Allegedly one of the fastest boot time. No SSDs. loading BIOS included.

RE:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/video-phoenix-instant-boot-bios-starts-loading-windows-in-under/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fab6IfPuvho

Discuss. How does it work?

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/jackluo922#p/a/u/1/m84V-jAKRXM

You can do it without any modification or the new bios with a netwbook. 20s boot up including bios loading

 

Well that's interesting

 

I wonder if existing notebooks can be retrofitted with this Phoenix BIOS and how many manufacturers would actually issue the BIOS update.

 

This is very interesting but is it going to go on the market and work with other types of BIOS's?

 

How would you do this? I have an SSD and it takes 30-40 seconds to boot Windows 7 from cold ... And my Windows is quite well taken care of (startup programs, etc.).

 

Fascinating! I wonder how fast a bios like this could boot to desktop with an ultra-light Linux OS.

 

Nice!

Imagine with SSDs becoming more mainstream...10second total bootup time from cold?!?!

 

BIOSes don't boot to the desktop, operating systems do. All the fast BIOS does is reduce the time it takes for the OS to start loading. So, for most modern machines, with the BIOS set to the usual FastBoot option, you'll shave off maybe 10 seconds off your boot time. Which makes me wonder, what's the big fuss about boot times anyway. I mean, how often do you guys reboot your machines? There's always sleep mode if you need to be back in business quickly...

 

I understand that. What I was pondering was how quickly one could get to the desktop with a fast loading bios + an ultra light OS.

I think it's just because people hate having to wait in this fast-paced world we live in. 10 seconds of waiting for your laptop to boot is 10 seconds you can't be using it.

 

Fine, then don't shut it down. With Hybrid Sleep, all you ever do is close or open the lid. As long as you're not in hibernation yet, you'll be back on your desktop, with all your apps open the way they were, in a couple of seconds, with no BIOS POST getting in the way. With current laptops, you can expect to avoid hibernation as long as you're using the machine at least every other day. Most will be fine sleeping over the weekend, too. So, if you're really that much into saving those last few seconds, why waste precious time on shutdowns and boots?

 

Do you think we will at some point in the near future get computers that turn on and off like light bulbs or is sleep mode and hibernation good enough?

 

Sleep mode should be good enough. Turning on instantly is not so easy, since computers do tend to be a bit more complex than light bulbs...

Seriously, when awaking from sleep, your computer will turn on essentially instantly, except for the fact that various drivers and services need to reconstitute themselves in their proper state, which may have to change relative to what they were before the computer went to sleep. As a simple example, your networking stack needs to find out what environment it is now in after the machine came back from sleep. In order to reduce the related work to zero, some significant changes would be required in the way various drivers and services work, with wide-ranging consequences for quite a bit of the computing infrastructure (such as communication standards for all sorts of devices) we use every day. This is not something that can be done easily, nor can it be done by a single hardware vendor (such as Intel, say) or software vendor (say, Microsoft) alone. Unless the whole industry gets together to move in that direction, that's not going to happen. Given the fact that most people really don't have a problem with the 3 seconds or so it takes their machine to wake up from sleep, I doubt there is much incentive for the industry to make the enormous effort required to get there.

 

I don't like to use sleep mode because it messes up my SSD's 16k random read performance. My notebooks BIOS only supports S3 sleep and when I resume the bitmap gets out of sync with the SSD's controller or something like that. You can check what sleep modes are supported by typing powercfg /a from an elevated command prompt.

I can type winsat disk from an elevated command prompt and get +100mb/s for the 16k random read part of the test but when resuming from sleep mode it drops to around 30mb/s and takes about a week to recover.

 

Also with certain GPU drivers you cannot resume from sleep (BSOD).

 

...the funny thing is the ASUS Express gate..it skips the bios!
8 sec boot! ..owned....

 

http://event.asus.com/mb/expressgate/

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/asus_express_gate_it_a_gimmick_or_shaping_future

I've had this on my motherboard since October '08, and it was out on other boards before that.

 

All this means is that your SSD driver does not support Sleep.

Badly broken GPU driver; get an update, if you can...

 

It could be limited to the Samsung SSD controller firmware, going to get a new one, probably Intel or Sandforce and will not have to worry about performance hits from sleep mode. Sleep mode is a must with a battery powered computer. Supposedly TRIM enabled firmware works best with S1 sleep mode since the disk is still powered where S3 sleep is the deepest sleep state and powers down the disk.

Back OT, if a simple BIOS update can speedup cold boots by 10-20 seconds then why not? Surely Phoenix is not implementing this for free and OEM's have to factor in bricked machines from bad BIOS flashes so I doubt existing machines will get it.

 

RAID actually increased my bootup time . POST takes about 5 seconds longer (almost 15 seconds for just POSTing sucks).

 

I think essentially they just skip all the checks a usual bios is told to perform, in order to check all things are working properly. The quick load into windows is probably just highly optimized windows loading practically nothing, cauise windows loading is more to do with harddrive speed also than anything. Doubtful a bios change affects this much.

 

I don't think everyone likes sleep I have always disabled it on any machine I use especially laptop's. I find the sleep when screen closes incredibly annoying too. So I boot probably dozen times a day from cold, leaving it on bugs me hehe cus then I am wasting energy

Either way streamlining your OS by cleaning things up including the registry, having an SSD and disabling useless services and startup programs ensures a prompt boot time. Personally having to wait 30 seconds or so from cold doesn't bother me in the slightest.

