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Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Nov 12, 2008 06:03 PM
from the says-them dept.
from the says-them dept.
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."
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Video (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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ASRock is not ASUS (Score:5, Informative)
ASRock is not ASUS. Hua Ching, the subsidiary that was spun off from ASUS is not any longer a part of the ASUS organization. See http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2002/11/05/asus-distances-itself-from-asrock-subsidiary [theinquirer.net] for details. There are a number of companies locally and elsewhere that have been pushing cheap ASRock mainboards as being the same quality as ASUS mainboards. We have seen many issues with the ASRock mainboards, both in premature failure and incompatibilities, that we have not seen at all in ASUS mainboards. ASUS has its own low-end set of mainboards and they are much better than the ASRock, from my experience. The sooner this sort of misinformation gets sorted out, the better informed the consumer will be.
Re:ASRock is not ASUS (Score:4, Informative)
I work at a computer store in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. However, I would like to point out that as far as my comments are concerned, I speak only for myself here, not where I work.
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Proper shutdown... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Proper shutdown... (Score:5, Funny)
Really I can shut my laptop down in less than 10 seconds, leaving the battery cover off enables me to improve that to 2-3 seconds.
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Re:Proper shutdown... (Score:5, Funny)
Hp laptops only take half a second to shut down - at least the DV 2000, 6000, and 9000 models, because the slightest bump to the battery release latch most often causes the battery to drop out, contacts first, causing immediate shutdown if you're not plugged in.
Side note and totally off-topic - WHAT THE FUCK SLASHDOT? Your site has been making my pop-up blocker and Firefox go fucking NUTS today!
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Re:Proper shutdown... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ditto... popups are probably the least effective on sites that attract technology minded folks - no, they don't see the ads - it just pisses them off everytime the blocker has to prevent them.
Screen ads much, Taco?
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Cool. (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if something like this could be done with Linux now that 2.6.27.5 has been out for a few days and that situation with the RESET_REG_SUP bit has been resolved. This certainly is great news for Vista users looking for a new board.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It shouldn't be hard, as long as you have any kernel/motherboard combination where suspend or hibernate work reliably. Just create a shutdown level that actually does a reboot, then modify the startup scripts to immediately do a suspend or hibernate as soon as the machine is booted if that shutdown level was used. The effective shutdown time will be longer (because it's actually a reboot), but the effective "boot" time will be very quick.
While probably do-able, this actually seems like overkill. Why not
It's been done in 5 seconds.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if something like this could be done with Linux now that 2.6.27.5 has been out for a few days and that situation with the RESET_REG_SUP bit has been resolved. This certainly is great news for Vista users looking for a new board.
It's been done in 5 seconds..
Doesn't even require a special motherboard, they did it by modifying Fedora on a EEE pc (something not known for it's speed)
http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ [lwn.net]
Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/arjanintel [youtube.com]
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Linux vs. Windows Speed boots (Score:5, Informative)
It's been done in 5 seconds..
Doesn't even require a special motherboard, they did it by modifying Fedora on a EEE pc (something not known for it's speed)
And above all the strategy behind the speedy boots are completely different :
- Linux basically Just boots in 5 seconds. In a plain normal fashion. Everytime you push the button, no matter what, the system is up in 5 seconds (well except if you trashed your machine and disk have to be rechecked).
But it's a plain standard boot.
- Whereas, for Windows, ASRock has to resort to abusing the sleep/hibernate system. With the subtle difference is that they are not actually suspending the system to RAM/disk (in order to avoid accumulating garbage, as they say).
They are resuming a special suspended "freshly booted" state.
i.e.: when in fast boot mode, you are not actually booting Windows. You are resuming an image of a "Windows-that-just-got-started" suspend on RAM.
The main implication is that the first time you boot, and after each system update (and you know that, given microsoft's track of security, you're still going to have patches coming often) or any other change that might render the pre-suspended image obsolete, you can't do this. You have to go through a slow boot, rebuild a pre-suspended state, and only after that it'll work.
It's not a standard boot. It's not as robust as a real boot, and frequently it won't work. (not to mention that these pre-suspended image will be the perfect place to inject a vm-based rootkit).
In short : not as useful as you would hope.
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Re:Linux vs. Windows Speed boots (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cool. (Score:4, Interesting)
You are not quite right.
The fast mode Linux equivalent is to have init suspend the system right before the log-on prompt every time you boot. Then to "shutdown" your computer you actually reboot it. It ends up in S3 sleep stage. When you arive at your computer to use it, you "turn it on" by unsuspending it.
