watt computer is going to produced as much heat as a 300 watt heater.

I don't see how - 100% of its energy is not being converted to heat. Most of it is being converted to light and mechanical energy, in addition to being used in its electrical form. Of course, all of these processes are less than 100% efficient, so they all generate some heat. A space heater, on the other hand, only converts energy to heat! It has no other function (except maybe a small power light).

Re:Vaporware!

[GigsVT]

I wouldn't really say huge amounts of power. Most modern computers, even fully loaded, usually pull about 200 watts on the DC side. Say the power supply is 80% efficient, that's still less than 250 watts.

It's surprising how little power most components use actually. Take hard disks for instance. I once put an ammeter on an array of 4 hard disks... they pulled about 6 or 7 amps on 12 volts during spin up (about two seconds), then only about an amp or two, for all 4 disks.

So you have maybe 100 watts on your motherboard, 20-40 watts on your video card, 20-30 watts per hard disk and optical drive.

Hard disk manufacturers don't really say accurately how much power a disk uses in the datasheets. It seems they stick in boilerplate power consumption values, much higher than actual consumption turns out to be.

The flip side to this is the power supply manufacturers lying about thier power ratings. I guess that balances out in the end. :)

Re:Vaporware!

[GigsVT]

Most of it is being converted to light and mechanical energy

I'm not sure what you are running in your computer!

All the kinetic energy in your computer eventually turns to heat, unless your computer is rolling across the room or something.

A front panel LED is negligible light, less than 1 watt. That's the only light escaping the closed system, so any other light (like a CDROM) turns to heat too.

A computer is very nearly 100% efficient, compared to any other resistive heater. A heat pump will beat a resistive heater any day though.

Re:Vaporware!

[LnxAddct]

Windows OEMs tend to be preconfigured for your system (i.e.Gateway knows your exact hardware configuration) Your linux kernel has support built in for a ton of things it doesn't need or will never use. Try recompiling your Kernel specifically for your system. Also, play with your init scripts, they usually aren't optimized because each system is special. But the best thing is to disable any services you don't need. Check out all the things that boot up at init and unless you are running a server, you probably don't need them, or you could throw it in with the KDE startup script rather then during boot(thats more of the Window's way, that way you feel like your gaining something by seeing the GUI sooner). Anyway..if you rid yourself of most of the server functionality then you're boot time will increase greatly, then compiling a custom kernel will make your computer burn threw the boot up. Finally, tweaking your init scripts and strategically timing when certain services load, the order that they load, etc.. you can have boot times in single digit seconds or low double digits. If you've ever used a windows server, you'd be amazed at how slow they boot. With a linux server versus a windows server booting up, the linux server screams past it even before any of the optimizations that I mentioned before. Your booting mostly slower because you can do *alot* more with a typical default redhat install then you can with a typical windows desktop install. But when comparing servers, linux has always booted significantly faster then windows, at least in my experience ( and yes I do administrate both types of servers).
Regards,
Steve

P.S. One other thing you may want to try is compiling things with Intel's Compiler. I've never tried it, I use GCC for many reasons, but Intel has optimizations that the GCC crew refuse because of cross-platformailty.I don't believe the kernel compiles cleanly, but most apps should. Best of luck.

Re:Vaporware!

[Deternal]

not completely correct.

You don't need to reboot in order to keep the machine up - but often you need to reboot in order to init the new dll's etc.

So in other words, today you can install alot of updates which are then ready the next time you reboot.

Though granted, there are some who take effect immediately - tho no-one but MS knows how many that is.

Re:Vaporware!

[DavidTC]

You are arguing semantics that have nothing to do with the discussion.

'Hibernate' uses the exact same amount of power as choosing 'Shutdown' or pushing the power button. The fact that that isn't truly 'off' isn't incredibly important to anyone. We all know computers haven't truly turned 'off' for half a decade now. I mean, duh, the 'power' button is connected to the motherboard instead of the power supply, and that would have been a rather stupid design decision if it wasn't to allow the motherboard to control power on and power off...which rather obviously requires it to have power all the time.

And there's no way in hell that airport security can tell the difference between a hiberating laptop and a powered off laptop, because a hiberating laptop is a powered off laptop...it's just one that's going to load memory from disk the next time it boots.

And, BTW, you can have a computer that's 'hiberating' and is truely off...you just have to hiberate and pull the power cable. It will boot just as fast when you plug it back in and turn it on.

Re:Vaporware!

[Fallen_Knight]

alot do, and that won't protect you enough without the updates

Re:Vaporware!

[plusser]

When approximately 10% of the world's electrical power is spent on powering computers, then there is a real reason why your electricity supplier might want you to turn your computer off when you are not using it. It is so they don't get in the neck when they need to build more power stations to cover the additional demand, saving you money in the long term.

Re:Vaporware!

[NemoX]

depends on how long you are using your computer for...
Even in "off" mode your computer still consumes 3 watts of energy (2 watts if motherboard and power supply were manufactured after July 2003). In standby mode my 250watt powered PC consumes 5 watts. My 600watt PC consumes 11watts in standby. To be energy star compliant, a 250watt can consume no more then 17.5watts, and anything over 400watts cannot consume more then 10% of the power supply wattage.

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

So, in answer to you question, if you had your computer on for 24 hours not in standby mode, obviously the answer is yes. However, I assume you meant in stand-by for 24 hours, which is exactly why I stated that you had to use your computer at least once a day (which last time I checked was 24 hours). In any case, the actual answer would vary depending on how many hours your computer was in use. But, it is possible, absolutely! As a developer, I have calculated it out in the past for me, and for the amount of hours I put on a computer per day (and how few hours in stand-by), mine definatly outweighs the power spike (minus the monitor's energy of course). I forget how to calculate the power spike off hand, my father was an electrical contractor and gave me a formula, but I don't know where it went.

References: energystar.gov, energy.gov

Re:Vaporware!

[egreB]

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.

Re:Vaporware!

[NemoX]

I don't remember everything it is used for, but it is more then just the LED ;) One thing it does is sit ready for a "power-on" command. Which you would need your battery in the laptop for anyway. Intel's site explains it in full somewhere. I do know that the government supposed to lower it to 1-watt but it has not gone into effect yet. Intel explains in the 1-watt initiative: The 1-watt measurement applies to the S5 standby mode, in which the computer is plugged into the wall, but the power is off on the computer. There is some more info on Intel's site about the 3,2, and 1 watt power consumptions. But, here is one about the bill to lower it to 1-watt: intel article

Note: most documents refer to "power-down" as "stand-by", and windows/linux "stand-by" modes as "sleep".

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

You are arguing semantics. . .

Certainly. It was about semantics before I arrived and I've already admited to feeding the troll.

. . . that have nothing to do with the discussion.

The only thing I'm discussing is power consumption.

'Hibernate' uses the exact same amount of power as choosing 'Shutdown' or pushing the power button. The fact that that isn't truly 'off' isn't incredibly important to anyone.

Since I've already provided myself as a counter example this could be considered an insult I suppose.

. . . which rather obviously requires it to have power all the time.

Which supports my premise.

And there's no way in hell that airport security can tell the difference between a hiberating laptop and a powered off laptop, because a hiberating laptop is a powered off laptop...it's just one that's going to load memory from disk the next time it boots.

The test is simple. Power up the machine. Power it down. Turn the switch to the "off" position. This last they consider critical. A machine that is put into hibernation mode from the shutdown menu or by closing the lid may still be drawing current and providing functionality. See your own above comments.

And, BTW, you can have a computer that's 'hiberating' and is truely off...you just have to hiberate and pull the power cable. It will boot just as fast when you plug it back in and turn it on.

Yes, it will post and restore, and a bit faster than a normal boot because the memory image is compressed, however, while the plug is out some funtionality may well be lost that would otherwise be available because the machine has no power to provide it.

If you want to save as much power as possible turn it off.

Which is where I came into this movie.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[HiThere]

I just don't understand how Linux can have such a ridiculously huge variation in boot times.

Well, I can't give a quantitative answer, so if that's what you're looking for just skip this.

A large part of the variation in boot times has to do with the range of services that load at startup. Linux can be configured in a huge number of different ways. (E.g., I always start postgres, but that's definitely not a requirement...but it makes many things work more nicely.)

If you are only starting the services you need, then you will pay extra if you only start them on a load-when-needed basis, but you *will* get a faster boot.

Someone mentioned customizing the kernel for your hardware...that's another factor, but I've never checked as to whether it's a major one. Some of the reports that I've heard claim that a generic Red Hat kernel generally outperforms most customized kernels made by people who don't *really* know what they are doing.

Another thing that can affect load time is RAM and swap space. But I'm not sure quite how. I think that if you have enough RAM, more swap space slows down the boot time...but you can more than gain that back later...up to a limit, depending on your work load distribution.

This is only a small sample of things that can affect load time, and why different people make different trade-offs.

Re:Vaporware!

[gTsiros]

hibernation means dumping physical ram (if you are to optimise for speed you might as well dump only the part that's used... no need to dump unused mem) to a file on a hard drive (which does not need power to retain data) and prepares the bootloader to do whatever it is necessary.

in short, you can very well dissassemble the entire pc in turn it inside out, whatever. The next time you power it on it will go on from where you left it. It could do some preparation to bring the machine to a hibernation-ready state, i dunno... hibernating in the middle of my game renders my system unbootable the next time...(xp)

but don't change the HW configuration. I don'tthink that would be a safe thing to do.

reminds me of emulators' "save state" heh

Re:Vaporware!

