PCTips Box

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. (more…)

In the Windows Explorer, deleted files and folders are normally sent to the recycle bin. This requires extra resources (i.e. time), particularly if the recycle bin is full and part of it needs to be emptied first to make room. When deleting files and folders that are certain to never be recycled, the time delay can be avoided by holding down the shift key when deleting the item. Both methods present a confirmation dialog box, but with different icons and text to make it easy to verify that the recycle bin is, or is not, being used. (more…)