Microsoft has optimized the boot cycle of the Windows 8 operating system so that long-used features such as hitting F8 for the advanced boot menu no longer work properly. While the feature is still there, it has become a lot harder to use it directly by hitting the key as the window in which the key needs to be send to the computer has been reduced to less than a second.

To load the advanced boot options, you now need to configure that you want the operating system to do so in Windows itself. That’s not convenient as you need to boot into Windows, make the change, reboot again to get into the options. This quickly becomes a problem if the operating system does not boot properly anymore.