[ShadowRage]

which begs a matrix question...

why didnt the matrix just equip all the geeks and slashdotters with amd systems and a lifetime supply of junkfood and post fake issues up on slashdot and use the heat from the computers and the users to power the matrix?

Re:Vaporware!

[DavidTC]

And there's no way in hell that airport security can tell the difference between a hiberating laptop and a powered off laptop, because a hiberating laptop is a powered off laptop...it's just one that's going to load memory from disk the next time it boots.

The test is simple. Power up the machine. Power it down. Turn the switch to the "off" position. This last they consider critical. A machine that is put into hibernation mode from the shutdown menu or by closing the lid may still be drawing current and providing functionality. See your own above comments.

You still obviously don't know what hiberation is. You can rather easily have a hiberating machine with the switch in the "off" position, or even drawing no power at all, because all a hiberating machine is one that's going to read a special disk file on startup into memory. That's all hiberation means. It's not even a power mode like S4 or S5, it's just a special way of shuttig down and booting, hell, you can do it with an old AT power supply.

You can combine this concept with wake-on-lan or all sorts of new options supported by special power requirements, and those require low-levels of power at all times. But that's nothing to do with hiberation at all.

Re:Vaporware!

[Temporal]

(Running a Stable Hardware Platform)

Bull. The fact that XP froze on you proves only that you are not running a stable platform. Try ASUS A7N8X mobo + NVidia reference video with adequate cooling and you'll never lock up, period. At least, that's what I have, and XP never locks on me. And no, it's not that I don't stress it. I run games galore, develop software, run servers, use two monitors, have two RAID arrays installed (a RAID-5 and a RAID-0), etc. etc.

(And if Linux is perfectly stable for you, all that proves is that Linux happens to have better drivers for your particular hardware, or perhaps drivers that use fewer hardware features. In any case, that's the hardware manufacturer's fault, not XP's.)

Bad apps do not crash XP. Bad hardware and drivers crash XP. You must be thinking of 9x.

Re:Vaporware!

[CTho9305]

What do you think happens as the light bounces off your walls? Unless it goes out the window, it all ends up as heat as the light gets absorbed due to imperfect reflection.

Re:Vaporware!

[L0rax23]

sorry... gotta jump in on this one. A electronic device does NOT produce anything near the heat output of an electric heater. Even given the same wattage, you have one device who's energy is being directed to some other form of work and is designed to run LESS hot versus another with at least 95% (controls and what-not) of it's energy being directed toward producing heat, and designed to run MORE hot. Power is a by-product of resistance and thus heat disipation is an indirect by-product of resistance. Electronic devices are design to be less resistant so as to make better use of energy. We don't use 300-400 watt power supplies cuz we want to. We use them cuz we must. And most of that energy is put very efficiantly to work.

But on a lighter note.... it is nice to think that it does make a good heater and I often use the reasoning myself when talking smack...

o)

Just cuz I spell bad and use run-ons, doesn't make me wrong... being an idiot does...

Re:Vaporware!

[perlchild]

without using the same hardware configuration, we're going to see a few discrepancies in here. My scsi card adds 15 seconds by itself to the booting process, for one... I'm sure there are others.

Re:Vaporware!

[Com2Kid]

• call BS. On my family's XP box (a P4@2.6 GHz) it takes about 20 seconds from the "login" screen to when icons actually appear on the desktop

Eeeew, that is horrible. I am siting on a XP machine with a 600MHZ Celeron that boots faster than that.

Run: MsConfig

visit this site and kill some of those services! I have gotten Windows XP down to ~60 megs of RAM right after bootup, ^_^.

Re:Vaporware!

[Lost Race]

I haven't installed a Windows security update in years, and my Windows 2000 systems are definitely not r00ted. I have this thing called a "firewall", and I don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook. If I didn't mind wasting electricity I could have left these machines on for months at least.

Is XP that much more vulnerable than 2000? What vulnerabilities besides IE and Outlook can be attacked through a firewall? Or do you consider a host with an unroutable address behind a NAT firewall to be not "connected to the Internet"?

Re:Vaporware!

[gayak]

Well, this is why some people use Qwik-Fix, from http://www.pivx.com/qwikfix/index.html. Even if your XP isn't updated, it keeps current and perhaps future worms also out. It's made by those who found rpc-bug.

Of course, even if you use Qwik-Fix, you should update your XP, but this gives you at least some protection if you're not on the computer when a new patch is released and don't want to use auto-update.

- Yak

Re:Vaporware!

[RajivSLK]

Dude, you don't understand. Eventually all of the energy is converted to heat. It is the lowest form of enery. All of the electrical energy that goes into your computer has to go somewhere. That is basic conservation of energy. It all ends up as heat. Wether it is first used to spin your had drive or power your ram. In the end it all becomes heat.

The only energy that escapes your house is a very small amount light (for your monitor,leds [if you have windows near by]) and a very very small amount of sound energy (from your fans etc). Where is all the other energy going?

Re:Vaporware!

[slamb]

Electricity spikes whenever an appliance is powered-on. This is why many people rightfully recommend to turn your monitor on before turning your computer on, so to shield the computer from the electricity spike.

That might have once made sense, but it doesn't now. When you power up the monitor but leave the computer off, it's sleeping and using relatively little power. If there's a big spike at all, it will come when you give it an input signal and it wakes up.

That spike takes up a lot of electricity on its own.

You're mixing up some concepts here. You don't "use up electricity". You use (and are billed for) electrical energy (measured by the meter you mention in kiloWatt * hours). Another way of saying that you're using energy quickly is to say you're drawing a lot of power, as power is energy / time. When you rapidly increase your power use, the line voltage can drop. (If you were to keep it at that power level, I think the voltage would come back up.) That low voltage is what could potentially be harmful to other appliances.

When I first learned about this in high school, I remember I did a test at home and had my brother turn on the vacuum at while I looked at the power meter on the house. It is true. That meter dial sped up like crazy for a few seconds, then dwindled back down to the vacuum's running electricity level

Yes, a motor like that takes more power to get up to speed than to maintain speed. For the same reason, your hard drives draw a lot more power when they start up. But a vacuum draws a lot more power than a monitor does in general. Mine claims to run 12 amps at 120 volts. That's 1440 watts.[*] That's an order of magnitude more than your monitor draws. So I wouldn't be too concerned about what happens to your computer when your monitor powers up.

[*] - more or less

Re:Vaporware!

[Baggio]

The 2 or 3 watts (actually less than a watt) is used by the ATX power supply. There is no difference in power consumption by the Windows hibernation and the Linux hibernation. Both are describing S4 power saving mode, and both are effectively spooling the RAM to disk while the machine is in its soft-off or full-off modes.

If a user decides to "Shutdown", rather than hibernate, then they are in the exact same power consumtion mode, but now they have to reinitiate all of their programs to get back to where they were.

Re:Vaporware!

[volpe]

The test is simple. Power up the machine. Power it down. Turn the switch to the "off" position. This last they consider critical. A machine that is put into hibernation mode from the shutdown menu or by closing the lid may still be drawing current and providing functionality.

If that's true, then a PC that is truly "Shut Down" also may still be drawing current and providing functionality.

The only difference between "Hibernate mode" and "Normal shut down" is what the software does when you power up the machine again. As far as the hardware is concerned, the computer is off, period. It almost sounds like you're talking about "sleep" or "standby" mode.

Re:Vaporware!

[shadowbearer]

Well, some small bit of the energy translates to movement (ie, vibrational energy). Otherwise, yes.

Back when I lived in the frozen north, the computer room (second bedroom) was so much warmer than the rest of the place that I'd pretty much live in that room in Jan/February :)

SB

Re:Vaporware!

[shadowbearer]

In my last place, in N. MN (The Frozen North) I ran a PVC pipe from a window enclosure to my refrigerator. During the colder months I had to cut the input from the pipe down; but the last winter I lived there, I saved about $70 in electricity running my refrigerator.

One thing I do here, now, is have a 4" dryer vent hose running from the computer desk enclosure to the bedroom :) Wish I'd thought of that up there. (bedroom being the coldest room in the house due to it's northern exposure, sigh - why on earth do people design houses that way? Put the friccin' kitchen on the cold side)

We get 100F plus temps out here during summer; I'm thinking of modifying the vent hose to introduce air into the computer enclosure from the A/C then. I hate to waste energy....

Cheers

SB

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

If that's true, then a PC that is truly "Shut Down" also may still be drawing current and providing functionality.

When you turn off your VCR is it not still visibly drawing current and providing functionality? Does it not change it's state if you physically disconnect it from the power source? Does it not behave in an anomolous fashion when reconnected to the source of power because some function was interupted?

You could easily add such a visible current draw device to your ATX computer. When you shut down from the front panel button or the shutdown menu the device would stay lit by drawing line power. Depending on how your computer is configured you may already have such a current draw display device. Shut down normally, walk around to the back of the machine, see if the NIC light went out.If your NIC light is not on first configure your compter so that it stays on when you shut down.

Now throw the breaker switch on the system (either on the power supply, UPS or power strip).

The little light goes out. Because it is no longer drawing power. Because the computer is physically disconnected from the power source. Reconnect the breaker, the little light comes back on. All of this while the computer is shut down.

When you shut down an ATX computer all power is shut down except that from a 5 volt connection. That 5 volt connection can, and is, used to power all sorts of things, such as the programable button on the front of the case (through the motherboard), or the NIC, or in some rarer cases even a cooling fan that keeps going after the computer shuts down.

