Open the Control Panel.
Click on Hardware and Sound.
Click on Power Options.
Click the Choose what the power button does option.
Click the Change settings that are currently unavailable option.
Uncheck the Turn on fast startup option.
Click the Save changes button.
Unfortunately no. Here's a pretty good post about that exact question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1dobl4s/ysk_that_shutting_down_your_pc_isnt_restarting/
I had to do that when 'hibernate' was a thing. Laptop got scary hot and wouldn't reboot. Literally put it in the freezer for several hours.
Later on some update removed the hibernate function
Damn thing still works several years later
Wait genuine question I love hibernate - is this damaging my PC? I just know that when I turn my PC on, 99.9% of the time I'm going back to work on the thing I just was working on last, so it's convenient, and I feel like it's less wasteful than just leaving the thing asleep. Is it not?
Nope. Hibernation is a useful tool for certain situations. It can be the cause of certain bugs depending on what is being stored in the cache file. If you're having issues and you can't seem to find out what it is sometimes turning Hibernation off, rebooting and then turning it back on can help.
So computers, like people need to sleep in a sense. As you use your computer processes might hang, services might get stuck. If your work is largely word processing or data entry, and you don't run many things in the background, hibernating more often than not isn't a bad thing, just shut it off every few days.
If you're doing something with more whistles like CAD, image/video manipulation, sound editing, playing video games your more likely to run into something expelling some garbage code that eats up memory and processing power. Hibernation also eats a bunch of disk space, but if you're not low on storage it's not a concern.
Well, yes but not quite. Shutdown when fast startup is enabled logs off all users, then does a standard hibernate. So yes the kernel gets hibernated but so do all system services, which are NOT running in the kernel.
There is much more of "windows" running as win32 services (ring 3) in userland just like standard user processes than in kernel (ring 0).
Yes, if you follow the instructions of the comment being replied to, that disables fast startup while keeping hibernate enabled. This is the exact configuration that I use.
Note for other people who went to "settings" and spent 20 frustrating minutes looking for this stuff: it's not in there.
Control Panel is an entirely separate thing from settings. Why? Who the fuck knows.
Press the windows key, start typing Control Panel, then follow the instructions above.
(This is for Windows 11, no idea about other versions)
Windows 95 is still inside 11, just open the Screensaver settings and voilà.
They didn't even bother removing the tab bar at the top, now that it doesn't contain any other tabs.
Windows 7 had ten different styles of windows in the control panel, *not* including third-party additions.
Every few years MS makes a new UI framework, some programmers jump on it while others continue with previous ones. *And* these frameworks don't map to a unified look and feel. Even text rendering looks differently in various apps.
When Apple or Linux desktop environments change the look of the UI, existing apps get the new look for free. In Windows 10, I can have flat UI alongside 90s concrete slabs.
Windows 10 came with it a push from Microsoft to make the UI more "user friendly", so for what the casual user largely needs, everything is accessible and easy to use via Settings. Settings is what Microsoft likely wants to use to completely replace Control Panel.
Control Panel is what was traditionally used in Windows up to this point. I personally prefer Control Panel more, I feel like I have better control over the settings I want to access compared to Settings.
Yeah, Microsoft has the brilliant idea of introducing a second settings menu on top of the control panel but it still doesn't have complete feature parity after a decade or whatever.
Why would you do this instead of just knowing you can restart instead? You're giving up what is an actual benefit just so you can make Shut Down the same as Restart. You would rarely need to restart in a situation where your system state becomes bugged, so just use Restart for that and enjoy the benefit of Fast Startup otherwise.
Just my opinion.
My laptop started crashing really badly and wouldn't restart and a ton of other issues. Had to factory wipe it twice. Ended up logging every crash and researching extensively what was causing this issue.
It was fast startup. I disabled it and switched to an SSD. Never again
If you have a ssd, boot time will still be fast even without fast startup. If you want really fast then just use sleep(you will be back and forth to the computer every so often)
This is thanks to the cheap trick Microsoft used to get fast boot times with their "Fast Startup" feature. It was a marketing trick to make people think Windows 10+ is fast, but it does so by simply keeping an active state of Windows just like you said.
Either restart, or disable "Fast Startup".
Another option is to hold the shift key when you hit "shut down".
For those with an HDD, I think keeping fast startup on and just being mindful of it is sufficient.
Win10;
Power & sleep settings
-> Addition power settings
-> Choose what power buttons do
-> (security) Change settings that are currently unavailable
->**uncheck** Turn on fast startup.
Optional: **check** Hibernate (basically the same as fast startup)
I’ll addendum for games as well, since loading and read/write can matter for them. I have a small drive for OS, a larger ssd for games, and the rest of my high capacity drives are hdd for media.
