Reboot WinXP and not entire computer

[prowsej]

Under Windows98 I was able to hold down the shift keys while selecting restart computer to just restart Windows and not go through my BIOS. This saved me about 30 seconds on my boot times and I liked the feature. Doing the same thing doesn't work under WinXP Pro. How do I just restart the OS and not my entire computer now?

 

[CTho9305]

I don't think you can. The Win98 restart isnt' a true restart - I think it just dropped to dos, then restarted the GUI. NT's aren't based off a DOS mode. Also, that "half reboot" is not as effective as a real reboot, and a "real" OS shouldn't (IMHO) support stuff that would make it less reliable.

What does your BIOS do for 30 seconds? Search for drives? Change them from "AUTO" to "None" on connectors that don't have drives hooked up.

 

[amdskip]

No such thing in XP.

 

[Nothinman]

MS doesn't even support the 'shift-reboot' in Win9X, probably because it skips certain important steps in the computers boot process.

But no, NT doesn't have that 'feature'.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
MS doesn't even support the 'shift-reboot' in Win9X, probably because it skips certain important steps in the computers boot process.

But no, NT doesn't have that 'feature'.

I agree, I highly suggest not using the "shift-reboot" feature, at least in any OS newer than the original "gold" Win95. I've had more than my share of problems in Win98/98se with that "feature", and even sometime Windows decides on it's own to do a "soft restart" rather than a "hard restart" after installing or configuring something, and during the 2nd boot decides to hang, part-way through loading Windows. Then I have to manually hit reset, "SCANDISK /ALL", "SCANREG /FIX", and then reboot again and then load Windows. So much for a "time-saving feature".

Besides... why would someone need to restart that often in W2K/XP? They really are much more stable than Win9x OSes - although it is STILL possible, strangely enough, to run out of system-wide GDI resources in W2K.

 

[Nothinman]

although it is STILL possible, strangely enough, to run out of system-wide GDI resources in W2K.

There are no system-wide GDI resource in NT, they're managed per app. I've seen certain apps (namely the win32 Novell admin utils) run out of them, but it never affects the rest of the system.

 

[WhoDeeny]

Logoff and logback on

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

although it is STILL possible, strangely enough, to run out of system-wide GDI resources in W2K.

There are no system-wide GDI resource in NT, they're managed per app. I've seen certain apps (namely the win32 Novell admin utils) run out of them, but it never affects the rest of the system.

That's what the general wisdom is, but my personal experience suggests that is wrong. I also recall reading about some registry settings for increasing the per-process resources/handles/whatever. While these two statements seem contradictory, the simple fact that I was able to completely deplete GDI resources such that icons, etc., started turning black and fonts started looking strange, in one Win32 app, and those problems continued to manifest themselves in other Win32 apps that I also opened, unless I managed to shut down enough windows of the first app to cause the problem to go away. (The symptoms were nearly exactly the same as they are in Win98se, except I can trigger them in Win98se all-too-easily, with only a pittance of Moz windows open, each with perhaps 10 tabs. In W2K, it requires something like 100-200 windows, each with many tabs or many pictures. The problem clearly does extend past the individual app, and to other apps in the system when it happens though, so it is definately system-wide.)

What the exact technical problem is, I do not know, but it affect GDI resources, system-wide, when it happens.

Whether this is truely a "GDI resource" problem, or if in fact there is some internel kernel-level table of identifiers/handles/whatever, seperate from "resources" proper, as they are known in API-level terms, or if the problem was in the video card driver (possible, but it definately wasn't a memory thing, so I don't know why the problem wouldn't manifest itself sooner if it were driver-related), I don't know.

I have a different video card in this system now, and at some point I am going to do some serious "GDI stress-testing" again. The problem was reproducable before, but I haven't eliminated the video card/driver as a possible factor yet.

 

[alkemyst]

I think these GDI issues are due to applications poorly ported from non-NT based code.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
I think these GDI issues are due to applications poorly ported from non-NT based code.

Mozilla and Internet Explorer???