Have you never read a vendor warning to pull the plug or turn the machine off with the power supply breaker switch before performing certain hardward tasks?

Shut down means shut down, an OS function (which by using ACPI can control some power funtions). It does not mean "turned off."

What happens when you shut down Windows on a non ACPI computer?

Most modern electronic devices are softswitched and the only way to reduce their current draw to 0 is turn them off, i.e. physically disconnect them from the power source by pulling the plug or installing an inline breaker switch in the power cord (most easily done by using a power strip). You may find this inconvienient, however, since they have certain functionality that depends on drawing power continuously.

I'd hazzard a guess that a Windows XP Media Center PC and attendant devices draw enough power to light the room while switched off and shut down and the beige box alone could be used to power nightlight if you wished.

It's live.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[RajivSLK]

Well, some small bit of the energy translates to movement (ie, vibrational energy). Otherwise, yes

No, even that ends up as heat. The spinning of your hard drives eventually stops and the energy is converted to heat. Just like rubbing two sticks together. Even the sound and light that doesn't escape your house becomes heat.

Re:Vaporware!

[shadowbearer]

Yeah, I thought of that after I hit submit. :)

Here's to the totally energy efficient domicile :)

SB

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

You still obviously don't know what hiberation is.

I've already stipulated that I was arguing semantics. The reason I'm arguing semantics is because it's a semantic issue. You can't refer me to the technical definition of "hibernate" (which in theory would end the argument right there), because there isn't one. The term is only contextual within a certain enviroment since different "people" (vendors, developers, whatever)all define it slightly differently.

That's why I was asking the troll for the defintion. I didn't tell him he was a moron for his defintion.

The WinTel/Windows XP context (the explicit context in which we're having this discussion), so far as I can determine, defines hibernating as saving state to disk and then shutting down.

I'm perfectly willing to except that definition and it's the one I've been using all along.

And whether a hibernating machine can be turned of is irrelevant. The only thing at issue here is whether it is turned off. And the answer to that is not necessarily.

My premise, my only premise, is that a Windows machine that is put into hibernation mode strictly through software (and the front panel switch is a software switch, one that is not capable of disconecting power to the machine) may be drawing power and the way to reduce power usage to a minimum is to turn it off. To disconnect it from the source of power. Use a breaker switch. Pull the plug. Dike off the hot wire. Whatever.

Now with regards to laptops on commercial flights it is illegal to have a laptop turned on during takeoffs and landings. Again, they don't care about the definition of hibernate. They care about the definition of off. If you shut down/hibernate the computer from the shut down menu or by closing the lid there is nothing to prevent the device from receiving and sending radio signals during takeoff and landing because it may still be powered.

So, let me again restate my premise (which makes no reference to hibernation) and see if you have any problem with it:

If you want your Windows XP Media Center PC to use the minimum amount of power possible, turn it off. Turn off the monitor too while you're at it.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[volpe]

When you turn off your VCR is it not still visibly drawing current and providing functionality? Does it not change it's state if you physically disconnect it from the power source? [etc etc etc]

Your rhetorical questions appear to be missing the point. I'm aware that a VCR's state changes when you unplug it, as does an ACPI computer. I don't think anyone is disputing that. If by "shut down your computer" you mean unplug it from the wall, then I concede to you that there is a difference between hibernate and "shut down". But if by "shut down" you mean "follow the operating system shutdown procedure and turn off the front panel power switch", then, from an electrical standpoint at least, the two states are the same. Unplugging a "shut down" computer won't affect what the computer will do when you power it up again, nor will unplugging a hibernating computer. So, as far as airport security goes (which is where this sub-thread started, IIRC), a hibernating laptop is identical to a shut down laptop.


Have you never read a vendor warning to pull the plug or turn the machine off with the power supply breaker switch before performing certain hardward tasks?

Like many folks here, I built my ACPI PC, and am completely aware of the implications of ATX motherboards and power supplies.

I imagine there must be a simple miscommunication here. I've read enough of your posts to know you're a very bright guy, so I'm sure you'll agree with the following detailed statements:

1) If you "shut down" a PC and leave it plugged in, it draws exactly as much current as a PC that is hibernating and plugged in.

2) If you "shut down" a PC and unplug it, it draws exactly as much current (0 amps) as a PC that is hibernating and unplugged.

3) The only difference between a "shut down" PC and a hibernating PC (assuming the same state of "plugged in" or "unplugged"), is the configuration of the hard drive and the software that will be executed upon power-on.

We're in agreement here, right?

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

i>1) If you "shut down" a PC and leave it plugged in, it draws exactly as much current as a PC that is hibernating and plugged in.

2) If you "shut down" a PC and unplug it, it draws exactly as much current (0 amps) as a PC that is hibernating and unplugged.

3) The only difference between a "shut down" PC and a hibernating PC (assuming the same state of "plugged in" or "unplugged"), is the configuration of the hard drive and the software that will be executed upon power-on.

We're in agreement here, right?

Yes. So we've got that out of the way right off the bat. But. . .you have described more than one state and they may go by the same name.

I imagine there must be a simple miscommunication here.

It would certainly seem. :)

I'm afraid this whole thing stems from a bit of silliness and when silly turns serious it can take a while (if ever) to scrub the silly out of it. I baited an offensive AC down a blind alley that I expected to get modbombed into oblivion and never read; and instead seem to have created a sideshow.

Your rhetorical questions appear to be missing the point. I'm aware that a VCR's state changes when you unplug it, as does an ACPI computer. I don't think anyone is disputing that. . .

Like many folks here, I built my ACPI PC, and am completely aware of the implications of ATX motherboards and power supplies.

Yeah, I didn't mean to be insulting or anything. I really was just trying to be as directly responsive to your questions and the way they were phrased as I could, in my own idiosnycratic beating about the bush way. :)

So, as far as airport security goes (which is where this sub-thread started, IIRC),. . .

Here's where we start getting into the messy part. From my perspective this sub-thread started with my statement that if you want to use the least amount of power possible, turn it off. That is the point, the premise. It is my premise, which is mine. I call it "my premise." The premise's name is. . .

Oh, sorry.

Anyway, some side issues to my premise have been raised on the basis of a bit of flippancy.

. . . a hibernating laptop is identical to a shut down laptop.

This is messy because neither I nor airport security are overtly concerned about whether a laptop is shutdown or hibernating, per se. We care about whether it is turned off. Airport security would be perfectly satisfied if you just turned the machine off without shutting down at all.

By shutdown I mean to follow the operating system procedure. By turn off I mean turn off the actual power switch. In certain cases turn off the power switch can mean either pull the plug or turn off the power strip it's plugged into, since many desktops these days don't actually have a power switch at all. If you shut down and then push the front panel button what you do is boot back up again.

Shutting down is an OS operation, one that has nothing logically to do with the hardware. The fact that the OS now turns off most of the hardware when it shuts down confuses the issue. On an AT machine you shut down the OS, then you can power down the machine by turning it off. The two processes remain logically clear and seperate.

So I havn't missed the point from my perspective because this difference between shutdown and turned off is what I'm interested in; and the fact that a machine that is shut down may not be turned off.

Other people are concerned about hibernating in particular. I am not. Just whether the machine is hot or not.

The issue with airport security comes about because if you shut down or hibernate as per above, by following the OS procedure, and do not turn off the front panel switch (which on a laptop is actually a breaker switch so as not to draw current from the battery) they will not consider that turned off, as well they shouldn't.

Re:Vaporware!

[vivian]

Man, with all those ducts, your house must look like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil

Re:Vaporware!

[volpe]

The issue with airport security comes about because if you shut down or hibernate as per above, by following the OS procedure, and do not turn off the front panel switch (which on a laptop is actually a breaker switch so as not to draw current from the battery)...

Ahh, this is what threw me. My current laptop, and every laptop and desktop I've used since "hibernate" became available, does not work that way. I don't know if it results in zero current draw from the battery, but both the "shut down" and "hibernate" OS operations result in a complete power-off (to whatever extent possible short of yanking the battery), just as if I had pressed the power button. There is no need to press the power button again. In fact, pressing it again at that point powers it up.

Thanks for clarifying.

Re:Vaporware!

[kfg]

Ah, well, thanks for clarifying that for me. I haven't used a recent laptop. This implies soft switching, which has certain implications.

I'll have to look into it.

KFG

Re:Vaporware!

[Matrix2110]

A couple of comments on your post.

(I actually misread the post and thought you were talking about a computer monitor rather than a mundane vacuum cleaner. Thank you, Evelyn Wood! Oh, well. I hate to see a good explaination go to waste, and it is close enough to the topic that I am going to post it with this Mea Culpa.) FYI vacuum cleaners typically have a powerful motor and that several seconds of meter windup is the meter catching up with the current draw of the vacuum motor starting up. (My family used to own a restraunt with a normal household meter on it and I was amazed that the silver disk did not just fly off into orbit because it was turning so fast, 5k/Month electric bills can produce an amazing amount of rotation!)

The semi-OT stuff starts now...

The "spike" that you see when you turn your monitor on is because of degaussing, almost all modern TVs and computer monitors have a coil of thick wire wrapped around the outside of the CRT to de-magnetize the CRT when it is turned on.

Also most modern monitors also have a "sleep" mode where if a loss of signal occours (but is still connected to a video card) the monitor keeps the low voltage circutry running and shuts off the high voltage part of the circut. Also it does not degauss when it wakes up. I have not turned off my monitor except for perhaps ten times since I bought it two years ago.

