Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC

Topics Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP on August 16th, 2007

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 ) to boot up, plus a minute for the operating system to boot. Sometimes, you need to reboot (e.g. when installing new software), but there is no need to restart , 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 to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

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27 Responses to “Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC”

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  1. Comment by Sam

    not sure about it

  2. Comment by Randal Osgood

    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).

  3. Comment by GK

    as my home pc is frequently restarting…..

  4. Comment by GFYM

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

  5. Comment by How to Restart Windows Without Restarting Your PC - Thinktechno.com

    [...] pctipsbox [...]

  6. Comment by Windows Tips & Tricks

    computer

  7. Comment by StumbleUpon - NCSPRINCESS20's web site reviews and blog

    [...] Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC | PCTipsBox [...]

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