The other method works EXACTLY the same as the fast mode outlined above, but has init hibernate the computer, rather than suspend it on each boot.
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Oh believe me, I'd love to (Score:5, Funny)
I'd boot Vista off my work PC in a millisecond if I could
Heh... It's using the Hibernate functionality... (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like all they did was allow you to store a Hibernate to Disk snapshot of your system at startup before anything else gets done- which is technically cheating. ANYTHING can boot up in about 4 or seconds that way. :-D
Re:Heh... It's using the Hibernate functionality.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Heh... It's using the Hibernate functionality.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Heh... It's using the Hibernate functionality.. (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. That is exactly what they do. So they just shift the boot time to be part of the shutdown time, so when you arrive at your computer again, and turn it on, you are just unsuspending it, or are loading an unusually clean hibernation file. This is a very interesting idea, but it is one that doe not need motherboard support. This can be done by the OS alone.
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Re:Heh... It's using the Hibernate functionality.. (Score:4, Interesting)
This used to be called "cutting part off the string on this end and tying it to the other end". The technique is sometimes useful, but in this case, what if you're also concerned about shutdown time? For instance, I sometimes shut down my laptop at the end of a meeting for various reasons. Shutdown time is important because I have to wait until it shuts down completely before closing it, else it'll suspend and then resume shutting down when I'm trying to boot it up.
Windows *already* takes too long to shut down -- I'm not sure I want to wait even longer so it can also do prework for the next boot. Instead of tricks like this, why not load less cruft at boot?
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My guess as to how it's done... (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
I fail to see how what they've done is a bad thing. And I don't think it's quite as easy to script, since you'd have to reconfigure how windows works. If you have an inkling of how to do this in a smooth automated fashion, please do tell me.
Big question is, if you pull
Re:My guess as to how it's done... (Score:5, Informative)
They answered that "big question" in the article. There are two different options the "super fast" boot mode that does the " boot" in four seconds. And a regular fast boot that takes 22 seconds. The four second super fast one, needs to stay plugged in to maintain state. The slower fast one does not.
I wouldn't recommend swapping out hardware in either case.
Parent
Re:My guess as to how it's done... (Score:5, Informative)
And I don't think it's quite as easy to script, since you'd have to reconfigure how windows works. If you have an inkling of how to do this in a smooth automated fashion, please do tell me.
A shutdown script that places C:\Windows\_reboot_quick_boot as an empty file on the file system when you shutdown, and cancels the shutdown in favor of a reboot ('shutdown -a' on Windows, 'shutdown -c' on Unix).
A boot-time script that runs last and waits about 10 seconds at the log-in screen for keyboard input (and to give the start-up applications a chance to settle, so they don't have to do a lot of work and thrash disk on resume). If it gets keyboard input, it exits. Otherwise, it initiates a hibernate action and then exits. When you resume this hibernate, the program either has exited or is exiting.
Do I get a blow job now? (I'm a Unix kid, these kinds of problems are obvious to me)
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Re:My guess as to how it's done... (Score:5, Informative)
This is EXACTLY what it does. The "more images for this article" section at the given link has a flowchart of the process...it's just a reboot and suspend.
Parent
Re:My guess as to how it's done... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Hmm. It seems like it'd be really easy to do this with an open source OS. I think I may have just found a nifty little project for this weekend. All it should take is:
At that point "sudo init 7" should cause your machine to shut down to "instant boot" state. Hitting the power button will then "instant boot" it.
"sudo init 0" or "sudo init 6" will do a normal shutdown or a normal reboot.
The final step would be to modify the "shutdown" command to go to runlevel 7 when given some new option, and then to modify the GUI-based shutdown tools to provide the instant-boot option as well, and maybe make it the default. Oh, and maybe modify the ACPI script that's executed when the power button is hit so that the power button does a "shutdown to instant boot" by default.
Pretty easy. Of course, in Linux I don't ever see any reason to shut the machine down anyway. My laptop pretty much only gets rebooted when there's a kernel update to install. Other than that, it just gets suspended. So, kind of pointless in Linux, but easy. The same would apply to *BSD.
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Not quite as useful as it seems at first glance... (Score:4, Informative)
BUT... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:BUT... (Score:4, Informative)
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What about shutdown? (Score:3, Informative)
Given the flowcharts (not the shiny video that catches your attention first) it appears that instead of shutting down, they simply reboot the system and once it reaches the state where the OS has finished loaded it then goes to sleep or hibernate. Once you power it back on it just returns to the freshly loaded OS.