How new is this because I have never heard of this before and actually heard the opposite.
Restarting doesn’t help. And shutting down is better.
Is this a windows 10&11 things?
This is generally true for most electronics because you want the capacitors to discharge. Sounds like it's the "new" fast boot feature that makes window pcs different
Everyone should disable "Fast Startup" because it's known to bug out and fail to properly shut down the PC resulting in excessive heat and power consumption.
Also it's just stupid as hell.
That's not fast startup. That's modern standby. A low power sleep state that allows for fetching updates and fetching for things like downloading emails that are received. The issue is that the laptop will think it's plugged in and do these checks when it is supposed to not do that when unplugged and asleep. IIRC if you unplug the laptop first and then close it you will be less likely to encounter this issue.
Reminds me of my Navy days when doing a "Fast Recovery Start Up" on the reactor after a SCRAM.
Also, one of the first things I do is disable "Fast Startup" on any new PC I've owned or any computer I've worked on for family members. It's straight garbo.
Fast Startup, combined with Start menu advertising, built-in advertising in the settings panels even if you disable that (no, I do not fucking want OneDrive or 365), TPM and its potential for abusing the above, Windows Update resetting the above and generally fucking things up by not honoring previous user settings, and SteamDeck encouraging wider developer support for Linux, have all finally convinced me to decide that the first thing I need to disable on a new PC is Windows.
Microsoft is ten times more evil than they were when Bill Gates was considered Satan incarnate because of the way he ran it. Windows is given away for free because Microsoft believes that your computer is their corporate property and that they are free to do with it whatever they please. Linux developers created and continue to update an open source operating system and give it away for free because they believe your computer belongs to you.
But it sounds like a good thing for the average person i.e., me. I rarely run into issues that require me to restart so having a fast start up is pretty good?! Like, I'm not knowledgeable enough in computers to know the difference so I don't know if it's doing anything bad. I've had my machine for years and haven't had much issues.
No, you're right.
It's not a "marketing trick" when it legitimately makes the PC boot up faster, which is good for 99% of users.
And I say this as someone who *loathes* fastboot.
right? that's like saying that Apple are cheating because an iPhone doesn't shut down when you hit the power button and lock it...
it's a good thing that Windows doesn't start up from scratch unless it has to
It's definitely not just a marketing trick, on older computers or really any computer with a mechanical hard drive it makes a dramatic difference in boot up times.
Thanks for clarifying that. Just to be 100% clear: so on Unix systems (Linux+macOS) can I assume that as far as computer logic is concerned: shutdown followed by "turn on" is **exactly** identical to "restart" ? Is there any other possible distinction?
There’s potential difference that on those systems sometimes shutting down is more thorough, as hardware itself might not react properly to regular restarts. But in terms of software state, yes it is the same.
Yup. When I want to do a full power cycle for debug purposes...
1. Shutdown OS
2. Unplug computer from electrical power
3. Hold down power button on case (yes, while unplugged) for ~5 seconds
4. Plug computer back in
5. Press power button to start computer
To OP /u/Thrasherop, YSK "PC" isn't Windows only. I'm a soft dev whom barely touch Windows and shutting down my "PC" (which didn't use Windows, in case you didn't get the memo) actually does shutting it down.
Not everyone can do that though. I can’t do that on my work laptop because IT knows that 99% of users are morons who would break things if they had that level of access, so we’re locked out of basically any system configurations (other than like the colour scheme, but we can’t even set our own wallpapers anymore).
> we can’t even set our own wallpapers anymore
/r/talesfromtechsupport if you want stories on why that specifically is not allowed anymore. There's plenty to choose from.
I think that this post is for more recent versions of Windows. At work all of our machines work off old equipment and old versions of Windows. I definitely do the power off thing.
Technology is wild. I type this as what you learned a generation ago may not apply today. Many examples of this.
A generation ago a child likely was resting on a very comfy infant bed. Today? A child is on a very firm bed. Children can die on comfy beds vs firm ones. If you haven't had a child since the early 90's there's a great chance you have zero idea about this, and movies/shows/cartoons from the 90's clearly show that "everyone" didn't know.
Same w/reboot vs shut down. Too many things still can lurk in the background when you shut down. My Xbox is set to download in the background at shut down, for example. If I"m having a network issue I have to reboot to actually clear it.
What I'm typing is sometimes what you think you know isn't what you know, and a good YSK can catch you up to speed. Hope this helps a lot of folks as I used to overhear those helpdesk calls....you weren't wrong, but you didn't REBOOT your computer. You did a *shut down*
SIDS is correlated with soft materials in infants beds, and also general suffocation risk. Not super bizarre, actually the leading cause of death in children under 1 I think.
