Computer tip of the day: Warm boot Windows

This is a tip that would be useful to everyone, however, it seems that very few people actually know about it. There are actually two types of reboots for Windows based computer systems. They are called a “cold-boot” and a “warm-boot”.

A cold boot, or cold reboot occurs when the entire computer shuts down and then restarts. This restarts the BIOS and all of the equipment attached to the machine. There are many times that this is not necessary. For example, most of the time that software or updates require a restart, they only need Windows to be restarted and not the whole machine.

Restarting just Windows is called a “warm-boot” or “warm-reboot”. To perform this hold down the SHIFT key while selecting the RESTART option, this will cause the computer to only reload the OS and not the entire machine. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could save you 10secs to several minutes of boot up time.