I am hoping the OSS community gets it together before they pry W2K off of my hard drive.
As far as I am concerned upgrading to Microsoft's latest and greatest is foolish behavior, and you are just asking to get whacked until say, service pack 3 rolls around. Mydoom is demonstrating how secure Windows is and is also playing havoc with my ISP. (They will not let me download my email, I can send via other options but they refuse my password for downloading. As you may gather, I am royally pissed off over the situation, And I have one of the Big boys as my ISP.)

It doesn't boot windows faster!

[spun]

It boots Linux faster, offering a choice of several entertainment related programs, as well as the choice to boot windows, which takes as long as usual.

Re:It doesn't boot windows faster!

[ForestGrump]

In other news, Intervideo announces that they will start selling 30,000 rpm hdd to be bundled with their InstantOn software.

-Grump

Re:It doesn't boot windows faster!

[mabhatter654]

yes, but the key is that the DRM particulars are hidden in the BIOS of the machine...after all a DVD player doesn't really need that many KB to run...if the hardware is setup properly. It neatly avoids many of the industry fears of using linux...too bad more mobos can't come with built in 64MB SDcards then the MOBO makers could install all this stuff by default...

Re:It doesn't boot windows faster!

[spun]

Point taken. I wasn't arguing the utility of this thing, it sounds like a good idea. The headline and the press release are slightly misleading, which is what I was trying to point out.

Re:It doesn't boot windows faster!

[binarytoaster]

Check out mini-itx.com - they have these adapters to turn an IDE connector to CF.

Basically, if you wanted to make a very very small computer that required very little power (firewall? router?) you'd use one of these with a 128M CF card.

It might be useful for these Media Center PCs, too. ;) Do they USE the secondary IDE channel for anything useful?

Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

What About the old "Don't load programs you don't need to load at startup"? Prefetcher tweakage. (yay for bootvis) Killing ad / spyware, tweaking services? My XP boot fairly quick (if I *enter* out of my 30sec countdown from my Xp bootloader asking me if I want Linux Or windows today.) Who doesn't know that isn't very likely to install a seperate Linux partition just to boot quicker?

Re:Common sense

[kfg]

Slow start up times are the price of using programable, general purpose machines. The ultimate way to reduce startup times is to hardwire the specific functionality you're looking for, as in conventional TVs or stereos.

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice, as they say.

KFG

Re:Common sense

[interiot]

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?

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Common sense

[MrAngryForNoReason]

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?

Re:Common sense

[Bobulusman]

I agree with your completely.

Also, I use LILO for a bootloader, and set it for 5 seconds. That way, if I'm not looking at the screen, it boots into Windows fine, but I still have time to select from the several other OSes installed. It's a lot better than the default 30 seconds.

Re:Common sense

[jrockway]

Psh. My LILO is set to 2/10ths of a second. Just enough for me to press a key and get it to boot vmlinuz.old, vmlinuz-default or memtest.

10 seconds is for W1Nd0Wz n00bs.

Re:Common sense

[interiot]

HOW does it help you shave off time though? Obviously it does, you just introduced it to thousands of people who don't know anything about it.. Please just explain in a little more detail so we can all nod our heads and agree that MS is full of it.

Re:Common sense

[ColaMan]

I'll weigh in on this.

Bootvis does exactly that, it gives you a timing of how long it takes for a particular process to initialise and hand off to the next one.

you can get an idea of why your boot takes so long to start. for instance, on my pc , video init takes 12 seconds, easily the longest bit.

It's not much use for end users , but for developers it helps to be able to say "goddamn crappy video driver takes 12 seconds to init! fix that!"

Re:Common sense

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Bootvis changes the order that services startup. It also can make them start concurrently opposed to consecutively IIRC. It essentially organises the startup in the most efficient way which can result in a quicker startup time.

Re:Common sense

[eneville]

A large part of the problem with this is that IE allows a lot of scripting, so spyware can easily be installed on the clients computer without him knowing, and entered into the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run and loaded at startup. If the average 2000 user changed his user setting so that he doesnt work as an administrator, perhaps that key would not be effected, no wait, it would still get punched in there, but it would be post-boot. That said, the key is loaded after the shell, but the principle remains, surfing as Administrator does allow software to be added to the boot process. Surf without admin permissions and less damage can be done.

Re:Common sense

[Endive4Ever]

Actually, 2/10th of a second is for Kids whose Mom only lets them have one Pee Cee in their 'room.'

The rest of us don't 'dual boot' anything. Get a KVM switch and join the 21st century.

Re:Common sense

[GiMP]

Get Win4Lin and/or Vmware and join the 21st century. Grab usermodelinux if you're only gonna be running other linux distributons.

Re:Common sense

[shadowbearer]

Or to compile the specific functionality...

Ya compiles a kernel specific to your machine :) Bite me, windows users, hee hee!

(Just installed debian on an older laptop (P1 200mhz) and with a fresh 2.6.1 kernel I was *amazed* at how much faster it booten and runneth ;)

*joke* - like all humor, partially serious.

SB

Re:Common sense

[0x1337]

I have an Athlon XP, a Coppermine laptop and a Ppro server in my room - LILO is set for 2 seconds... just enough for me to choose whether I want 2.4.22, 2.4.22-ck2 or 2.4.23.

LinuxBIOS

[wowbagger]

Sounds like they are using LinuxBIOS plus some apps for the quick boot option.

Now, the question is, will Joe User start asking himself "Why can't EVERYTHING run this quickly?", and will the companies start realizing that everything CAN, IF they port their stuff to Linux?

(NOTE: Obviously there is one company that is unlikely to take this action, but perhaps others might.)

Of course, there is always the option of embedding Windows into the system ROM as well.

(shudder)

Re:LinuxBIOS

[LostCluster]

Then, everybody insists on loading at startup in Linux... and everything comes crashing down again.

Re:LinuxBIOS

[Curtman]

Linux is a kernel. Mine is a whopping 1.2M. The remainder of the eight gigs is GNU software.

</gratuitous stallman rant>

It isn't some kind of linux based boot loader...

[Valar]

Which is what I thought when I read the writeup. It is actually a minimal media-distro designed to boot quickly. To do windows stuff, you still have to wait for windows start time.

not true

[relrelrel]

It's very misleading, it actually boots at the same amount of time as it usually does.

New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[a XOR b XOR a XOR b]

Here it is!

F000:E05B call check_for_linux
F000:E061 jc do_error_beep_and_halt
F000:E063 nop
F000:E064 nop
F000:E065 nop
F000:E066 int 19

All kidding aside... I write BIOS code for a living, and this scares the crap out of me. What Microsoft wants is to basically eliminate the BIOS, except for the jump to the OS code (the "int 19" above). Windows already does just about everything that we do in the BIOS, like PCI device enumeration, etc...

No doubt, this would make Microsoft's life a lot more simple, but I think it would give them too much control -- way too much. DRM would just be the start of it.

I wonder what the EFI proponents (Intel) think about this deal...

Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[adrianbaugh]

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.

Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[ctr2sprt]

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.

Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[runderwo]

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.

Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[ahhhmytoes]

repost from October 3 2003, by LesPaul75.

Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked!

[cubic6]

Troll????

Grandparent was a troll. Anybody who knows any assembly code could tell. I know I'm kinda stupid for responding to him, but keep the troll mods for those who actually deserve them.

"Entertainment machines"

[TubeSteak]

A partition on the hard disk houses the Linux software in an area separate from the Windows operating system. The developer claims that with the new software, the boot time is brief -- a mere 10 seconds. When a user turns on the PC, the InstantON software preempts the Windows boot sequence and takes over, quickly loading basic entertainment functions.

Business Applications

Moving from the quick-boot entertainment functions into Windows, however, will take users more time than the initial 10-second boot because the InstantON software must hand off the user to the Windows operating system at that point. Still, the company believes that most users inclined to use PCs as entertainment machines in their living rooms are accessing those machines mainly for entertainment-related functions, rather than to run business applications like Microsoft Word or Excel.

1st step towards seperating 'entertainment centers' from general computers. "Ro foresees a market emerging for computers that don't have conventional operating systems but are used in the living room as entertainment devices, right beside TVs." And since this technology is being marketed towards OEMs, HP and Gateway etc, I can't imagine that it will compromise WINXP Media Center's DRM.

Re:"Entertainment machines"

[geekoid]

". "Ro foresees a market emerging for computers that don't have conventional operating systems but are used in the living room as entertainment devices, right beside TVs.""

He's a genius! Or would have been if he made that statemnt 25 years ago.

Shesh. VCR, has a computer(albiet primitive) cd player, dvd player, stereo, Tivo.
The market is here Ro.

Re:"Entertainment machines"

[nolife]

Movix is a useful suite of applications for audio and video files. Not a full media center but allows booting from various devices and auto launching media files on the boot media or can connect to a network resource for media files.
I've used it for creating self booting cdroms that launchs some divx movies.

Re:"Entertainment machines"

[WhiteDeath]

World Domination v0.0.1

Stage 1: provide a fast booting device for home entertainment. People will use the features in this because it starts up almost as fast as the VCR, TV or whatever else they would have turned on to do the same.

Stage 2: start providing built-in apps for other things (eg games). Make it possible to download updates from our web site.

Stage 3: since it's linux, people will realise there are other programs that work on our device, and start using them because the device will be more covenient than going over to the computer and waiting for windows to boot.

Stage 4: start selling bigger devices to handle the increased load of watching TV while playing Quake/Eternal Lands/etc

Stage 5: spend profits......

