Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC

Posted on August 16th, 2007 by Jason

A modern PC with Vista Home Edition takes about one and a half minutes to boot. An older machine with XP is about the same. That’s 30 seconds for the PC itself (the BIOS) to boot up, plus a minute for the Windows operating system to boot. 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.

The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart.

Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice.

Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 4:19 am and is filed under Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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37 Responses to “Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC”

  1. MS Windows Vista Compatible Software on 02 Sep 2007 at 11:01 am #

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  5. David on 17 Aug 2007 at 3:02 pm #

    This only works on 98 95 and win me, it hasnt worked since win 2k and doesnt on vista or xp

  6. Jason on 17 Aug 2007 at 3:19 pm #

    No david …working vista and xp :)

  7. Tom on 17 Aug 2007 at 6:02 pm #

    Doesn’t work in xp

  8. Jason on 17 Aug 2007 at 7:51 pm #

    Tom working xp.. Please select Shut Down. And shift key..

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  10. Dan on 26 Aug 2007 at 1:21 pm #

    Win XP SP2, doesn’t work.

  11. Jason on 26 Aug 2007 at 8:21 pm #

    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!

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  13. Matt Ellsworth on 03 Sep 2007 at 9:01 am #

    thats great to know – i’ll be doing that for sure from now on.

  14. Darius Spooner on 03 Sep 2007 at 8:39 pm #

    Doesn’t work on my XP SP2. Nothing happens when I click OK while I’m holding down the SHIFT key, after having chosen the ‘Restart’ option from the Shutdown dialog.

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  20. Debi on 20 Nov 2007 at 2:01 pm #

    RESTARTIN WINDOWS WITHOUT RESTARTING COMPUTER…….. it didnt work for me either – it just restarted the computer as usual. and im runnig Windows Vista Basic….. ?????????

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  24. GFYM on 12 Feb 2008 at 4:22 pm #

    Didn’t work for me either, on a xp sp2.

  25. GK on 28 Feb 2008 at 3:25 pm #

    as my home pc is frequently restarting…..

  26. Randal Osgood on 05 Apr 2008 at 8:49 pm #

    Didn’t work with WXP SP2. On a slightly related note, Shift-Del bypasses the Recycle Bin when deleting. Don’t use unless you really don’t want it because you won’t be able to restore the file(s).

  27. Sam on 28 Apr 2008 at 3:35 pm #

    not sure about it

  28. Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC « PcTweak on 10 May 2008 at 8:47 am #

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  29. NOBAMA 08 on 01 Sep 2008 at 9:30 pm #

    Doesn’t work on vista.

  30. ONLYBAMA on 10 Sep 2008 at 6:48 pm #

    No go with vista

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  32. dave obrien on 23 Oct 2008 at 10:09 pm #

    holding the shift key down and clicking restart does nothing i’m running vista premium, timed it with shift key and without no differance.

  33. ryan on 15 Nov 2008 at 12:23 am #

    NO, its DOES NOT work JASON. Hasn’t since ‘98. Did you even try it before you posted this? Even the original guy who posted this on the web has retracted his statement. Before you post something, how about you actually TRY it first??

  34. adesudoyo on 21 Nov 2008 at 11:40 pm #

    It doesn’t work at all !

  35. fassiuddin on 27 Jan 2009 at 12:16 am #

    My system Resatrting actumaticly and its say CTRL+ALT+DEL
    in dos mode
    please give me solution.

  36. Jack C on 26 Feb 2009 at 4:49 pm #

    Did not work on XP ! Lame

  37. uday on 22 May 2009 at 3:46 pm #

    to restart windows without restarting…just do the following

    open taskmanager and switch to processes and end the process explorer.exe…Don’t think about the warning u receive..

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