Microsoft to Utilize UEFI to Make Boots Faster with Windows 8

With all the hustle surrounding Microsoft’s BUILD conference over with, the Windows 8 development team has gotten back to work on its blog, informing us of all that’s going to be coming to the company’s upcoming OS. In a post made earlier this week, boot times are explored – a topic that both hardware and software vendors love to talk about often.

Microsoft realizes that no one wants to wait 60 seconds from the time the power button is pushed to the time a workable desktop is reached. Thanks to the fact that both UEFI and SSDs are becoming more prevalent, the chore of optimizing boot times should be made a lot easier.

Rather than stick with the boring ol’ black boot-loader that has become a stature, for Windows 8 Microsoft will be moving to a blue, crisp offering instead. This assumes that your PC supports UEFI, however. If it doesn’t, you’ll likely see nothing different between this and older Windows versions.

At this boot screen, you’ll be able to choose between multiple Windows OSes to boot into, or access a couple of different options – including some to do with recovery. In the video included in the below-linked article, you can see just how fluid this implementation is. It’s much nicer than previous iterations, and best of all, it can be used just fine with touch-first devices.

As Ars Technica points out, there is something to be aware of with how Microsoft has implemented it’s new boot-loader. Required for official Windows 8 devices, the UEFI “Secure Mode” feature must be enabled, which only allows the OS to boot if a legitimate signed key is found. No version of Linux that I am aware of requires the same sort of measure, which means if Secure Mode is enabled, no version of Linux – or even previous versions of Windows – will be able to load.

Fortunately, as motherboard vendors often do, there are likely to be options found inside the UEFI that will allow the disabling of Secure Mode, but the fact that has to be done isn’t that great. The reason Microsoft wants it enabled is because Secure Mode protects against things like boot-loader viruses. Linux’s most popular boot-loader, GRUB, can’t have such a feature under the GPLv3 license it adheres to.

The ultimate solution to this problem is up in the air. If Secure Mode is enabled, Linux will not boot, and that’s a problem for those wanting to run it. Secure Mode can be disabled, but it’s not the greatest of ideas. If GRUB could support the Secure Mode, we’d be set – but that in itself would introduce its own set of problems. There’s no simple answer.

Again, if you are sticking to your current PC that uses an old-school BIOS, you won’t have anything to worry about. Most of what’s mentioned here will really only take advantage of UEFI.