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Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP)

codejacked.com — Sometimes, you need to reboot Windows (e.g. when installing new software), but there is no need to restart BIOS, too. However, the default is to reboot both. (That’s called doing a “cold boot,” rather than a “warm boot.”) There’s a trick that works on both XP and Vista to get it to do a warm boot instead, thus saving you 30 seconds per cycle.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 17, 2007

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319 Comments

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  • vpshockwave, on 10/10/2007, -3/+147I'd love to know how this got to the front page, considering every comment is "It didn't work" .
  • chingy1788, on 10/10/2007, -3/+127didnt do anything on XP Pro SP2
  • Scynet, on 10/10/2007, -2/+92http://support.microsoft.com/kb/226939
  • Fredx, on 10/10/2007, -3/+87This same thing worked on windows 9x, i guess no one bothered to see if it worked on xp onwards aswell till now
  • insomniac8400, on 10/10/2007, -1/+72http://www.duggmirror.com/microsoft/Restarting_Windows_Without_Restarting_Your_PC_Vista_or_XP/
  • TimOgg, on 10/10/2007, -4/+68Doesnt work, Dugg down
  • wazzledoozle2, on 10/10/2007, -5/+63Doesn't do anything. And yes, I have the alternate logon (win2k style) interface. Shift+restart doesnt even restart my computer in the normal way, nothing happens.
  • p0tent1al, on 10/10/2007, -2/+57165 diggs so far, and this doesn't even work. What does that say about the 165 people that dugg this up?
  • kelchm, on 10/10/2007, -6/+54I call BS.
  • Spr0k3t, on 10/10/2007, -4/+40or vista pirates gold...
  • marcz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+35It works only on Windows 98.
  • invictus0x0, on 10/10/2007, -3/+35This is an old windows 95/98 trick, and has not worked since windows 2000, buried...
  • Splitt3rxx, on 10/10/2007, -4/+35I'm pretty sure that didn't change anything, my monitor lost the signal for a second... the mobo did the POST and it showed me the normal options for acessing BIOS and system recovery.. so i am pretty sure it was a cold boot. using win XP home btw.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+31It didn't do anything on my PC. I'm very disappointed.
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/10/2007, -4/+33Didn't work, I agree with the BS remark.

    Computer powered off and on like normal.
  • nymphetamine, on 10/10/2007, -13/+40So what exactly does this do? Just bypass the BIOS?
  • doctapeppa, on 10/10/2007, -2/+28did nothing.
  • Xanadude, on 10/10/2007, -6/+30I think Digg rebooted that web server.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+24great, it doesn't even work..
  • Tabris, on 11/10/2007, -2/+25He's just being specific...64 bit does tend to run differently from 32 bit.
  • Exploit, on 10/10/2007, -3/+23Who dugg this?

    Stupid!!
  • brucebeh, on 10/10/2007, -3/+23didn't work on vista ultimate...
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+21you haven't got a clue.
  • kesam, on 10/10/2007, -4/+23Very minor nitpick from an old computer geek. When the computer reboots normally, it's still a "warm boot". A "cold boot" means pressing the reset button (or meant, back when reset buttons still existed) or turning the power off and on. This sounds like just restarting windows, which is technically not a reboot at all.
  • pukiman, on 10/10/2007, -6/+24"A modern PC with Vista Home Edition takes about one and a half minutes to boot."
    I call ***** on that. Takes about 30 seconds from the time I hit the power button until I'm in Firefox, surfing the web.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5_k3x61aM
  • DocHoliday22, on 10/10/2007, -5/+22http://www.duggmirror.com/microsoft/Restarting_Windows_Without_Restarting_Your_PC_Vista_or_XP/
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+19How did this make the front page? Everyone knows that this DOESN'T work and hasn't done since Windows 9x/98/ME. Buried.
  • foxyloxy, on 10/10/2007, -8/+24If you support winXP then I feel sorry for your company dude...

    Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > User Accounts > Click 'Change the way a user logs on and off' > Untick use Welcome (no0b) screen.

