In a new Building Windows 8 blog post, Microsoft outlines the “problem” with Windows 8 and its fast booting. In fact, Windows 8 boots so fast that there is very little time to press F8 or F2 during boot to access settings or the boot menu. Well, not anymore. Microsoft has fixed this issue with Windows 8.
Windows 8 will feature a new boot options menu that has all the troubleshooting tools, developer options for Windows startup, firmware BIOS setup, and methods to boot into alternative devices such as USB. Windows 8 will also feature a fail-over behavior in which the boot options menu will automatically come up whenever there is a problem that would keep the PC from booting successfully into Windows 8. Users can also access the boot menu via the “Advanced Startup” option within Windows 8 from the General tab of PC settings. Users can even hold down the Shift key while clicking Restart and Windows 8 will go through the same sequence of events as if you had clicked Advanced startup from within PC settings.
“The boot options menu creates a single place for every option that affects the startup behavior of the Windows 8 PC. By bringing these together into a single place, the boot options menu has become a familiar, unified, and highly usable place for these related items. Tasks such as changing Windows Startup settings, entering the UEFI firmware’s BIOS setup, or booting to a USB drive no longer require interrupting boot with a keystroke,” Microsoft adds.
