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ASRock Instant Boot loads Windows in four seconds
Load your Windows desktop with a clean boot in just a few seconds, even after a proper shut down
With high electricity prices and tough economic times ahead, now isn’t a good time for most of us to leave our PCs on 24/7, but that also means you’ll have to wait a little while when you switch on your PC if you want a clean boot of Windows. However, Asustek’s budget motherboard wing, ASRock, reckons it’s found a good way around this with its Instant Boot system.
The idea behind Instant Boot is that it takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI (advanced configuration and power interface), 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.
The latter advantage only applies when using the Regular Mode, however. When using the Fast Mode, ASRock advises you not to switch off the AC power to the PC at the mains. As well as this, you’ll also save money on electricity by not leaving your PC switched on. Instant Boot will also only work on Windows systems (XP or Vista) with a single-user account and no password protection.
Instant Boot can be enabled on five of ASRock’s current boards, which are based on AMD’s 780G and 790GX chipsets, and Intel’s P45 and P43 chipsets, and you can grab the appropriate BIOS updates from here. ASRock has also released a hilariously cheesy video to demonstrate the feature in action, which looks as though it was shot in the motherboard factory. Check it out below.
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The Instant Boot PC on the right had no sidebars (quicker loading) but the Normal PC had its usual sidebars - not exactly fair. We need Custom PC to do a proper test instead, please :)
Comment by champmanfan2 at 6:49pm 15th November 2008
I've wrote a batch-file today that emulates that behaviour :-) ----- http://bigfatflat.net/public/fastboot.bat ----- Best!
Comment by kurzvorzirka at 3:08pm 13th November 2008
look at the boot process flow diagrams provided by ASRock. They are simply executing a sleep (S3-suspend to RAM) / hibernate (S4-suspend to disk) call immediately following a full system reboot. Anyone can do this, you don't need a new motherboard or fancy software.
Comment by wicksee at 12:47am 13th November 2008
ill have my instant boot with a massive slice of cheese!
Comment by tmonkey at 12:03am 13th November 2008
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 (likely) 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.
Comment by dumdedum at 11:30pm 12th November 2008
Sounds like an updated version of asus expressgate which is cr@p and useless anyway. Easy solution is to set your computer to sleep rather than shutdown which saves loads of power but with the click of a mouse your whole pc is back on the desktop in a couple of seconds.
Comment by subzero1971 at 8:37pm 12th November 2008
that was a fun to watch video and I really think this is a cool feature - cant wait to see it as a standard option in all mobos! imagine that with a SSD? 2 seconds boot time?
Comment by vaduk at 8:46pm 12th November 2008
4 seconds boot time.WOW!! That is impressive. ASRock seems to be innovative arm of ASUS, rather then the low budget. The amount of "cost-effective" ideas that company churns out is really impressive
Comment by jonisaksson at 8:33pm 12th November 2008
I'm surprised to see that mentioned here. Brilliant!
Re: power usage while off..... unless you switch off the PC at the mains I believe they all use some power.
Comment by cjagusz at 7:28pm 12th November 2008
the video has been taken off youtube i huess they thought it was cheesy to lol
Comment by Deathtaker27 at 5:52pm 12th November 2008
Im slightly concerned as requires that the ac still be plug in which for me sounds like they use a little power. For me when i shutdown my machine i dont want it to be using anything also think this might cause problems with my intel plug which could mean that it never shuts down my other stuff. Mind u this is great for certain places especially anyone who has to keep the machine on most of the time or who perfers to burn money this will be great.
Comment by nick101 at 4:48pm 12th November 2008
asus often use asrock to test out new ideas and features, it seperates them from any failures and allows the good ideas to jump onto asus brands quickly. this is why asrock have always had a penchant for the quirky, like different generation RAM slots, AGP 775 boards. PCIe lanes on AGP chipsets etc. this sounds interesting, have to see if the feature makes it to asus
Comment by vulcanproject at 4:19pm 12th November 2008
4s is my kind of waiting time to get out of screen save :( wow 22 and 22 seconds thats one hell of ancurate estimation.
Comment by Cool_CR at 4:18pm 12th November 2008
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 22 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. Between 22 and 22 seconds? ***Thanks - I've corrected this now. I would have added a comment myself, but apparently my username doesn't exist any more. Grrr. (Ben Hardwidge)
Comment by finlay666uk at 4:15pm 12th November 2008
Does the guy in the video think that this video was aimed for people who can't read. I can see that theres 'Enable' and 'Disable'.
Comment by Cerberus_xiii at 3:48pm 12th November 2008
Sorry, Custom PC comments are now closed.
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