Microsoft Layouts Windows 8 Boot Options

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This is quite interesting. The Building Windows 8 blog posted another very detailed post to address an issue that you and me never thought about was an issue. Windows 8 boots up too quickly. It’s so quickly that there is no longer time for anything to interrupt boot. Indeed, trying to press F8 to call up the boot option isn’t that easy with Windows 8.

The answer to this issue, according to the post, is a combination of three different solutions that solve the scenarios without needing to interrupt boot process with a keystroke.

  1. The unified boot option menu.
  2. A failover behavior that automatically brings up the boot option menu.
  3. Several straightforward methods to call up the boot option menu.

Obviously, the unified boot option menu is the key to this design which includes all tools needed for a computer to boot up, troubleshooting tools, methods of accessing the firmware BIOS, or booting to alternative devices such as USB drives.

Windows 8 boot option thumb - Microsoft Layouts Windows 8 Boot Options

The Advanced boot options menu includes most of the troubleshooting tools such as Command Prompt, System Image Recovery, UEFI Firmware Settings, Automatic Repair, and Windows Startup Settings.

Windows 8 advanced boot option thumb - Microsoft Layouts Windows 8 Boot Options

It’s fairly understandable that the boot options menu automatically pops up when there is a problem but what’s more useful is the ways that you can intentionally bring the boot options up at next boot so it’s more predictable than relying on the keystroke you have to press.

The primary method of reaching the boot options is from Advanced startup on the General tab of PC settings. Pressing the Restart now button under Advanced startup begins the primary pathway to reach the boot options on a fully functional system. The system begins the normal restart process. Then, just before Windows has finished shutting down and is about to fully restart and enter POST, the entire process is paused and the boot options menu fades into view.

Windows 8 PC settings.jpg thumb - Microsoft Layouts Windows 8 Boot Options

You can also hold down the Shift key while clicking Restart from the shutdown menu.

Windows 8 boot options from Start menu thumb - Microsoft Layouts Windows 8 Boot Options

And the new flag added to the shutdown.exe command line can also do the trick. Even though there are not too many using the shutdown command line for those who do having this new feature added certainly is nice.

shutdown.exe /r /o

As usual, here is the demonstration in action.

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