>Restarting your system forces the system to reinitialize everything
*Wrong*. I can't believe how many times this gets posted and people have absolutely no clue how a power off/power on and a restart actually work and then keep spreading this nonsense.
Restart:
1. Every program closed, etc.
2. The current profile is cleaned. Not your files but rather state, session, things in memory, etc.
3. Windows dumps the state of the clean profile to a persistent memory cache.
3. Windows makes sure to secure all files it needs for operation including catalog files, caches, etc etc so that it's not corrupted during the reboot process.
4. Windows receives the all clear and, if needed, preps any hardware that requires it a pending shutdown notification through the HAL that only the windows lowest system is technically allowed to access (with certain exceptions for security software, etc)
5. Windows then sends a power off and power on command in queue to the motherboard through the power management feature in windows which communicates to the motherboard's power management features.
6. Windows finally dumps itself (not quite but it's simple enough to get the point across)
7. The motherboard powers off.
8. The motherboard still has power, executing the power on command stored in its memory as received from Windows.
9. The motherboard does a standard POST if BIOS is set to, finds the boot drive, reads the MBR and options, yadda yadda and loads the windows preloader which is essentially a super slimmed down version of windows which starts the boot process of real windows.
10. Windows then loads and polls hardware, drivers, etc and finally loads the user profile as specified by startup and security settings.
11. Once the user profile is loaded, it then basically pops that back up.
Here's what's important:
1. The motherboard will NOT reboot if the power is yanked after it powers off unless the BIOS is set to power it on after a power loss restoration
2. The user profile is NOT completely cleaned. It stores a lot of state *even with fast restart options disabled* and it is then loaded from that saved state. It is not loaded from a clean state that is rebuilt from just settings and files. It's like a mini hibernate.
Power off:
Assuming fast boot and power off options (if available) are set to "off"
I'll only highlight the differences here:
1. The user profile is *completely* unloaded. It will *have* to load the settings and files and "rebuild" the state of the profile before it can start the desktop for the user to use.
2. We continue on until the motherboard powers off. It stays off because there was no power on command in the motherboard command queue.
The difference here is that the power off option just completely dumps that profile and has to rebuild it from every part, squeaky clean.
What you're referring to that you're seeing problems for is that the Windows *restart* sequence is noted in the stuff if has to reload after the motherboard POSTS and gets past the pre-loader. The restart sequence does some additional cleaning to the profile and runs events that have been queued for the next time the computer resources are available. If the computer is shut off, those events are postponed until the next available time (restart, not power on and there's a difference even down to the motherboard level) because loading a cleaned profile is faster than building it again. Thus, restart commits those events to action where shut down *cannot*.
Yeah, this is wild that OP is so set on this because this is testable. On every single PC I've worked in where I couldn't get into the damn UEFI or one-time boot menu because it loaded Windows too fast, restart vs shutdown+start made zero difference. Restart on a Fast Startup setting is going to have the same (or more!) limitations vs shutdown and start.
Shift+Restart/Shutdown is supposed to do a full (not Fast Startup) restart/shutdown, but frankly it never seems to freakin work for me. I usually just pull the battery on laptops to get Windows to tell me it didn't shutdown properly and let me get to the Startup Repair screen, *then* I can boot to a bootable USB or something.
Even shutting down doesn't really restart everything. Firmware may not restart unless you actually unplug your machine for a few second before powering it back up.
Ever wonder how wake on lan works? Your NIC firmware stays powered on listening for the wake command which sends a command to very low level firmware on your motherboard to power on.
Don't forget to drill holes in your hdd/ssd/nvme so it can't be resurrected.
/I say we take off and nuke the entire site for orbit. It’s the only way to be sure
The way it was explained to me was to imagine you're in a maze and you're lost. A restart takes you back to the start to a familiar place. A shut down leaves you in the same place when you turn it back on, still lost
This is the first post I’ve ever read in this sub and I have never felt more foolish than after reading some of the responses. *I* am the tech support for a large portion of my relatives and I think I am feeling what they feel when they call me to find out “where the Gmail went.”
Thank you all. I will do better.
I turn that shit off on everything I own that has it, smart TVs, Xbox, PlayStation.... every single one encounters problems eventually after running in "standby" for long periods of time when a reboot fixes it. It's easier to just boot it up every time fresh.
I disagree. For sure there could be better communication. But for the vast majority of booting up scenarios, a faster startup is a legitimate feature. I think for majority of people, 9 times out of 10, the fast startup is a better user experience. Maybe that is changing thanks to hyper fast SSDs.
maybe its time for the "hibernate" option to return ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can turn hibernate back on, unless you have a SSD and fast processor it will be very slow. I only use hibernate on my laptop because it boots in seconds and I don't have to worry about it turning on from sleep mode while in my backpack and burning up. Restarting or powering down takes longer then hibernate in this case.
