Windows 8 boots so fast, users will likely not have time to trigger the boot menu before the PC boots, Microsoft claims.

In a blog post this week, Chris Clark, a program manager on the Windows User Experience team, again claimed that Windows 8 will boot in less than 7 seconds on a PC equipped with a sold-state drive.

In older PCs, users have had plenty of time to hit the F2 or the F8 key and trigger a boot menu before the machine POSTs, and could use that menu to run diagnostic tools and boot from alternate devices. With Windows 8, that "window" to push the F8 key is less than 200 ms, Clark wrote, fast enough that even a gamer might be hard pressed to hit the correct keystroke in time.

Instead, Microsoft had to come up with some alternative methods of getting to the boot menu.