    I support windows too... obviously a lot more competently.
  • GeckoSlayer, on 10/10/2007, -10/+25Control + Alt + Backspace :]
  • mmockett, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17I can't believe I just watched a video of a computer booting up.
  • zumpiez, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17Didn't work for me.
  • Inferny, on 10/10/2007, -4/+19That's not so much a Warm restart, it just restarts the X server if it's going,this unloads then reloads windows. Still, helpful if the X server freezes.
  • wattznext, on 10/29/2007, -4/+18Their both dumb what?
  • schizogony, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16Didn't work in Vista Premium. Buried.
  • buricu, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14Actually, i used this all the time in win 98, and i tried it in xp when it came out and was disappointed when i saw that it doesn't work anymore. It didn't work for me then and it doesn't work now. Does anyone have an idea why?
  • directsun, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Sense... this comment makes none
  • shawnz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Do you have any idea what you're talking about? *every* system *always* has to contain 16-bit real mode code, since that is the mode that every x86-based processor starts in. Windows 1/2/3/95/98/ME just used DOS as a 'bootloader' of sorts, because after they finished booting, the system was completely 32-bit and used no DOS code. (try renaming ntldr to ntldr.exe and running it from DOS)

    Also, it isn't just restarting the "gui," this trick restarts the kernel without rebooting. Linux *can* do this using kexec, but it isn't exactly well documented nor does it have anything you can call a cushy interface. You *can* restart the GUI on linux though, but that is only because it is completely provided in user mode (whereas NT's gui is a component of the operating system.)

    Thirdly, the reason Win9X restarted without rebooting was because it was easy -- all it had to do is drop down to real mode, and exit the process -- it could instantly get back into DOS and run win.exe again. I can't say why NT doesn't do this by default though...
  • Sl4sher, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Actually, in Ubuntu (etc.) Ctrl-Alt-Bksp ONLY restarts the X server and programs that rely on it.

    For example, if I have gaim running and restart X gaim will be killed because it's a graphical application and thus relies on the X server.
    But let's say I open a terminal and use the "screen" command to run a program and detach it. Screen will keep the program running in the background without a terminal OR an X server, SO if I kill X my program will keep right on running until I explicitly kill it or restart the system.

    In conclusion good sir, for those with ONLY HALF a clue you are correct, for those with the other half of that clue, you are actually DEAD WRONG.
  • Hawtshot, on 10/10/2007, -4/+13Didn't work on Vista business edition.
  • SuperCUBE, on 10/26/2007, -2/+11And you are a ***** retard, gyrfalcon.
  • sfox, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11So does warm booting. Hence, the whole purpose of the article.
  • afruff23, on 10/10/2007, -5/+14Yeah, nothing happened for me unless it restarts that quick. I'm using XP 64-bit BTW.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14I'm sorry to say--this was a cool trick when it first appeared in Windows 95--but now will only work on very specific and growingly rare hardware. It is was an "unsupported feature" when it made it into '95, but now it's been abandoned completely.

    But it does serve as an excellent example of how far into Windows code Microsoft developers delve with every new release--which is, apparently, not very far at all.
  • shawnz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8It seems like instead of using ACPI to restart the computer (drops down to real mode, runs BIOS over again,) this just closes all programs, restarts the kernel and boots up again (therein not requiring the system to POST again.)
  • rootstyle, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10Ctrl-Alt-Backspace just restarts X.... But congrats on being such a Linux pro on digg.
  • fahrvergnuugen, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7The best part is that this article got a substantial # of diggers to reboot their PC for no reason.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Not only is the method inaccurate, the description is as well. A "cold boot" means you powered it on from it being powered off entirely, hence cold. A warm boot is a reboot.
  • Sp00nMan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6How the hell are we up to 1210 diggs? This is completely FALSE with WindowsXP!
  • shawnz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8You know that windows laptops have ACPI Sleep functionality too, right?
  • jellygraph, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Well, to be honest, I thought MS had gotten rid of that feature, because the 9x line of Windows was actually running on top of MS-DOS 7 native, if I recall correctly... While 2000, XP and so forth actually loads the NT kernel on boot

    i'm going to try this, but i sincerely doubt it works... and would probably be dangerous, especially if the OS is doing an update/patching
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