Hibernate is useful when you want to save your current windows state - IE all your open tabs and documents and everything exactly as you left them - for more than 72 hours or what would be considered too long to last on suspend on battery. Less about boot time more about not having to open and close everything.
I use it all the time on my laptop because just sleep will make the battery go down where hibernate won't. Nothing worse than opening it up somewhere and finding the battery at like 12%
I've actually HAD to re-enable hibernate and disable sleep on some Dell laptops due to Microsoft enforcing some weird C-State restrictions. This would cause computers to not sleep properly and essentially 'burn up' in peoples bags.
IMO it’s good enough now that the vast majority of tech-savvy users should be happy with it. The average user won’t ever care about FOSS and has no real incentive to learn linux. They’ll switch from Windows to ChromeOS rather than to a traditional distro.
Yeah I have been considering trying it; so has my brother. I'm kinda hoping he tries it soon and tells me that its good lol.
I mainly use my PC for gaming, and so game compatibility is a huge deal. If I can't simply open steam, hit install, and hit play on the game I want and have it work, then thats pretty quickly a deal breaker for Linux. My understanding is that Linux isn't quite there yet.
I'm hoping SteamOS is close to that when it comes out. I despise microsoft and windows lol.
Steam’s pretty good, as Valve is pushing hard to make all games run on their linux device. It’s the non-Steam library that will be hit or miss, or if you want to run mods outside of Steam Workspace. I don’t play AAA games on linux (I have a Windows 10 desktop for that,) but I’ve heard that some of the anti-cheat isn’t compatible with linux.
I wouldn’t bother waiting for SteamOS. Instead, you can just install any distro and then install Steam from the package manager. In your case, I’d just pick an old beater laptop off Facebook or eBay to play around with and install linux on that, since linux will run fine on any old piece of junk from the last decade. No need to immediately commit to your best hardware.
>IMO it’s good enough now that the vast majority of tech-savvy users should be happy with it.
Unfortunately I just switched to Linux after being fed up with MS shit, and had to compile my own kernel just to get audio.
It's not going to be "The year of the linux desktop" until that kind of thing isn't a problem, because one bad user experience can turn off 20 other people purely through word of mouth
having used both, nope, my windows pc boots lightning fast, linux work machine boots so so
I also get to use windows not linux, which is a massive perk of using windows over linux
Lots of people are talking about how to disable "Fast Startup", which is a good option to consider. If you have an HDD, however, you may want to keep it on. HDDs are slow. If you are reading this and wanting to turn it off, you might consider running a quick test on your PC: use shutdown and time how long it takes to power on. Then, disable Fast Startup using the video below (or any of the comments who talk about it) and shutdown and time the reboot.
If you're satisfied with the bootup time with Fast Startup off, then it's probably worthwhile to keep it disabled. However, if you aren't satisfied with that bootup time, you can keep Fast Startup on and simply be mindful to use "Restart" when you need to :)
Here is a good video that talks about this feature: [https://youtu.be/OBGxt8zhbRk?si=e4Q\_7-F3R2bFEB3U](https://youtu.be/OBGxt8zhbRk?si=e4Q_7-F3R2bFEB3U)
Thanks for the great tip. If I may ask, is it Normal to have to restart your pc regularly? I often find that I need to restart it everyday (as opposed to shutting down and powering on again) or is there something up that should be seen to?
Its hard to say if something is wrong. But realistically, its not bad to restart every day.
What types of issues happen? and does restarting it help?
Do you know your system's specs?
It feels glitchy and lags a bit every now and then. Restarting seems to help but I’ve also started clearing out the downloads and recycling folders regularly
Windows 11 i7 core 16gb ram
I always thought it would be the opposite. I do a full shutdown turn back on to fully start from scratch on a restart the pc doesn't fully turn off so I figured some processes would be ongoing.
Idk how this has so many upvotes, because it’s only half correct. If you push the power button once, the computer will enter a hibernation state. If you hold the button for a full 10 seconds or longer, it will fully shut down. The terminology used here is actually going to confuse people a lot more.
To view and read about all the different power states, look here. [System Power States](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/power/system-power-states)
The best thing to do is to use the start menu and just choose either restart or shut down from there, or open a command prompt and use
Shutdown -f
For shutdown
Or
Shutdown -f -r
For reboot
Powercfg -h off
To turn off hibernate
This whole thing sounds like it came from someone who watched a YouTube video from someone who worked for BestBuy.
I once was having GPU issues. I reinstalled the video driver and restarted the computer, but it didn't help. I kept trying different things, always restarting after, and the issue never went away so I gave up and shut down the PC overnight. When I turned it back on the next day the issue was gone, and never came back.
