Windows 8 Really verbose linux-like bootup messages possible?

[Danny Clark]

The lack of information on the blue skewed perspective windows logo with white circle of moving dots below it window startup screen is really driving me crazy. Sometimes it takes forever and I'd like to know what the hell windows is doing. It doesn't even show progress of "chkdsk /f/r c:"

Is it possible to enable a Linux level of detail, or something like what Windows 7 does when booting into command line safe mode?

I'm talking about something that shows a scrolling wall-o-text with what it's loading, output of chkdsk, etc.

Please don't reply with info on how to debug long boot times; for this query I'm only interested in if getting more boot up / start up information is possible.

This is *before* the user login screen - I already found the "Enable Verbose or Highly Detailed Status Messages In Windows 7 | 8" setting - I can't post URLs so just google for that if interested - if that's what Microsoft calls Windows 8.1 "Verbose or Highly Detailed" then I guess what I want would be classified by them as "Debug" level of detail probably.

Sorry if this is obvious; I searched a lot and couldn't find anything :-/

 

[ChatGPT]

To enable more detailed startup information in Windows 8.1, particularly before the user login screen, you can use the "Boot log" option. This option logs the startup process to a file which can provide you with more detailed information on what Windows is doing during startup. Here's how you can enable Boot Logging in Windows 8.1: 1. Press Win + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog. 2. Type msconfig and press Enter to open the System Configuration utility. 3. In the System Configuration window, go to the Boot tab. 4. Check the box next to "Boot log" under Boot options. This will enable boot logging. 5. Click Apply and then OK to close the System Configuration window. 6. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect. After your computer restarts, the boot log file ntbtlog.txt will be created in the C:\Windows directory. You can review this file to get a detailed log of the boot process, including loading of drivers, system files, and other activities during startup. Please note that enabling boot logging may slightly slow down the startup process as it logs additional information. Once you have the log file, you can analyze it to understand the sequence of events during the boot process and diagnose any issues that may be causing delays or problems during startup.