How To Warm Boot Windows XP/Vista
Unless you have to, it is many times advantageous to “warm boot”, or rather warm reboot, Windows. In a warm reboot, Windows restarts, but the computer doesn’t, skipping the whole pre-Windows boot screen/BIOS/startup sequence. You an easily specify a warm boot in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Just hold down SHIFT on your keyboard before clicking “Restart” in Vista, or before clicking OK in the restart dialog in XP. Enjoy the extra 20 seconds!
Technically, the use of the term “warm boot” is a bit misused here, but the small amount of time saved by not re-running the BIOS can be worth it.
(via Digg)



Thank you! I forgot most of the keyboard tricks related to the shut down dialog.
Of course I still remembered the “press shift to hibernate” option, but since I disabled hibernation, I obviously didn’t use that one anymore.
Comment by Tim | August 17, 2007
doesnt work?
Comment by sam | August 17, 2007
doesnt work in XP
Comment by f | August 17, 2007
Doesn’t work in XP. Does anyone know how to get it to work?
Comment by Nick | August 21, 2007
Doesn’t work. Tried several times. Windows XP Media Center edition
Comment by Allan | September 3, 2007
If I have the start bar vertical, down the left edge of the screen, then when I mouseover th eicon in the tray, the resulting popup obscures the tray icon, and I can’t access it to do anything… (I’m on a dual monitor box).
Comment by Jaye | September 4, 2007
I’m so sorry, wrong blog… Sheesh.
Comment by Jaye | September 4, 2007
Really, did the author even test this before posting it? All signs point to this being a hoax. Too busy blogging to stop and try the warm reboot. Really. Shame.
Comment by nunya | July 8, 2009