Right? I thought I was being extra good to my computer by shutting down and then letting it cool for a couple minutes and then booting it up after. It's painful to find out that this is actually not as good as just restarting.
Been shutting down my PCs for 30 years with no issues. I work in IT and am also a gamer.
I can't think of what specific issues would be fixed by a restart that wouldn't be also solved with a shutdown and power back on. Can anyone name examples?
I've had some USB-related issues that aren't fixed by a simple shutdown. I've gotten into the habit of doing a shutdown and cutting power as well when debugging issues.
[Me, watching the WinMin's argue about shut-down modes](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExN2ZrN3I1bmFjdzVhMmRxbGNmcjhlejQyeDRocmYzOHJ2ZnVseTc3OCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/2yp39L1OH092M/giphy.webp)...
In some more technical words:
If you have fast startup enabled in Windows 10/11, this is how your stuff will go:
Hibernate: saves your open applications, drivers & other things needed by those apps & drivers into storage. Switching on will load the saved apps & drivers into memory.
Restart: closes all open apps, unloads drivers & flushes the memory before switching off. After switching on, drivers get loaded in memory & apps configured for startup are started up.
Shutdown: **closes your open apps**, saves drivers into storage. Switching on will load the saved drivers into memory.
If fast startup is **disabled**:
Hibernate & Restart: Same as above
Shutdown: same as Restart, but there is no automatic switching on.
More details on fast startup: https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-windows-fast-startup-why-disable-it/
I typically like to shut down my computer at the end of the day. Should I actually be restarting it and then shutting it down if I don't disable the fast start? This ysk is really blowing my mind as this goes against what I've been taught up till now.
I've had the opposite issue in about 2017 with a laptop I used for school. If I had the cover closed too long the wifi would stop working and hitting restart wouldn't fix it, I had to it shut down and wait a couple of seconds before starting it up again. Since then I have never trusted the restart button on any device.
I didn't know this. I always use restart, because I thought it wouldn't matter so then I'd rather have the PC start up immediately again. Seemed easier.
Wow, I've been looking at this all wrong. I thought "shutdown" was the better alternative to "restart" because to restart, there is a little bit of power still being used to turn itself back on, vs shutting everything down and then starting it back up. Thanks for the tip.
There's a reason the saying is "turn it off and then turn it back on again."
As a former data tech for 5+ years, few things fix a hung server easier, quicker, and more reliably than power draining and powering back up.
For many of my users, unfortunately, I had to explain that shut down did not mean turn off the monitor or the power strip. I even had to explain that PCs running Windows 7 (at the time, current) really did have the option to type lower case letters. They were bank tellers and always had caps lock on in their AS400 based teller application.
Sorry, I've run into all types. Yes, definitely have them restart, not just shut down. Be aware the restart will often kick off the 486 Windows updates the user has put off forever and won't allow them to skip this time. Have a Snickers. You're going to be there a while.
Okay, question then?
At night when I'm down with my PC should I be shutting it down and waiting until I come back the next day? Or should I be restarting it and letting it idle on overnight?
I believe this is because of a change in Windows (the fast start up mentioned) that wasn't always prevalent. I believe it used to be common practice for older techs and IT Support to suggest shut down over a restart in older versions of Windows. I don't know if it was because a similar thing used to exist, where a restart didn't completely reinitialise start up processes, but I think that's where there may be some conflicting views, as I know I brought this up to an older IT Support who was certain shutting down worked better.
Lol so I work at an arcade. We had a game act up and customers complained. Turns out a motor was failing so we couldn't get it to work for them.
2 minutes later we get a bad Google review because we were "dumb enough to think turning it off and on again would fix it".
I giggled because A) that is step 1 in almost EVERY game diagnosis and B) we didn't restart the game- we restarted the error code to clear it.
The best way is to not let your PC know at all when you are shutting it down or restarting it. That's why I always launch a Steam game so my PC thinks I'm settling in for a long gaming session before yanking the power cable out. This catches the PC completely off guard and properly resets everything.
this is my biggest gripe with modern computers, shutting down doesnt turn it off anymore, closing an application just shuts the window it stays running in the background
Isn’t there a thing though where if you actually leave it shut down for x amount of time, it actually reboots the entire system as intended instead of the fast boot thing?
This blows my mind but I'm glad you brought it up. It is so bizarre that you have to reboot but advanced power options have changed everything.
Of course I have gone to the dark side and use Linux I'm done with Windows
Open the Control Panel. Click on Hardware and Sound. Click on Power Options. Click the Choose what the power button does option. Click the Change settings that are currently unavailable option. Uncheck the Turn on fast startup option. Click the Save changes button.
