Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds

arcticstoat writes "Asus' budget motherboard wing, ASRock, claims that it's found a way to load a clean boot of Windows from a full shut down in just four seconds, using its new Instant Boot technology. The technology takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows respectively. However, by calling them at different times in the boot-up and shutdown process, Instant Boot enables you to boot up to your Windows desktop in three to four seconds, even after a proper shut down. Two modes are available; Fast mode, which uses S3 and boots up in around four seconds, and Regular Mode, which uses S4 and apparently takes between 20 and 22 seconds to boot. The advantage of Instant Boot when compared with normal Sleep and Hibernation modes is that you get the advantage of a clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls 'accumulated garbage data,' and you also get the security of knowing that you won't lose any data if there's a power cut and you lose AC power. There's also a video of it in action at the link above."

Comments

Video

[AKAImBatman]

Those guys in the video are having WAY too much fun with their jobs. "Why your computer boot so fast? I must get ASRock motherboard!"

Now I know why ASUS mobos tend to be so good. They encourage a fun workplace. ;-)

Re:Video

[Netsplitter]

My personal experience is the same as yours. The motherboards are great, if you can get your hardware to work on them. I've found compatibility with different kinds of memory to be especially terrible, but they usually work after BIOS updates which, thankfully, Asus seem to release often. Of course, one could argue they should get it right the first time; I do, and it's why I don't buy Asus anymore.

Re:get some fucking priorities

[Shikaku]

And you're posting on Slashdot. What have you done to help save the economy?

Seriously.

My guess as to how it's done...

[crt]

They never show the shutdown process - my guess is that when you shutdown, it actually reboots, then right after Windows boots it puts it to sleep or hibernate (S3/S4). When you turn it back on, it wakes it and looks like you "just" booted up.
Not really a bad idea I suppose - moves the boot time from boot to shutdown, when you are less likely to care.
Of course you can get the same effect yourself by rebooting then just putting your machine to sleep when you want to shutdown. Someone could probably even write a simple software solution for this rather than requiring a whole new motherboard.

Re:get some fucking priorities

[MoFoQ]

this is Slashdot....news for nerds, stuff that matters.

Emphasis on "news for nerds"....it's not news for "stocktraders" or "economists" or even "lawyers".

Re:Cheating...

[Colonel Korn]

This is still cheating - it's first of all not actually booting but suspending/resuming (albeit smartly).

Most importantly the system is not actually shut down, so it still draws power to refresh the memory. This will likely suck on high-performance laptops where the large amounts of ram with high voltages will suck the battery dry in a substantially short time.

And worse, this technology will take a _long_ time to shutdown. It's sacrificing a lot. We can (really) boot+shutdown a linux box in +- 10 seconds. Would you want a 3 second boot if your shutdown time becomes one minute?

For people who are on the go a lot and tend to open/close their laptops a lot, this may actually reduce their effective work time a lot.

1) It only draws current in "Fast Mode." The "Regular Mode" still allows for 22 second booting with no power draw.

2) Most people won't mind the slow shut down, even in a scenario where the computer is being turned on and off frequently. Why? You shut down because you want to do something else, so the computer can painlessly finish the process in the background where you don't need to notice it. Yes, it will hurt battery life by extending the powered up state for a little longer than your actual usage time, but it then shaves most or all of that off of boot time, which is subjectively more critical.

3) How do you boot a Linux box in negative 10 seconds? "+- 10" looks like a statement of error bounds to me. I think you meant "~10."

Re:Linux vs. Windows Speed boots

[DA-MAN]

If they've found a way to boot Windows in 4 seconds, nobody other than haters is going to care how it was done. Calling the method an abuse of the hibernation system is as ridiculous as calling Jailbreaking an abuse of an iPod. It's your hardware.

I think you're missing the point. Since this is loading a hibernated image of a freshly booted system, this means that updates or changes in startup will be lost unless you remake the image. Since many Windows Updates require a reboot to take effect, this could result in remotely exploitable services running on your system.