In an era when processors were slow and hard drives were noisy, every reboot of Windows 95 was a test of patience. But resourceful users discovered that they could hold down the Shift key while clicking the \u201cRestart\u201d button, which caused the desktop to refresh in seconds instead of minutes. Raymond Chen has now explained that this trick wasn\u2019t just a software shortcut, but a clever manipulation of the system\u2019s kernel itself.
Instead of the system commanding the motherboard to completely reboot (which would trigger slow BIOS tests and RAM counts), the Shift key command simply shut down the graphics interface and drivers. Windows 95 simply returned to the MS-DOS environment that was always running in the background and immediately restarted the WIN.COM graphical shell. This was a revolutionary solution for the time, as it allowed users to quickly fix minor system errors without waiting for a hardware cycle.
Interestingly, the feature didn't work the same on all computers. If specific drivers were loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file that required a full hardware reset, the system detected this and performed a classic boot despite the Shift key being pressed. In 2026, when our computers and phones perform background updates, such nostalgia seems almost unbelievable, but it was these innovations that paved the way for modern features like "Fast Startup" in Windows 11. The engineer's revelation reminds us of a time when programming in constrained environments was a true art of optimization.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an era when processors were slow and hard drives were noisy, every reboot of Windows 95 was a test of patience. But resourceful users discovered that they could hold down the Shift key while clicking the \u201cRestart\u201d button, which caused the desktop to refresh in seconds instead of minutes. Raymond Chen has now explained [\u2026]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[136],"class_list":["post-7101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-operacijski-sistemi","tag-windows-operacijski-sistem"],"acf":{"subtitle":"Se spomnite \u010dasov, ko je ponovni zagon ra\u010dunalnika trajal celo ve\u010dnost? Windows 95 je imel v rokavu skrit adut, za katerega so vedeli le redki. Tri desetletja kasneje je Microsoftov veteran Raymond Chen kon\u010dno razjasnil tehni\u010dno ozadje \"skrivnega\" hitrega ponovnega zagona (Fast Restart), ki je omogo\u010dil osve\u017eitev sistema brez popolnega izklopa strojne opreme.","heading":"","summary":"Nekdanji Microsoftov in\u017eenir je po treh desetletjih pojasnil delovanje skrite funkcije za hiter ponovni zagon v Windows 95, ki je uporabnikom prihranila dolgotrajno \u010dakanje na ponovni zagon strojne opreme.","thumbnail_small":"https:\/\/racunalniske-novice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/windows-95-1535864_1280-560x315.jpg","thumbnail_large":"https:\/\/racunalniske-novice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/windows-95-1535864_1280-1024x574.jpg","thumbnail_caption":"","gallery":"","video_gallery":null,"author":"","links":null,"sources":null,"skip_language":[]},"yoast_head":"\n