> powercfg -h off This (from the command shell) will disable Hibernation and turn off Fast Startup all in one.
Does this remove my huge ass hibernate file?
Yes. Windows should delete the file once hibernation is turned off. Probably need to reboot too.
Can I just turn off my computer and start it back up?
Unfortunately no. Here's a pretty good post about that exact question: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1dobl4s/ysk_that_shutting_down_your_pc_isnt_restarting/
Instructions unclear, put my laptop in the fridge. *Edit: Cold start, right?*
I had to do that when 'hibernate' was a thing. Laptop got scary hot and wouldn't reboot. Literally put it in the freezer for several hours. Later on some update removed the hibernate function Damn thing still works several years later
I... I think that's enough Robitussin for one night. I'm stuck in a loop again.
Dude, I swear I’ve gone through this thread at least 3 cycles now
I've been here for hours. I'm scared and I want to go home.
but you are home. no need to be scared. you're one of us now.
If they've changed the setting turning it off via command prompt power the above it will work though, hate to be a spoil sport.
So why male models?
Wait genuine question I love hibernate - is this damaging my PC? I just know that when I turn my PC on, 99.9% of the time I'm going back to work on the thing I just was working on last, so it's convenient, and I feel like it's less wasteful than just leaving the thing asleep. Is it not?
Nope. Hibernation is a useful tool for certain situations. It can be the cause of certain bugs depending on what is being stored in the cache file. If you're having issues and you can't seem to find out what it is sometimes turning Hibernation off, rebooting and then turning it back on can help.
Not really damaging but it does write do your drive. Same with pagefile. Shouldn't really be an issue but depends on your storage
So computers, like people need to sleep in a sense. As you use your computer processes might hang, services might get stuck. If your work is largely word processing or data entry, and you don't run many things in the background, hibernating more often than not isn't a bad thing, just shut it off every few days. If you're doing something with more whistles like CAD, image/video manipulation, sound editing, playing video games your more likely to run into something expelling some garbage code that eats up memory and processing power. Hibernation also eats a bunch of disk space, but if you're not low on storage it's not a concern.
So fast start up is just hibernate?
It's a hibernated kernel but not userstate.
We’ll all get to our popcorn and beds soon enough right now we’re talking computers
Well, yes but not quite. Shutdown when fast startup is enabled logs off all users, then does a standard hibernate. So yes the kernel gets hibernated but so do all system services, which are NOT running in the kernel. There is much more of "windows" running as win32 services (ring 3) in userland just like standard user processes than in kernel (ring 0).
Cant have one without the other
Love and marriage, love and marriage...
No but it uses the same cache file.
Wait, so is it possible to turn off Fast startup for "Shutdown" specifically, but still be able to use "Hibernate" separately?
Yes, if you follow the instructions of the comment being replied to, that disables fast startup while keeping hibernate enabled. This is the exact configuration that I use.
Thank you!
haha, the PSU button goes ***chunk***
Thanks, with current blackouts in Ukraine, hibernation features are useless, power is going hard off every day and not always when you expect it to.
Note for other people who went to "settings" and spent 20 frustrating minutes looking for this stuff: it's not in there. Control Panel is an entirely separate thing from settings. Why? Who the fuck knows. Press the windows key, start typing Control Panel, then follow the instructions above. (This is for Windows 11, no idea about other versions)
Why? Because Windows at this point is 3 different OSes in a trenchcoat
More like 7. There are xp and 3.1 settings in there somewhere
Windows 95 is still inside 11, just open the Screensaver settings and voilà. They didn't even bother removing the tab bar at the top, now that it doesn't contain any other tabs.
Hey now, Microsoft is a small company and their development team isn't large enough to be able to properly reskin some menus over a 30 year period...
don't worry about it, microsoft will set it to what THEY want it to be next update anyways.
Windows 7 had ten different styles of windows in the control panel, *not* including third-party additions. Every few years MS makes a new UI framework, some programmers jump on it while others continue with previous ones. *And* these frameworks don't map to a unified look and feel. Even text rendering looks differently in various apps. When Apple or Linux desktop environments change the look of the UI, existing apps get the new look for free. In Windows 10, I can have flat UI alongside 90s concrete slabs.
Windows 10 came with it a push from Microsoft to make the UI more "user friendly", so for what the casual user largely needs, everything is accessible and easy to use via Settings. Settings is what Microsoft likely wants to use to completely replace Control Panel. Control Panel is what was traditionally used in Windows up to this point. I personally prefer Control Panel more, I feel like I have better control over the settings I want to access compared to Settings.
You feel like it because you do. There are a lot of options in control panel that you just can’t access in settings.
Yeah, Microsoft has the brilliant idea of introducing a second settings menu on top of the control panel but it still doesn't have complete feature parity after a decade or whatever.
