Boot Windows in Under Ten Seconds
How long does your Windows PC take to boot? Two to three minutes is about average, under two minutes and you are doing really well, one minute or less and it’s either only a couple of days old or you’ve been doing some serious tweaking. So how about a Windows PC that boots in less than ten seconds? Well, Bios makers Phoenix Technologies reckon they can do just that. It’s called Instant Boot Bios and is based on a set of standards called UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) and some fancy pre-boot footwork in Windows 7, which apparently involves carrying out around 2 million instructions. Apparently with a bit more work it may be possible to boot a PC in a second or less, which sounds great but the question that has to be asked, is when it all goes wrong – as it inevitably will — how on earth will you be able to get to the BIOS menu?
Dell Releases NVIDIA Patch
Owners of some quirky Dell Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, Vostro and XPS models should be relieved to learn that a patch has been announced that fixes most of the problems associated with a rogue NVIDIA graphics adaptor chip. These include lines on the screen, multiple images and random characters and they can appear when the graphics processor unit (GPU) overheats. The BIOS patch optimises the fan’s temperature regulation of the GPU. The problem, which is caused by a packaging fault on the chip should solve the problem for most users but if the chip fails then NVIDIA has set aside up to $200 million to cover warranty claims. There’s a list of affected models, and link to the download on the Dell2Direct website.
