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Windows 8 To Feature 'Fast Startup Mode'
New story submitter CSHARP123 writes "Microsoft has posted details about a Windows 8 feature that is a hybrid between cold booting and waking up from a hibernated state. This feature is called fast startup mode. Gabe Aul, director of program management in Windows, explains: '[A]s in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested).' The post contains a video as well, which shows Windows starting up in less than 10 seconds."
Can we start talking about "Time to a Usable Desktop"? My laptop boots to a login prompt in 15 seconds, but after login it's another 2-5 minutes before it's done thrashing the hard drive. There are precious few (useful) tools available to track down everything the system is doing, and even fewer to help you improve the situation.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Didn't think about that. The hibernate file doesn't have any special permissions or encryptions or something does it?
It doesn't matter if the file is protected. If you can breach the kernel, and store your malware/rootkit/etc as part of the "session 0" data mentioned in the summary, then the OS will automatically save it all for you. No need to crack the file.
However, the file does provide another vector for attack.
RTFA and find out..
Hint... The answer is yes. But note that they do re-intialize drivers even in the hybrid boot, so that takes care of a majority of kernel level issues
The biggest problem I have when running Windows, especially in a corporate environment, is all of the crapware that doesn't start until I log in. Those are the programs that decide to do massive tasks as soon as they're started. They bog down the network connection and thrash the hard drive doing their startup scans. They make the desktop completely unusable for significant lengths of time after login.
I suppose the fast boot to a login screen is useful. I'm able to get to the login screen quickly and log in. Then I can go get my coffee and read the paper while the startup applications take forever to do whatever it is they are doing. But it still doesn't solve the core problem of having a computer that is up and useful to the end user in a reasonable amount of time.
Now, it should be obvious that the blame here is not entirely on Microsoft. They have no control over what crap the end user (or corporate IT monkeys) install on the desktop. They can't control what gets started up when the user logs in. Microsoft has no way to prevent an idiot from writing an anti-virus package that does a complete system scan (that bogs down the entire system while it's running) when it is first started by the user. There's nothing stopping a startup program from waiting for a slow network connection to time out, causing the entire startup process to basically hang. There's nothing Microsoft can do to prevent a program to rebuild it's entire search index at startup, thrashing the disk to the point where the entire system is unresponsive while it's running.
But Microsoft is not entirely blameless either. The root of the problem was the decision to make the console the central focus of operation.There is absolutely no reason why so much of the software has to start up as soon as the user logs in. There is no reason why it cannot be tied to the startup of the computer. And if that software was tied to computer startup there would be no reason it could not be identified for hibernation just like the kernel, resulting in not only a faster boot time but a faster time to actual usefulness of the desktop.
OK so I tried Soluto in a VM. I was curious and downloaded it.
Granted that a VM is not a real machine, it shouldn't make any difference in this sort of software. But it does. The VM install of Windows is pretty spare. It has only a few programs that I actually fuck around with in Windows. It takes under 10 seconds to get to login and under 5 for the desktop to appear. So it's no slouch.
1. Soluto's a pig. Oink Oink. It will not even install if you have less than 512MB of RAM, which a lot of people do if they're still running XP (which is a huge amount of people). This means typically 256 or 384MB or 512MB with "shared graphics memory" cutting it down. I know, people should upgrade, but this isn't some sort of 3D modeling program, it's just a startup trimmer and browser fixer.
2. It's a sloth. It's slow as molasses in January. The install is slow and the interaction is slow. And its disk footprint is huge for what it does.
3. It /insists/ on using flashy 3D graphics calls. I know that you have to please the drooling masses somehow, but this is one of the main causes of #2. In a VM it turns the interface /unusable/. I had flashbacks of Norton in the 9x days.
In short, this program has loads of fat that should be cut off and thrown in the fire. It should reflect what it purportedly does - speed up your machine. This is not done by adding useless frippery.
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BMO
What a passive-aggressive piece of shit.
An animated frowny-face when I go to Install? And second guessing me?
Fucking really?
I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable in a utility software.
There is a quality I see in good software. I call it 'neatness'. It's a tough quality to describe. Neat software does something useful, does it with aplomb, and has a simple, spare, self-descriptive interface that does not surprise the user in bad ways. But it's more than that. It's software that, when used, puts a smile on your face because of its elegance.
Soluto is anything but that.
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BMO