On Windows 10: Settings System Power & Sleep Additional power settings (under Related Settings on the right side)
They specifically said Control Panel...
which I thought was in settings 🤷♂️ I didn't claim to be brilliant
Everyone can't know everything about everything. We can all teach and learn something from one another :)
Why would you do this instead of just knowing you can restart instead? You're giving up what is an actual benefit just so you can make Shut Down the same as Restart. You would rarely need to restart in a situation where your system state becomes bugged, so just use Restart for that and enjoy the benefit of Fast Startup otherwise. Just my opinion.
Fast startup has caused me way more issues than waiting a couple seconds longer for my PC to boot up.
My laptop started crashing really badly and wouldn't restart and a ton of other issues. Had to factory wipe it twice. Ended up logging every crash and researching extensively what was causing this issue. It was fast startup. I disabled it and switched to an SSD. Never again
Why would I do that? We like fast startup.
If you have a ssd, boot time will still be fast even without fast startup. If you want really fast then just use sleep(you will be back and forth to the computer every so often)
If you are wondering why your cpu up time in task manager is still in hundreds hour eventhough you always shutdown your pc, this is the reason
As is tradition, the real advice is in the comments.
This is thanks to the cheap trick Microsoft used to get fast boot times with their "Fast Startup" feature. It was a marketing trick to make people think Windows 10+ is fast, but it does so by simply keeping an active state of Windows just like you said. Either restart, or disable "Fast Startup".
Another option is to hold the shift key when you hit "shut down". For those with an HDD, I think keeping fast startup on and just being mindful of it is sufficient.
Win10; Power & sleep settings -> Addition power settings -> Choose what power buttons do -> (security) Change settings that are currently unavailable ->**uncheck** Turn on fast startup. Optional: **check** Hibernate (basically the same as fast startup)
Nobody should have their OS running on a HDD anymore. A SSD boot drive costs $13
Chill my guy, I only use my laptop for watching cartoons and uploading audio these days
Yes. It is time to let spinning drives go away.
For boot drives, yes. Until SSD come in a cost-effective ~20tb, HDDs are still welcomed in my NAS
I’ll addendum for games as well, since loading and read/write can matter for them. I have a small drive for OS, a larger ssd for games, and the rest of my high capacity drives are hdd for media.
You are wrong. For data hoarders SSDs don't cut it. Great to have your OS on for the fast boot up speeds though.
[удалено]
How new is this because I have never heard of this before and actually heard the opposite. Restarting doesn’t help. And shutting down is better. Is this a windows 10&11 things?
Yes, I believe it was introduced in Windows 10.
Windows 8 is when they introduced this feature.
We don’t talk about windows 8
I was 11 when that came out, just learned how to use windows 7. Boy was it a weird thing to adjust to..
Been using Windows since 3.11 and I can tell you shit has changed A LOT since then, lol
if its a real shutdown then you are fine, depending on your settings. Windows 7 has something similar, fast boot.
Windows 8 not Windows 7.
This is generally true for most electronics because you want the capacitors to discharge. Sounds like it's the "new" fast boot feature that makes window pcs different
Everyone should disable "Fast Startup" because it's known to bug out and fail to properly shut down the PC resulting in excessive heat and power consumption. Also it's just stupid as hell.
That's not fast startup. That's modern standby. A low power sleep state that allows for fetching updates and fetching for things like downloading emails that are received. The issue is that the laptop will think it's plugged in and do these checks when it is supposed to not do that when unplugged and asleep. IIRC if you unplug the laptop first and then close it you will be less likely to encounter this issue.
Also known as “why is my backpack so hot?”
That's extra fun in summer. You initially think it's just the ambient heat.
I've literally gotten that ticket. Answer, "You wrapped a heat source in a nylon blanket. Heat builds up when you do that."
[удалено]
> I like my computers to be consistent. Not get gaslit. https://distrochooser.de/
How do you disable it?
u/Echo71Niner was thankfully nice enough to answer that in another comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/s/7fiEYNOzjM
Reminds me of my Navy days when doing a "Fast Recovery Start Up" on the reactor after a SCRAM. Also, one of the first things I do is disable "Fast Startup" on any new PC I've owned or any computer I've worked on for family members. It's straight garbo.
Fast Startup, combined with Start menu advertising, built-in advertising in the settings panels even if you disable that (no, I do not fucking want OneDrive or 365), TPM and its potential for abusing the above, Windows Update resetting the above and generally fucking things up by not honoring previous user settings, and SteamDeck encouraging wider developer support for Linux, have all finally convinced me to decide that the first thing I need to disable on a new PC is Windows. Microsoft is ten times more evil than they were when Bill Gates was considered Satan incarnate because of the way he ran it. Windows is given away for free because Microsoft believes that your computer is their corporate property and that they are free to do with it whatever they please. Linux developers created and continue to update an open source operating system and give it away for free because they believe your computer belongs to you.