Re:"Entertainment machines"

[autocracy]

More than that, your cable box is quickly getting a more than primitive (can't be less than primitive, right? Maybe I should say "beyond primitive." God love English...) operating system. With all the new VOD stuff the cable companies are doing combined with Tivo... I think he's just as right now, if not more so in the clear definition. VCRs and such are all hardware programmed systems, or running embedded systems. Of course, "Windows XP Embedded" is not my definition of embedded - the MSDN docs stated it was a 4.x Meg kernel, and still couldn't do anything other than talk to hardware once that was loaded. Eep!

Missing the point of Windows Media Center

[LostCluster]

Windows Media Center is meant to be a TiVo clone. In order for it to record the shows you want, you need to leave it up at all time. This stripped-down Linux just isn't going to make the cut... the proper mode of operation is to simply avoid rebooting by leaving it always-up.

Re:Missing the point of Windows Media Center

[Utopia]

Yeah. Funny they would attempt to sell a media center competitor whose only saving grace is faster boot time!

Re:Missing the point of Windows Media Center

[rusty0101]

Actually, with a reliable fast boot procedure, that boots into the application that can initiate and end recordings, I don't see any real reason to have even a TiVo clone on all the time.

If you are wondering how that would work out, all you need is to set the bios alarm to a couple minutes before the program you are going to record next, and power down. The bios alarm clock will turn the computer on at the appointed time, your program gets recorded, and after the recording is done, the computer resets the bios alarm for the next program to record, and shuts the computer down again.

This can also be done to handle other scheduled events, such as schedule update retreival, software updates, etc.

I suspect that the primary reason that no one wants to do this today is that bios clocks are notorious for their drifting off of the current time. It would get anoying to keep missing the first few minutes of your show, because the clock drifted. Even worse if the program scheduler was coded to ignore record events which the begining time has already passed.

-Rusty

Re:Missing the point of Windows Media Center

[ColaMan]

There's an alpha feature in MythTv that does this now. Apparently it works, but I try to keep off the bleeding edge CVS, especially when my TV depends on it;-)

Re:Missing the point of Windows Media Center

[ColaMan]

Oh and in additon, I use ntpd to keep the software clock synced and hwclock to hourly reset the hardware real time clock on my mythTV, otherwise it drifts rather alarmingly when I reboot.

i want fast pre os booting!

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Re:i want fast pre os booting!

[Cramer]

And suddenly, we're all returned to EISA where the "BIOS" is so stupid one requires a series of "EISA configuration" floppies to do anything. Even moving a card from one slot to another requires the utility to be ran. Without that floppy (usually floppies) you're screwed. (Ever used Compaq "PC"s?)

No thanks. I'll live with the existing BIOS PnP and PCI enumeration. Yes, it's slow, but much simpler and forgiving. My SCSI BIOSes can be configured to scan only a subset of IDs (and the fibre channel controller spends more time giving me a chance to hit Alt-Q than it does scaning for drives -- the drive scan occurs in an instant.)

Re:i want fast pre os booting!

[Nugget]

Never Again

EISA was so awful. A classic example of "sounds like a great idea on paper" that proved, in reality, to be way worse than what it hoped to replace.

Re:i want fast pre os booting!

[toddestan]

There should be a fast boot option, which usually consists of skipping the memory test, floppy scans, and other stuff. On some boards it's called "Quiet Boot" or something simular to that.

On my system though, it doesn't matter, as the onboard RAID controller has to take atleast 15 seconds to detect drives. Apparently, it stores information about the RAID array on the boot sector(?) of the drives, so every time I turn on the computer it scans for the drives, detects them, then reads the array information off of them. Apparently this is so I can take the drives to a different computer, and still use the array as the configuration information is with the drives. But I would think they could make the process faster.

Re:i want fast pre os booting!

[Cramer]

Dude. It didn't even sound good on paper. It's up there with Micro-Channel among the Bad Ideas (tm). (MCA, IBM's proprietary, "we ain't tellin' nobody nothin'", bus.)

Heh. Looky what I found...
[just click *grin*]
[Alpha ECU (NT)]
[Alpha ECU (VMS)]

How will is this going to be received ...

[zbaron]

... if all of a sudden, as the company believes that most users inclined to use PCs as entertainment machines in their living rooms are accessing those machines mainly for entertainment-related functions, consumers buying these machines never see a need to actually boot into the Windows Media Center. Could we eventually see Media Center as an optional and pay-for add on?

Windows is already faster than linux

[menscher]

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. :(

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[bobthemonkey13]

Linux is a kernel. It takes very little time to boot up (it's done when you see INIT: Version such-and-such booting). On a modern PC, Linux will boot in a few seconds or less. From there, everything is in userland, and boot speed thus depends on what your distro chooses to initialize at startup. So if you're unhappy with bootup times, use a distro that loads less stuff, or cut yours down. For the network thing, I would suspect a failed attempt to get a DHCP lease.

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[MikeBabcock]

I've been using daemontools for years to start up all my system processes in parallel. My start-up times are great (plus, I don't have to wait for timeouts on failed drivers before I get a login).

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[menscher]

Parent is being helpful; the original poster does not seem to know about dhcp, and this (probably correct, by my experience) assessment....

As the original poster, I can assure you that I know about DHCP. But it should have been obvious that DHCP was irrelevant since I said I was having trouble mounting NFS filesystems. And I've never heard of anyone exporting NFS filesystems to a DHCP range.... ;)

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[menscher]

It's a spanning tree thing. Turn on portfast on your switch.

Whoa, I just learned something useful from Slashdot. Thanks!

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[shadowbearer]

Agreed on NFS, but DHCP times can vary quite a bit. I get very fast DHCP resolution at home, but when I go LAN against a friend of mine, his router sometimes takes 15-20 seconds to DHCP lease.

I'm not a DHCP guru, like you; I just know what I'm observing. He's observed the same thing, and is looking into a different router (and different cable setup, we're agreed that Fibercom may be the problem - I'm on midco - when he comes and plays here, he says the DHCP times are a lot short than what he experiences at home). We've observed bootup differentials of 30 sec += 15 seconds...

Any thoughts?

SB

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[shadowbearer]

Is it worth trying for slower systems (aka, my laptops, 200mhz and 233 mhz Pentium/PIIs)? Or does it only help in faster boxes?

I ask because my main systems stay up 24/7; but faster boot times on the laps would be nice :-) If I'm going to put time into setting it up, I'd like to know it'd actually save me something.

TIA

SB

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[MikeBabcock]

I use it on my P-133 gateway machine at home with 64M of RAM. And yes, its much faster to start up.

Re:Windows is already faster than linux

[shadowbearer]

Cool, thanks. I'm going to give it a whirl.

SB

The makers of LinDVD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The makers of LinDVD

[ron_ivi]

Parent wrote: "Someone should really ask them when LinDVD will be launched to the public".

Yeah, that would be cool. I've seen it play, and it's pretty much just like the Windows WinDVD.

Another article on their LinDVD based Instant On product in NewScientist

Re:The makers of LinDVD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Who needs fast booting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who does it more than twice a year? Oh wait... this is Windows. Nevermind.

Re:Who needs fast booting?

[temojen]

Laptop users.

Re:Who needs fast booting?

[keeboo]

That's why there's the "sleep" mode.

why not use hibernation?

[techvd]

When the PC is hibernated, it comes back up much much faster than a normal boot. Most PC/laptops on market have had support for hibernation for a while. Except when necessary, why not get rid of a complete boot process and just stick to hibernation? It's no Instant On, but a lot better than a complete reboot!

Re:why not use hibernation?

[mikeman14400]

Why even bother with hibernation if your looking for fast time up. Just turn your monitor off and when you need your computer turn your monitor on and Volia! No boot time no stand by wait time... Well i guess you still have to wait on your monitor to come up.

Re:why not use hibernation?

[enosys]

That was my first thought. XP resumes from hibernation very quickly. The only reason not to do this would be if instability and memory leaks progressively mess things when the system isn't rebooted frequently. XP seems stable enough that this isn't a problem. It might be an issue for applications though.

There's also suspend, and it can be almost instant. Suspend to RAM can use less than 5 watts. That's definitely acceptable for a home entertainment system. It's within the range of power used by TVs and VCRs when they're "OFF".

Using Linux to boot Windows

[Our Man In Redmond]

"I'll take Irony for $1000, Alex."

well

[relrelrel]

i never turn off my windows box anyway, it takes too long to logout, and also to shutdown, so i just keep it on all the time and then it reboots whenever it feels like (when it crashes)

Re:well

[McAddress]

i never turn off my windows box anyway,

i'm kind of the same way, except the part about with turning it on.

This isn't the solution to the problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:This isn't the solution to the problem...

[erikharrison]

It's not just stability. Windows crappy file locking semantics mean that program installation almost always requires reboots. Keeping up with MS security patches, even at the relatively slow rate some bugs are patched, leads to several reboots a week.

Re:This isn't the solution to the problem...

[westlake]

Keeping up with MS security patches, even at the relatively slow rate some bugs are patched, leads to several reboots a week.

Microsoft has gone to a monthly release schedule, and even then you may not need to reboot.

Re:This isn't the solution to the problem...

[Tim C]

Keeping up with MS security patches... leads to several reboots a week.

Bullshit. They aren't even releasing security patches at anything like that rate, and not all patches require a reboot. From memory, I've rebooted my machine due to applying a patch once in the last couple of months (and yes, I stay current).