So it appears that while it starts up faster, you should end up spending more time shutting down (actually rebooting and reloading the OS). You could also do this manually by rebooting Windows and once it gets to the desktop/login screen go into hibernate/sleep.
Home test (Score:5, Funny)
I pulled on a pair of boots and managed to beat their time by more than 3 seconds.
Cheating... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cheating... (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Parent
No, really, this is clever... (Score:4, Interesting)
What it looks like they're doing:
1. They're taking a snapshot of the system that was made when you hibernated, and restoring that snapshot.
2. Next time you shut down it restores the same snapshot you made the first time, after your original clean boot.
The only real issue I see is that your file system cache (and any other file system state) now contains garbage, and will need to be invalidated (NOT FLUSHED). If the cache was left out of the original snapshot then just remounting the file system from scratch should solve that. This isn't really booting (you'll need to repeat the whole process after just about any time you modify system state, including a lot of things like registry changes), but it's also not specific to Windows and should DTRT with Linux, etc...
YouTube syndrome (Score:5, Funny)
The video suffers from YouTube syndrome. Symptoms of this condition include one or more minutes of stuff we don't care about. The condition is most extreme when the event we care about is of short duration. Although it is not entirely curable, it can be treated by posting the time of the interesting event in the comments section. In this case, the event in question occurs at 2:38. Remember, this is a treatment not a cure. The treatment still consumes bandwidth and time. In the future, we may have a Flash plug-in where the annotation feature can be used to denote points of interest, with the ability to skip to a keyframe just before said point. Until then, only video posters can prevent YouTube syndrome. Remember, if the event of interest in your video is of short duration, the video should not be any more than twice as long as the actual event. Introduction, at most, should identify you and/or your company. Anything that can be explained more efficiently as text should be put in the little text section that appears in the upper right.
How does it know the difference (Score:4, Funny)
clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls 'accumulated garbage data,'
you also get the security of knowing that you won't lose any data
You insensitive clod! All my data IS accumulated garbage!
Okay, that was the best video I've seen in ages. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm really beginning to like ASUS. Not only do I like their approach to hardware a lot, but that was the most straight forward, unintentionally entertaining, non-bullshit video I've EVER seen from a corporation. I mean, yeah, it was dippy YouTube stuff, but seriously; Can you imagine any other main stream computer company allowing their tech monkeys to represent the mothership without the message first passing through a legion of marketing directors, lawyers and various haircuts in suits? Hell no!
Imagine the plasticy, dumbed down crappola video with gawdawful elevator music and bad overlay graphic effects you would have gotten in nearly every other situation.
Damn. ASUS is run by humans!
-FL
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're posting on Slashdot. What have you done to help save the economy?
Seriously.
Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:5, Funny)
Leave Anonymous Coward alone!!!!!! *tears*
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Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Parent
Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:5, Funny)
The US Government is on the verge of nationalizing 3 failing automakers and you're concerned with how fast you can boot windows? Seriously? The failed
financial bailout may cause the US government to declare bankruptcy and you care about this shit? Get some priorities!
Okay, fine, instead of considering product purchases that would fix the economy, I'm going to take your advice and worry about the gubment bailing companies out.
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!
THey're spending monEeeez to bail them outz!!!!
I'm so nervous! Worry worry worry worry worry!!!
Oh noes!!! Waaahhhh!!!1111
Wow, I see your point, that was so much more worthwhile than what I was doing before I read your post.
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Re:get some fucking priorities (Score:4, Interesting)
Psst,
You are part of the government.
If you think you are living in an island, you are about to be surprised.
And unions have nothing to do with the current Automaker woes. Not. A. Damn. Thing.
It's upper managements fault for not preparing for the change in markets.
Parasite? what the hell are you talking about? Are you saying people shouldn't be paid for work?
God you are an idiot.
His post was not insightful, it is ignorant, emo, and self centered to the point of harm.
OTOH I should expect this from someone who can't even grasp why the current pledge of allegiance is a prayer.
ON a side note, at least we live in a society that allows you to go on and on spouting your ignorant drivel...no thanks to you.
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Re:You can't have both (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, (sorry about another post) they couldn't advertise "not worrying about losing your data if there is a power cut" if the image was taken straight after boot, because it wouldn't have any of your data in it, just OS stuff.
Re:What about logon? (Score:5, Informative)
Instant Boot will also only work on Windows systems (XP or Vista) with a single-user account and no password protection.
from the article..
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of us don't actually know what S3 and S4 are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACPI#Power_States [wikipedia.org]
Re:S3? S4? What is this of which you speak? (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of us don't actually know what S3 and S4 are.
You will after reading this article... [wikipedia.org]
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