Windows 8 multiboot sucks

[Evander]

I had Vista installed and just installed Win 8 as a dual boot. This is how booting works now: Windows 8 boots maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through (at least 15 seconds for me), then gives you the option of booting Vista or 8. If you choose Vista, it restarts the whole damn system and then boots directly to Vista.

On my other system that dual boots Vista and Win 7, it gives you the option at the beginning to choose Vista or 7 and then starts the boot process for the selected OS. That's the way it should be.

BTW, if I had Linux installed before installing Win 8, would the current menu give me the option to boot Linux? Since I don't have Linux installed now, what happens to the boot selection if I decide to install it?

 

[cmdrdredd]

That's because of Secure boot I think. Not too sure as I only have one OS, but I believe this is what Secure Boot does...prevent startup interruptions and such.

I could be wrong but I think it needs to restart to verify the certificate. Although you do have to enable secure boot to begin with via your UEFI BIOS.

 

[Evander]

I think when I ran the compatibility thing it said my system (2007 laptop) doesn't support secure boot

 

[HeXen]

disable secure boot in bios. Fedora is supposed to be buying a proper security certificate from MS. whether they already have or not I dunno.

UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy
Secure boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature
UEFI secure boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture
Windows 8 utilizes secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure
Secure boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components
OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform
Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

 

[cmdrdredd]

yeah i dunno then...could be just how it does it. Doesn't it give you some startup options and whatnot in a little window? That's what I found when I searched.

 

[Evander]

When you start up the system, it gives you the black background w/ the blue window, that takes several seconds, and then it takes you to the screen that says "Choose an operating system" (one good thing is that it looks a lot nicer than a DOS style loader to choose OS that previous versions of Windows used). There is another clickable area that says "Change defaults or choose other options" but that's for choosing whether the default selected OS is Win 8 or Vista and how long it should wait before automatically going to the default OS (30 seconds is default time). Other options are for repair, command prompt, enable safe mode, and such.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Ahh...well that's something...able to get to a command prompt and stuff. Didn't see that mentioned before.

 

[augiem]

I had Vista installed and just installed Win 8 as a dual boot. This is how booting works now: Windows 8 boots maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through (at least 15 seconds for me), then gives you the option of booting Vista or 8. If you choose Vista, it restarts the whole damn system and then boots directly to Vista.

Mine did that at first. If you set Vista to your default OS, it will use Vista's bootloader which is a whole lot faster and doesn't do a full reboot when you boot Windows 8. Now you may not want Windows Vista to be your primary, in which case it wouldn't work for you.

 

[ViRGE]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...or-pcs-that-boot-faster-than-ever-before.aspx