Besides, what does it matter? This isn't a server OS, and it isn't on a server. My XP Pro machine at work stays on 24/7 except for infrequent patch-required reboots. Even when I do have to reboot, it's back up in a matter of seconds - not even enough time to go grab a coffee from the kitchen 10 feet away.

As for *program installation* requiring a reboot, you're really talking crap. No program should *ever* require a reboot to install/uninstall. Reboots are only required if a file that is in use has to be overwritten, and no program should be replacing system files. If you have one that does, I'd think seriously about seeking an alternative.

Re:This isn't the solution to the problem...

[quantum bit]

The OS even asks to be rebooted when you change DNS settings.

The last Windows OS that did that was NT4. Win2k and everything after it no longer asks for a reboot when changing networking settings.

Even on NT4, it would prompt for a reboot, but if you hit 'no', the new settings would work just fine anyway.

Oh come on.

[ProtonMotiveForce]

Is everything about Microsoft's DRM? Really, now, is it?

Memory images on disk

[digitalhermit]

There was a project a while back to take a snapshot of a boot state then load this snapshot directly into memory. Any modern harddrive can move the 40M or so in a few seconds. The sticking points were mainly due to hardware that needed initialization and some OS design issues (beyond my understanding, but had to do with how control is passed to the operating system). If not for these issues, the machine could boot completely in seconds.

Re:Memory images on disk

[nacturation]

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.

Re:Memory images on disk

[toast0]

I would think they'd be able to make this work by booting, then doing a suspend to ram, and storing that (or you could hibernate, and convince the os not to remove the hibernation file when it dehibernates). That would solve the hardware init issues, but any software that starts on boot might not it, because of the back and forth in time.

Re:Memory images on disk

[kayen_telva]

sounds like hibernation mode. or did I miss something ?

Re:Memory images on disk

[Jerf]

Current hibernation modes would not be able to do that because they end up storing various memory-based file-system caches in the hibernation as well. You do not want those caches to get out of sync with the real contents of the disk; big lossage.

"So avoid saving those caches...", well there's a reason they are saving them. If you don't save them, you have to first close all open files, and now your "suspension" isn't transparent. So you've opened the door to two "modes" of program starting, "suspended" and "not suspended", or some such other crap. And re-loading the cache with new, valid data on startup takes time, which defeats the point of this in the first place.

My point is not that there are no solutions to these problems but to try to give a taste of how these things cascade rapidly. OS design is a subtle and tricky work, which only becomes truly apparent once you actually try to sit down and code solutions to these problems.

Re:Memory images on disk

[ColaMan]

Windows does this by telling itself to re-enumerate it's devices in 5 seconds, then hibernating.

On wakeup it's down to 3...2...1...re-enumerate devices.As windows can re-enumerate it's device list any time it feels like it's not much of a hassle.

I used to lurk on the linux-usb dev list, getting device enum sorted was a bit of a pain in the bum, with much discussion.... I don't know how far the other linux subsystems have gotten yet. If they've gotten the re-enumerate problem licked , it's not too much hassle.

Unless you do something like remove some usb storage while the PC's sleeping, of course.

Re:Memory images on disk

[RdsArts]

So why not have the hiberate function unmount the USB device when called, and attempt to remount it on return?

Not as 'clean' as one would hope, but it would serve the purpose. I'd assume it would require some userland, but then so does Udev, and that's not stopping anyone. ;)

Innovation

[Camel Pilot]

Wait a minute this smells like an innovation and we all know only MS can bring innovation to the marketplace. I think they have an exclusive license from SCO.

Re:Just the opposite

[afidel]

It's only OEM, so power users will have a hard time getting their hands on it.
*cough* *sputter*

You must have a much different definition of power user than most of us around here =) If you can't get your hands on OEM software, hack Linux into your BIOS and handle the integration of the two then I don't think your a power user by slashdot standards.

Timmy Stay in your Chair

[sPaKr]

Jebus. This doesnt boot MCE faster. Rather it uses Linux for some media operations.. but still boots MCE for other things. Timmy You make the most mistakes in posting. You post more dupes, and wrong descriptions then anyone else. Please stay in your chair.. and fondle your joystick.. and keep all your comments to saying only your own name. The world .. and slashdot will be a better place.

Incredible Misleading

[Ageless]

This has to be one of the most misleading articles, and even more misleading /. blurbs I have ever seen. This software has nothing to do with Windows. It's a stripped down version of Linux that has basic media center programs. It "integrates" with the BIOS by "booting" like every other operating system.

Paranoia

[91degrees]

I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.

At the time of writing - I suspect all of them.

Parallel init scripts?

[pardasaniman]

I RTFA!

How does it boot in ten seconds? I suspect parallel init scripts.. I realize it wouldn't need alot of services... but heck, ten seconds is still awfully short to run X and a few tiny apps.

Seriously, the next distro to have parallel init, is the distro I am sold to... no functionality would be more essential than booting in less than 20seconds to me.

Re:Parallel init scripts?

[vrmlknight]

you wouldn't need full blown X hell you probably wouldn't anything other than access to the IDE bus and memory and something to query the video card to make sure that you can display a DVD or something to it.

Re:Parallel init scripts?

[djcapelis]

Not to be one of those people always promoting Gentoo or anything... but I've heard Gentoo has parallel init... think my system does it... not sure, but think it does. Anyone want to clarify?

Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[cmacb]

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.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[bmajik]

you have no idea what you're talking about.

it's very easy to see when and which files are loaded by Windows as it boots. try the /SOS switch in boot.ini. Better yet, run XP under the kernel debugger (you do know how to do this, right ? I mean, you _are_ an expert on windows OS design, right ?)

XP is one of the fastest booting MS operating systems there has ever been, since the DOS days at least. Significant engineering effort went into optimizing the boot time. ... Which is hillarious because XP also needs to be rebooted / bugchecke'd LESS frequently than any previous MS Os..

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[spun]

Where does cmacb ever mention XP? Cmacb is talking about something that started to happen in Windows long before XP came out. XP is a fairly quick booting OS, I'll admit, but previous versions of Windows weren't.

However, I think a lot of it is really the GUI and memory resident utilities loading. Try booting Linux into a GNOME session running Enlightenment as the window manager with a ton of applets, buttons and suchlike gewgaws. Almost every Windows box I ever had to service had far too much crap like that running, not to mention spyware. It's a wonder some of them even booted at all, and given a clueless user, a Linux system could be just as bad.

God knows mine was when I first started playing around with X Windows. :-) Look everyone, Enlightenment v0.4 with the Aliens theme and a dozen applets running on a 386 with 32 megs of RAM. Hey Rocky, watch me pull an X Server hard lockup out of my hat! (but try telneting in to reboot a frozen windows machine...)

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[cmacb]

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.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[kayen_telva]

thats strange, windows XP boots faster than any linux distro
Ive ever run except debian with almost no services running.
it surely beats the pants off any linux install with a normal set of services and GUI.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[cmacb]

Well, I won't run XP, and I wasn't making any comparisons with Linux. But Microsoft people are sensitive types, so it didn't surprise me to get jumped on. Talking with MS employees about Windows is like trying to tell a Fiat owner that they just maybe don't have the best car in the world.

Choice is a good thing. Long as MS doesn't try to legislate Windows I have no problems with them.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[m_pll]

Well, initially you said:

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

The Windows boot sequence is very well understood. See for example Inside Windows 2000 - there's a very detailed explanation of what's going on at boot time. Now, since you claim to know what you are talking about, can you point out where exactly is the "initialization work for Office and IE" done and what it consists of?

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Beg your pardon there mate, but if you won't run XP how on earth do you expect to have a valid opinion on it?

Oh, of course, this is slashdot, my mistake.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[Tim C]

Well, that may well all be true (and I assume that it is), but it doesn't change the fact that on my machine, XP Pro and Mandrake 9.2 feel like they boot in a comparable amount of time. I've not timed them, but I sure as hell haven't been sat waiting for either thinking "ffs, the other one boots faster than this, what's wrong with these people?!"

So while I'll accept that you know what you're talking about, I think your data is a good few years out of date. Unless, of course, you're comparing boot times for Windows to GUI and stripped-down Linux to prompt, which would hardly be fair.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[Tony-A]

Still pretty easy to tell that the system is rigged for benchmarks.
Boot XP.
Load Internet Explorer.
Crash Internet Explorer.
Reload Internet Explorer.

The second takes much longer.

There are switches that tell you some of what's going on, but the net effect is that of a root kit preloaded by Microsoft.

Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design

[eneville]

THe problem here is that windows crashes more often than linux. I work in a ISP and I am often having to alter my IP address for various equipment when I need to telnet to a certain piece of COE for testing. I find that after making around 30 IP changes to my LAN via alias or which ever means I am no longer able to use my LAN connection. Not only is chaning the IP ackward, but go damn, ifconfig is so much easier and quicker. if anyone knows of an ifconfig like command tool for windows let me know please.

Slow XPMCE booting?

[Utopia]

What the hell are they taking about?
My XPMCE boots faster than any OS I have ever seen.
I rarely have to reboot. But when I do, it takes less than 30 seconds to boot my machine.

Boot times...

[imsabbel]

Well, linux may be good for many things, but my notebooks with its slow 4500rpm disk boots Windows xp 10 seconds faster than my main pc Linux->Kde from a raid with 128MB hardware cache. (and no, there arent tons of unused services running, both are the standart instalations (suse 9.0 ftp install, windows xp home).
(counting only after bios, because the raid controller adds 10-15 secs which the OS cant change).