 

you should meet hibernation. a new feature implemented in windows 2000. fixes all your issues

 

Nah I am too old fashioned to use a feature like that Besides I have often seen machines so clogged up that you can't even use them for 5 minutes after being "woken". Also having a battery that lasts around an hour or so at max (6 cell + desktop quad = big drain) means it is likely I will run out of power before I can hibernate it

 

you run out of hibernation power the same moment you run out of shutdown power, so that point is mood.

and don't base your judgement on some single stories about systems where it doesn't work. base it on the reality that for all the most systems all over the world today, it just works. if it doesn't, blame your vendor. but at least TRY it.

 

Actually, hibernation takes quite some time on computers with 4GB or more of RAM.

 

They have been talking about this for years and still havnt made it public yet.

Nothing new.

 

That's quite understandable/reasonable IMO.

Coming out of hibernate takes my laptop 30 seconds (incl BIOS). (4GB RAM, 41% RAM utilisation, 320GB HDD 5400RPM).

 

not on win7, where it only writes down the used ram. and with an ssd, which excel all at readspeeds, it takes around 4sec for a gb to reload. very often, my system is up again in 6-8seconds.

 

hibernation ftw
I don't understand why people still prefer to boot from cold (edit: close programs then shutdown), when you can use hibernate.

 

indeed, even if hibernation isn't faster than cold boot and cold shutdowns, it's a no-care thing.

"we have to go!" ? *hibernate*

at next place, open, continue where ever you where. like standby, it costs no mental time to close/save stuff when shutting down, and to open/start things when started up again. big gains.


still, i love more instant bioses everywhere. you want to enter the bios? HOLD a key while turning on. else, instant os boot (or hibernation restore )

 

yeah I know, I have this "Fast Boot" setting in my Dell that allows 2-3 seconds Bios Post time. Loving it.

 

That appears to be quite a fast boot time.
I have seen nearly as fast of boots on 10 year old machines running Gigabyte I-RAM cards for the operating system.

Today I wait a good two minutes for my laptop to boot. I have to wait for the LSI raid controller to pick up my SAS drives. But once windows is up and going it simply cranks

K-TRON

 

now i really have to resist talking about betting on the wrong horse, not understanding technology progression, explicitly look away from ssds..

just kiddin. but 2min boot would be much too long for me.

 

lol not everyone uses SAS drives like u do in ur monster laptop... SSD's FTW anyways!

 

Hibernate definitely takes longer than shutting down for me. The recovery might be slightly quicker at best but it takes forever to shunt a few gigs of RAM onto disk.

 

Hmm there goes the odd..
I never feel that way

but anyway, have you ever really count it like ..
- save/ close programs and click Start > Shutdown > Off
vs
- punch shutdown button to hibernate > Off

edit: forgot to mention the time for startup as well

 

So I timed it, and I was right and wrong:

Hibernate: 38 second shutdown, 29 seconds till login screen/+1 second till usable desktop

Full Reboot: 27 second shutdown, 30 seconds till login/+34 seconds till usable desktop.

So there is a ~30 second difference for the full routine, but I think I was paying attention more to the shutdown times because I'm usually in a rush to pack my laptop to go somewhere

64 second startup is a bit dismal, but I have a lot of startup programs I like to run (notably LCDHype).

 

I can see why you said it takes longer. My hibernate till shutdown only takes 17 seconds with taskbar full of explorers and firefox windows.
And 25 seconds to startup including Bios post.

In these areas hibernation owns full shutdown/boot.
If you're in hurry, just need to push the power button and you're all set to pack-up.
For startup also no need to wait that long for usable desktop

 

Ah, I was using about 2.5GB RAM when I tested (Steam, Outlook, Firefox, uTorrent, etc). Now that I rebooted it's much less and I pulled a 19 second hibernate time. I don't feel like rebooting again but I'm sure it'd be a lot faster since Steam took a full 4 seconds last time to close shop.

Yeah that's true. To be honest though I rarely use either, sleep is more than ample for me and owns both startup and hibernate . Sleep hibernates for me automatically after 6 hours, and then I don't need to wait forever for it to start hibernation, and I see the performance benefit when I turn my computer on

I think the only time I reboot is for updates and to flash my GPU actually.

 

glad to hear that because I thought you were using full shotdown/startup
I'm not a fan of sleep bcause I don't have any reason to use it (at least I think)
either it's fully on or fully off to me

 

Haha no, I'm not that crazy
I do bring my computer a lot of places often, and usually it would consume more battery to hibernate/reboot than to have it sleep for an hour.

 

It boots fast only because he has Classic Theme enabled.

 

It takes my slowest computer a whole 30 seconds to hibernate. Plus Windows can be set to hibernate when you have like 2 minutes left of battery.

Why do you even bother watching it hibernate when you are in a hurry. I just close the lid and stuff it in the sleeve and go. 30 seconds inside a sleeve isn't going to do any significant damage.

 

I've had bad experiences with jostling my computer around. My hard drives tend to freeze and I've gotten a few BSOD's from running across campus while it hibernated (sometimes from sleep>hibernation). I think it has something to do with either the $30 500GB hdd I put in or the lack of a second bracket. In any case, if I treat it right it works great!

Also, FTR, drumming on your keyboard with drumsticks enough freezes it, no BSOD.

 

haha 10char

 

Well then just prevent windows from doing anything when the lid of the laptop is closed.
Have it go to sleep only when you press "sleep" on the startmenu.

 

I'm late to the party here but from a cold start through bios/boot/login/desktop (including establishing a wireless network connection) it takes my HP G70 22 seconds.