Pretty boot screen...? | Tech Off

javamdk
Innovating Tomorrow's Technology

What gives... why is when I installed Vista, during boot I just get a green progress bar indicating that it's loading. Isn't there suppose to be that Vista logo or something... opposed to JUST a progress bar.

If this is normal, then that sucks (not too professional) - but what could be wrong with this? Expressionless

AndyC

It's intentional. Loading a bitmap to display just wastes time. The aim is to boot as fast as possible and that means no time wasted on frivolities.

javamdk
Innovating Tomorrow's Technology

Okay, at least it was intentional - I must have seen the beta build with the splash screen during boot.

Thanks! Cool

ZippyV
Fired Up

I think you can still use msconfig and check the "no graphical bootscreen" checkbox. Then you get a better image, at least that's how it was during the beta.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

AndyC wrote:
It's intentional. Loading a bitmap to display just wastes time. The aim is to boot as fast as possible and that means no time wasted on frivolities.

Loading and rendering a bitmap... that would be measured in the microseconds (assuming it was already read into memory, but since it's a 16-color 640x480 image, that shouldn't take long). But the Vista "throbber bar" stays onscreen for at least a few seconds.

In fact, the Vista bootscreen looks practically identical to the XP bootscreen, I'd wager the little copyright notice at the bottom is a bitmap. In fact, I'd bet 50p the pixels are black because a bitmap says so (viz: it's loading and displaying a bitmap that's all black except for the little copyright notice).

So it isn't for "performance reasons", but just to de-emphasise the VESA-only part of the boot process, or because there was no way they could render the Vista logo in 16-colors without it looking crap. Therefore they went for the simplist thing possible.

AndyC

W3bbo wrote:

So it isn't for "performance reasons", but just to de-emphasise the VESA-only part of the boot process, or because there was no way they could render the Vista logo in 16-colors without it looking crap. Therefore they went for the simplist thing possible.

Install XP prior to SP2. Notice how it displays a different bitmap for Home and Pro versions. After SP2, it's always the same bitmap. The cited reasons (from various sources) were that time spent just deciding which bitmap to display was wasted effort, especially given how short a time it ultimately ends up being shown for. Vista has essentially just taken this to the next logical conclusion.

When it comes to startup times, every millisecond counts.

Piroko

Isn't there usually an animation featuring the Vista "pearl" after the bootscreen/progress bar animation, accompanied with the "Vista Sound?"

TimP

It's a good thing they're not wasting time on the startup bitmap and spending it on more important things like the Vista start sound. If they're seriously removing it for performance reasons, I think they need to take a look at Amdahl's law.

AndyC

Piroko wrote:
Isn't there usually an animation featuring the Vista "pearl" after the bootscreen/progress bar animation, accompanied with the "Vista Sound?"

Which occurs at the perceived point of the boot completing and it's all about perception.

stevo_
Human after all

I think the problem is the boot environment. Its not that it would slow performance (much) or take useless development time.

As soon as EFI (UEFI?) takes off, fast boot process with lots of nice abstraction from the hardware occurs meaning then Microsoft will most likely give their next Windows a quick and fancy looking loading screen.

I quite like the OS X one of just the spinning jobbie, infact- OS X boot process, because it can use EFI in its primative hardware eco system is one of the really nice things about OS X that compared to even Vista, makes Windows still look like a 10 year old computer.

Not to say Microsoft doesn't have some innovation in their boot process in Vista, but its innovation built on a construct thats far at its limits for what modern day computing demands.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

stevo_ wrote:
As soon as EFI (UEFI?) takes off, fast boot process with lots of nice abstraction from the hardware occurs meaning then Microsoft will most likely give their next Windows a quick and fancy looking loading screen.

Not necessarily. This is about services provided by the video hardware.

Vista can't jump to 1280x1024 immediately when it boots because there's no guarantee the hardware supports that mode (since it hasn't loaded any drivers), so it goes to 640x480x16 which is the lowest-common-denominator display mode supported by all VESA-compliant display adapters.

The problem being this standard is over 10 years old, you'd think by now they'd have mandated a minimum of 800x600x24-bit?

stevo_
Human after all

I think you miss the point, Windows currently does this because it has no way of finding out. EFI can find out what resolutions are supported.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

I love the black booting screen! It's great to have no logo at all. This thing should pass by as fast as possible and load into the full OS. The XP logo was just a waste of time!

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

stevo_ wrote:
I think you miss the point, Windows currently does this because it has no way of finding out. EFI can find out what resolutions are supported.