Hitting F10 to get into the BIOS or F8 to get into Safe Mode already comes down to timing. Would you be able to catch those spots if booting took only 7 seconds?
Microsoft discussed the problem with Windows 8 and its faster boot times thanks to UEFI, improvements in the operating system, and solid-state drives. The window to hit F8 on some of these systems can be consistently less than 200 milliseconds according to Microsoft.
The problem we saw with our F8 key extends to any other key you may want to press during boot. For example, in the Windows 8 Developer Preview release, the F8 key led to a full set of repair, recovery, and advanced boot options. A different key allowed developer-focused options, such as enabling debugging or disabling driver signing. And on most PCs, there are additional keystrokes used by the firmware and advertised by messages during POST: “Press F2 for Setup” or “Press F12 for Network Boot.” Now, POST is almost over by the time these instructions could be displayed. And in many cases, the keyboard wouldn’t be functional until so late in POST that it’s almost not worth the time it would take the firmware to look for these keystrokes. Some devices won’t even try.
To solve the problem, Microsoft came up with three new approaches to allow interrupting the start up process.
- We pulled together all the options into a single menu – the boot options menu – that has all the troubleshooting tools, the developer-focused options for Windows startup, methods for accessing the firmware’s BIOS setup, and a straightforward method for booting to alternate devices such as USB drives.
- We created failover behaviors that automatically bring up the boot options menu (in a highly robust and validated environment) whenever there is a problem that would keep the PC from booting successfully into Windows.
- Finally, we created several straightforward methods to easily reach the boot options menu, even when nothing is wrong with Windows or boot. Instead of these menus and options being “interrupt-driven,” they are triggered in an intentional way that is much easier to accomplish successfully.
The single menu allows you to boot normally, boot using another device or operating system, troubleshoot problems, or shutdown. But, how do you get here?
Under the troubleshooting button is a group of Advanced options that allow you to choose using system restore, image recovery, automatic repair, or a command prompt. You can also access the UEFI Firmware settings through the menu or change Windows startup options like the former F8 (Safe Mode, etc) screen.
One approach to accessing the boot menu will happen automatically. If Windows detects a problem, it will try a second time and if it fails as well, it will automatically reboot to the boot options screen to allow troubleshooting within WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment). Even if a false positive is caught, you can click the ‘Continue’ button to boot normally into Windows.
I know I have to get into some of these menus daily even with no problems, just a configuration change is needed. How do you access the Boot Options menu when nothing is wrong?
You can find ‘Advanced startup’ as an option under the General tab of PC Settings.
You can get to PC settings from the Settings charm, or by searching from the Start screen using specific search terms, such as boot, startup, safe mode, firmware, BIOS, or several others. On the General tab, you’ll see a short description of the options that will be available in the boot options menu, as well as a Restart now button. The descriptions shown on this screen are fully dynamic, and will change based on the hardware, firmware, and software available on your specific Windows 8 PC.
To even more quickly access this menu, you can hold down Shift while clicking Restart and Windows 8 will go through the same stages to land in Boot options. Being able to do this from the Shutdown menu also means that it is an option that can be accessed without having to sign in to the computer. From the login screen, you can hold down Shift and click Restart to reboot to the Boot Options.
Finally, a new parameter has been added to the Shutdown.exe command.
If you use shutdown.exe /r /o, it will restart to the Boot options menu.
/r means restart and /o only works when paired with /r to mean booting to Boot options.
This article certainly made for an interesting read and it was great to read how Microsoft approached solving the problem. Certainly nobody would want every boot up intentionally slowed down for the few times you need to access boot up options. I look forward to seeing it in action and I’m sure it will take some getting used to.