Need to re-boot != instability always. THINK!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Tell me, how is it 100% stable if you have to restart it to install things or change settings?

Stability and having to re-boot to install *certain* software packages have nothing to do with each other. Yes, the need to re-boot for certain installs is a weak point for Windows, but that's not the same thing as stability.

It's understandable that many here do not like Windows. But many people also understand that certain applications don't run on Linux, nor have *nix equivalents. We who must use these apps are stuck with Windows. But the need to re-boot is not the same as instability, and indeed many Windows machines have up-times that rival the average Linux server. It's true.

By the way, it it "instability" that after making changes in a Linux configuration, you often have to re-start services?

Harp on some other point that makes more sense.

Re:Need to re-boot != instability always. THINK!

[MntlChaos]

no, stability means that it functions in a reliable and predictable manner. User-initiated restarts do NOT mean instability. explorer.exe crashing whenever you press escape DOES.

Re:Need to re-boot != instability always. THINK!

[javatips]

stability != availability

Re:Need to re-boot != instability always. THINK!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

YES! stability != availability

Re:Need to re-boot != instability always. THINK!

[iamhassi]

"100% stability means that the system never goes down, it is up all the time. Is the system still up during a reboot? No?! Then it's not 100% stable."

On what planet does stability have anything to do with uptime? If I shutdown my PC does that mean it's unstable?

"Stable" refers to the PC not crashing due to hardware/sofwater i.e. overclocking too far results in instability, or running Windows 95 results in instability.

Whoever told you that in order for a PC to be stable it can never reboot or shutdown was lying. Did they happen to sell you a bridge?

Two things

[ev1lcanuck]

1) My XPMCE laptop boots in about 20-30 seconds, much faster than my XP Pro desktop or SuSE 9 desktop.

2) Does it really matter? I mean, in the home environment (I hope to god our corporations aren't stupid enough to buy MCEs for workstations) what is 45 seconds at maximum to wait for the computer to boot. If you REALLY need your computer to boot that fast then just put it into standby or hibernation - both options are excellent and give you almost instant gratification. Standby in my MCE laptop takes about 1.5 seconds to get up and running and coming back from hibernation takes about 5-6 seconds.

Re:Two things

[vrmlknight]

your running XPMCE on a laptop?? what support for video capture if there on PCMCIA cards in XPMCE?

Re:Two things

[ev1lcanuck]

It's a Toshiba P15-S479. It has an outboard TV Tuner via USB2. The 17" toshiba MCE laptop has the tv tuner built in, but that thing is just way too massive.

POST?

[SHEENmaster]

Every dealt with the Power On Self Test of Sun systems? My E3500 takes minutes to get to loading the kernel, because it has to check all eight processors, all 32M/cache, and all 4G/ram.

That 25 seconds is a blessing.

It has Hibernate and Suspend.

[AzrealAO]

You should use Suspend, because the scheduler can wake the machine up out of suspend mode to record a show you have scheduled. It can't wake the machine up from Hibernate.

Fujitsu Lifebook

[jmichaelg]

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.

Re:Fujitsu Lifebook

[crimson30]

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.

I wouldn't say it's the only downside. The graphics capabilities are quite slim, crippling an otherwise decent laptop.

I will admit I was surprised the first time I closed the lid and forgot about it. It didn't look like it lost any battery power whatsoever in the 10-12 hours I left it on.

Re:Fujitsu Lifebook

[frank_adrian314159]

The only downside is the screen is very small...

Not the only one - the keyboard sorta sucks because of it's size. But then, I cart along a USB keyboard if I think I'm going to need to type for long periods, so 's'all good. I've gotten mine set up as a dual boot W2K/Linux system. I have the touch screen and wireless subsystems working in Linux and I'm looking at upgrading to a 2.6 kernel for the ACPI support. We'll see how that goes. All-in-all a great little machine (and it gets people's attention, too)

Re:i know some may disagree,

[AstroDrabb]

Where are you pulling that opinion from? Linux is used in TONS of things and you would have no clue that it is. Linux is used in tons of commercial devices: PDA's, handhelds, mobile phones, IP phones, robots, DVD players, audio/video devices, digital video recoreds ala Tivo, tablets, webpads, gateways, routers, wireless access points, digital picture frames and plenty more.

Linux is even used in space!!!

If you were talking about the desktop, then sure. Linux is still geared more for someone that is a little bit more technically savvy then your average MS Windows user. However, I think your age range is off as well. I am 31 and have been using Linux for everything at home for many years now, though I am a programmer and more experienced with a computer then Joe User. I think your statement would make a little bit more sense if you had said it about your average non-technical home user.

Too complicated...

[ByteSlicer]

If you really want to boot Windows XP fast, configure your BIOS to do a suspend to RAM on sleep. When you hibernate XP, the computer will be completely off (except for a tiny current for self-refreshing the DRAMS). From this state, booting will take only about 5s. And all programs you had previously running will still be there. Even music will continue playing where it left off.
The only drawback is: if you lose power, the DRAMS will be cleared. That could be solved by a UPS or maybe some built-in battery.

Re:Too complicated...

[ByteSlicer]

I meant 'Standby' instead of 'Hibernate'. Hibernating will write your RAM to disk. It is controlled by the OS instead of by the BIOS. Reading half a GiB worth of RAM back is significantly slower than resuming from suspend to RAM. But in hibernation state the computer is really off, so no risk of losing DRAM content.

MS already has their own BIOS..

[T-Ranger]

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.

Re:MS already has their own BIOS..

[Sprinkels]

DOS before Netware (do they still do this?).

Novell Netware 6.0 does. (Using their own Novell DOS.)

I have not tried Netware 6.5 yet. But I have peeked at the documentation and I do not think they have changed it.

Netware 7.0 is announced be able to run on both the Netware kernel and on the Linux kernel.

Re:MS already has their own BIOS..

[Rick the Red]

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.

Why? They only need to make sure it works with their latest OS (as in Longhorn; even XP could be locked out of these hypothetical Microsoft BIOS PCs). Indeed, I could easily see a scenario where Longhorn requires the MS BIOS and the MS BIOS will only work with Longhorn. Hell, they could even do an Apple and put key parts of the OS in the BIOS.

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.

What on Earth makes you think that Microsoft cares about any of those? Preventing them from working would be, to Microsoft, a big plus.

Acelerating windows

[gmuslera]

That is nothing new... with Linux I accelerated Windows to 9.8 m/s^2

Re:Acelerating windows

[parkanoid]

I know it's a joke, but you're describing a change in acceleration, not in velocity, so it's referred to as, um, jerk.

"That is nothing new... with Linux I jerked Windows to 9.8 m/s^2".

(This is, also, a joke).

Doubtful

[DeathPenguin]

>>Sounds like they are using LinuxBIOS plus some apps for the quick boot option.

What makes you think that? Just because they use Linux as part of their project does not mean they're necessarily using LinuxBIOS.

Besides, if they are then where's the source code? There is that little issue about the GPL...

I'm still bemused

[fullofangst]

I dunno if it's just me, but I find it odd that computers still take as long to boot as they do.

I hit the power button on mine, and I'm not even clear of the bios for 3-4 seconds. Then my hard disk controller takes a couple of seconds to 'see' what is connected.

And then we hit Windows.

Why is this a problem? Well, we're talking about a mostly-electronic system. Electrons, flying around at speeds somewhat incomprehensible to the average human brain, able to go from A to B to C to D hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times a second. Yet we are talking fractions of MINUTES to get a computer into a usable state.

Bizarre.. I must be missing something fundamental. Either that or I've read too much Sci-Fi and haven't gotten used to how primitive this planet really is.

Re:I'm still bemused

[pe1chl]

Much of this time is spent waiting for devices to respond.
The BIOS tries to activate any diskdrive it supports, then waits for the drive to respond. There is some (conservative) timeout on that query, because the BIOS does not know how quick a working drive is going to respond. So it may wait .5 seconds for a diskdrive, adding up to 2 seconds for two drives.

Similar waits are going on all over the hardware detection and test process, and they are all adding up.

Things that could be done:

1. review delay times, detection algorithms. see if a quicker detection can be done

2. make sure the delays don't add up. i.e. perform detections and tests in a parallel (multitasking) fashion

Use Linux to bypass DRM-featured hardware?

[Observador]

I didn't RTFA (of course) but upon reading the headline it ocurred to me that if such a thing can be done... could Linux be used to bypass (maybe even break!) said MS DRM features on the hardware level?

I'm no OS coder, or kernel hacker, so I ask... could it be possible?

Slashdot isn't journalism

[xswl0931]

Just remind yourself that Slashdot isn't journalism and doesn't need to be held to such standards. Really, it's nothing more than a community blog. Slashdot is a business and to get people to visit the site, they basically troll and wait for comments. Personally, I'm fine with that as usually some comments are more interesting than the actual article.

Well, what do you think hibernate does?

[pr0ntab]

n/t

Linux hosts "Windows" virus migration

[Doc Ruby]

How about a Linux image small enough to act as the BIOS firmware, which runs Windows as a process, and a watchdog process that restarts a new Windows image when a Windows heartbeat process heartbeat stops? Enough CORBA/COM+ IPC work with an event rollback queue might keep Windows app state persistent across Windows restarts, so crashes would be momentary pauses in continuity. Redundant sync'd servers delivering restart attempts to a single client GUI via VNC might actually present an apparently crashproof Windows environment. And that platform would be an advantageous config from which to migrate to a 100% Linux environment, gradually eradicating vestiges of the Windows virus.

