Microsoft Details The "Boot Options" Menu, A Fix For Windows 8's Fast-Booting Ways

Posted 05/23/2012 at 10:06am | by Brad Chacos

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As any SSD owner can tell you, fast boot times are a wonderful thing! Except for, well, when they're not. Microsoft's been working hard at reducing the boot times in Windows 8 and to hear them tell it, your home screen pops up so fast that there simply isn't enough time to mash on the trusty ol' F2 or F8 if you need to muck around in the BIOS or enter Safe Mode. Rather than shrugging their shoulders and leaving users to press a key in a 200ms window, Microsoft instead created a new "Boot Options" menu.

Basically, you won't be able to access boot options during the actual boot-up process anymore unless some sort of error prevents Windows 8 from starting properly, in which case the Boot Options menu you see above will appear. You'll also be able to access the Boot Options from the Advanced Startup portion of the General options menu, after the PC has launched. Finally, holding down the Shift key and clicking "Restart" on the shut down menu will restart the PC and bring up the Boot Options menu.

One caveat: some of the new options -- booting to firmware settings and booting directly to a device -- only apply to computers with a UEFI BIOS. Don't have UEFI? You'll still get the button-mashing prompt during boot-up. Check out the Building Windows 8 blog for waaaaaay more information, or watch the video above to get a sense of just how fast the Windows 8 boot times can be.