Re:Can't spell?

[sirReal.83.]

I wouldn't complain too much, since you don't seem to be able to spell "writers" ...

Re:ROTFLMAO!

[JesterXXV]

Windoze is lucky to get more than a day of uptime, especially when you run media applications on it.

You're talking out of your ass. I've had mine on since Tuesday, and that's only because i didn't want to leave it on while i was home for my month-long winter break. I've had it on for weeks (maybe months, i've never really been insecure enough to measure the uptime) at a time before, played games, movies, music, burned several cd's, installed software, uninstalled software, downloaded gigs of stuff, with no restarts.

Anyway, I should know better than to read past the word "Windoze" in anyone's post before I waste 5 minutes of my life agitated at their fabricated information.

Whatever, I'll drink it off anyway.

Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux

[flacco]

I can attest to this. I used Linux to boot Windows right off my PC!

Apple

[bluewee]

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.

Re:Apple

[BiOFH]

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.

Re:Apple

[eneville]

My celeron900 notebook resumes windows in about 5 seconds. but the bios loads. so i guess we cant count that.

I am quite surprised with the time it takes to resume. Windows occupies a large amount of ram, but the less you have running the quicker it shoudl be to resume, or am i just imagining it?

Why booting takes so long

[Animats]

Just think of all the things that have to happen during boot-up today:

• Displaying Microsoft logo.
• Enumerating peripherals.
• Waiting for the nonexistent floppy drive to time out.
• Checking file signatures for files covered by "file protection".
• Re-homing the scanner.
• Restarting the print queue.
• Loading Internet Exploder.
• Loading Microsoft Office.
• Loading every DLL that contains anything those two ever need.
• Starting services nobody except attackers ever use.
• Loading fonts into memory and generating bitmaps for them.
• Bringing up the PPPoE connection.
• Checking for new updates to Microsoft software.
• Downloading new virus signatures.
• Loading spyware and adware.
• Loading latest ads for home page in browser.

Re:Why booting takes so long

[shadowbearer]

Displaying Microsoft logo.

With (apparently, from what I've seen) the gratuitous delay so the user doesn't miss it... :), but on my folks' new system, the amount of time that logo is displayed coupled with the lack of HD activity, makes me wonder...

SB

Re:ROTFLMAO!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Goddammit!

I really hate people like you. In fact, I hate all overzealous zealots, whether they're Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or whatever zealots.

They (and you) are the reason people get a bad impression of otherwise great communities.

And don't think I'm writing this because I'm a Windows user hell-bent on flaming Linux zealots, since I'm not. I use Linux most of the time I use my computers, and only boot Windows when I'm at a LAN party, or when I want to play games I can't get working with WINE.

Ever since Win2000 and XP, Windows has been acceptable, so shut your trap!

Re:ROTFLMAO!

[Barlo_Mung_42]

"Using Linux to load an "up" image into RAM and turn control over to it is a great idea."

This is what we in MS land call Hibernation.
Really a great feature. You should try it some time.

"But That Trick *Never* Works!"

[Ray Radlein]

"For my next trick, I will boot MacOS faster, using AmigaDOS!"


Once upon a time, someone (Perry Kivolowitz, I think) figured out a way to get the Amiga's ramdisk device to survive a restart with its contents intact. Like probably everyone else who discovered this trick, I immediately set about figuring out a way to get my Amiga to boot from its own ram disk, just because it was such an unbelievably goofy thing to want to do. It was pretty neat to be able to hit Control-Amiga-Amiga and have the whole computer reboot in a matter of seconds.

For a time, I also had one of those Emplant Mac-ona-stick cards for my Amiga. The Emplant cards were well-known for being able to run Mac apps faster than an equivalently-CPU'ed Mac (even while also running Amiga apps at the same time), thanks to the Amiga's coprocessors. Perhaps if I had set up my ramdisk-based boot sequence to immediately fire up Finder on the Emplant, that trick could have worked.

Alas, the Emplant card was the sole computer casualty of my last move, thereby sparing me from spending a truly ridiculous amount of time firing up my old A3000 just to see. Maybe I'll just do something useful instead, like my taxes, or building a working jet engine out of Lego bricks.

Re:Setting the record straight

[Tim C]

I run Gentoo with a lot of beta programs and it still has better stability than Windows.

I've been using XP Pro on a number of machines for the past 18 months or so, and I get about as many crashes as I do on the machines running Mandrake - that is to say, almost none.

Windows stability has come a long, long way, and for everyday use is easily on a par with that of Linux.

etBIOS

[soramimicake]

Similar in idea, new motherboards just came out in Japan using etBIOS. Letting PCs to play CD/DVDs, browse the net, etc. even before they boot up. No HDD is needed, though that probably means persistent storage is not available. (Can't save the all the p0rn you find nor bookmark the site :-) )

Re:etBIOS

[eneville]

Theres so much pr0n on the net now that you will forget all about that pr0n you found yesturday... Dont worry too much about it. Indeed many pr0n sites keep repeating pics.

*giggle*

[frause]

You don't have to sit there and wait for it to shut down, silly!

Win4Lin

[PhotoGuy]

On a slightly related note, one of the faster boots of Windows I have ever seen, was using Win4Lin, a program which lets you run Windows 98 on Linux. It doesn't attempt to emulate a whole PC a la VMWare, it just focuses upon tweaking Windows enough to be able to run on Linux, including native access to the file system (your Windows installation and files are simply in a "win" directory, not on a virtual disk or anything).

By using the native Linux file system, and an efficient set of appropriate drivers for mapping to X, etc., I found they made Windows run much faster than Windows could on bare hardware, including boot times.

It's so deliciously ironic, using Linux to make Windows boot or run faster than otherwise possible.

reboots

[Barbarian]

At least 3 windows xp security updates released within the last 90 days have required reboots.

DRM will save us...

[ConceptJunkie]

I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.

By instanly sending a message to the Department of Homeland Security. Since you are violating Microsoft's Digital Rights, you must be doing something to subvert U.S. security.

And no, there are no network drops in the cells at Guantanamo.

Re:New MS BIOS - for real

[VJTod]

I thought EFI was Microsoft's implementation of BIOS. They just picked a well known hardware vendor to introduce their plan.
http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/efi.htm

Its called: Turn off WFP

[TubeSteak]

A Guide to turning off Windows File Protection. Most of the time, the only reason you need to reboot is for windows to replace a protected file. Once you tell Winblows that its okay to replace it, you can update all day every day and not have to restart your boxen. Pretty groovey right?

Re:Its called: Turn off WFP

[HiThere]

That sort of depends on what "turning of Windows File Protection" means. The phrase sends chills down my back, but since so many terms don't mean what they first appear to, I'm not sure this is justified.

No I'll never find out through experience, since I *won't* agree to the MS EULA, but that sounds like a very dangerous and insecure thing to do. To me it sounds like you are making system files world writeable. To which I can only say UGH! Or "how to make MS Wind less secure than it is by default".

OTOH, it's certainly true that the criticism levelled at another poster applies to me. I don't know much about MSWind, and I don't use it. The last version I had much contact with was MSWind98, and this may color my feelings. (But the thing that colors my feelings most is the progressive changes in the EULA.)

Re:Its called: Turn off WFP

[TubeSteak]

yes, i guess it does make windows less secure, but then again, the type of user doing this probably has all his ducks in a row when it comes to security. If you look at windows as a whole, the vast majority of recent security issues have been from/through the web browser... If you're smart and use a browser that doesn't execute everything under the sun by default, 9x% of your vulnerabilities are gone. I wouldn't suggest home users do this, its the type of tweak meant for the server/hardcore crowd.

A completely seperate gripe: Windows brand firewall. A great way to whitewash security issues.
Customer: I got a virus. Help!
Support: Was your firewall turned on? No!? Sorry, we can't help you.
Customer: But...

Re:Its called: Turn off WFP

[cos(0)]

Windows File Protection is a feature that does not allow programs to permanently overwrite system files. I experienced this once -- a program overwrote some files and after a reboot Windows popped up an alert that some critical files have changed and that it wants me to insert a Windows CD so that it can restore the old copies.

Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on this.

Re:Its called: Turn off WFP

[jpop32]

Most of the time, the only reason you need to reboot is for windows to replace a protected file.

But, most of those most times include the situation when the file to be replaced is an .exe or .dll currently loaded and running. If that file turns out to be something that can't be unloaded (a base service, kernel or whatnot), you have to reboot, no way around it.

For the uninitiated, Windows File Protection monitors designated crucial files and folders for change, and replaces them with a trusted copy if one happens.

In other news:

[outofpaper]

Get your car though rush hour trafic by riding your bike to work.

Re:ROTFLMAO!

[westlake]

Windoze is lucky to get more than a day of uptime, especially when you run media applications on it. The only way to run a windoze computer is to turn it off at night so it won't crash and burn as much durring the day and firewall the hell out if it.

Twitter, you've become tiresome.

I haven't seen an XP crash in a year, media apps run flawlessly, and there are damn few I haven't tried.

Re:ROTFLMAO!

[CompMD]

I had a Pentium 200 with 64MB RAM running NT4 with an uptime of 230 days before someone who didn't understand how to use a fusebox pushed the wrong button and knocked out my circuit. The box runs great with AIM, IE6, an ftp daemon, Photoshop 5, Starcraft, and an X server so I can access my real computer. It makes a good footrest too.