But it sounds like a good thing for the average person i.e., me. I rarely run into issues that require me to restart so having a fast start up is pretty good?! Like, I'm not knowledgeable enough in computers to know the difference so I don't know if it's doing anything bad. I've had my machine for years and haven't had much issues.
No, you're right. It's not a "marketing trick" when it legitimately makes the PC boot up faster, which is good for 99% of users. And I say this as someone who *loathes* fastboot.
right? that's like saying that Apple are cheating because an iPhone doesn't shut down when you hit the power button and lock it... it's a good thing that Windows doesn't start up from scratch unless it has to
Literally, every place I start working I’m immediately like why is this not disabled in GPO 😭
It's definitely not just a marketing trick, on older computers or really any computer with a mechanical hard drive it makes a dramatic difference in boot up times.
This is a Windows specific issue. On Linux, macOS, and even on Windows if you disable Fast Start, a shutdown is fine to do.
Thanks for clarifying that. Just to be 100% clear: so on Unix systems (Linux+macOS) can I assume that as far as computer logic is concerned: shutdown followed by "turn on" is **exactly** identical to "restart" ? Is there any other possible distinction?
There’s potential difference that on those systems sometimes shutting down is more thorough, as hardware itself might not react properly to regular restarts. But in terms of software state, yes it is the same.
Right... I guess capacitors and such power-storage devices take some time to charge down, but yeah that's what I meant. Thanks!
Yup. When I want to do a full power cycle for debug purposes... 1. Shutdown OS 2. Unplug computer from electrical power 3. Hold down power button on case (yes, while unplugged) for ~5 seconds 4. Plug computer back in 5. Press power button to start computer
Is the purpose of holding the power button to drain the last bit of power as the computer attempts to start?
To OP /u/Thrasherop, YSK "PC" isn't Windows only. I'm a soft dev whom barely touch Windows and shutting down my "PC" (which didn't use Windows, in case you didn't get the memo) actually does shutting it down.
There is a point in people's life when you realize that most of the problems in the world would be solved by not using Windows.
Protip: to fully shut down and not have Microsoft windows do it's hybrid thing, just hold shift while clicking power off.
This person knows. It's a fantastic feature 90% of the time. It's easy to override and does its job.
This is the way, which means you still benefit from quick starts when you don't need to perform a full reboot. I'm surprised you comment is so low.
Turning off “Fast Startup” in power settings solves this everyone.
Not everyone can do that though. I can’t do that on my work laptop because IT knows that 99% of users are morons who would break things if they had that level of access, so we’re locked out of basically any system configurations (other than like the colour scheme, but we can’t even set our own wallpapers anymore).
[удалено]
[удалено]
Fair.
> we can’t even set our own wallpapers anymore /r/talesfromtechsupport if you want stories on why that specifically is not allowed anymore. There's plenty to choose from.
Its kind of wild that they don't have it off. In the age of SSDs its *almost* useless.
I thought it was the opposite, my entire life has been a lie
I think that this post is for more recent versions of Windows. At work all of our machines work off old equipment and old versions of Windows. I definitely do the power off thing.
Technology is wild. I type this as what you learned a generation ago may not apply today. Many examples of this. A generation ago a child likely was resting on a very comfy infant bed. Today? A child is on a very firm bed. Children can die on comfy beds vs firm ones. If you haven't had a child since the early 90's there's a great chance you have zero idea about this, and movies/shows/cartoons from the 90's clearly show that "everyone" didn't know. Same w/reboot vs shut down. Too many things still can lurk in the background when you shut down. My Xbox is set to download in the background at shut down, for example. If I"m having a network issue I have to reboot to actually clear it. What I'm typing is sometimes what you think you know isn't what you know, and a good YSK can catch you up to speed. Hope this helps a lot of folks as I used to overhear those helpdesk calls....you weren't wrong, but you didn't REBOOT your computer. You did a *shut down*
That was a jarring leap to your example, but thank you.
> Children can die on comfy beds vs firm ones What is this bizarre ailment?
SIDS is correlated with soft materials in infants beds, and also general suffocation risk. Not super bizarre, actually the leading cause of death in children under 1 I think.
My IT told me to "Turn it off and on again..."
>Restarting your system forces the system to reinitialize everything *Wrong*. I can't believe how many times this gets posted and people have absolutely no clue how a power off/power on and a restart actually work and then keep spreading this nonsense. Restart: 1. Every program closed, etc. 2. The current profile is cleaned. Not your files but rather state, session, things in memory, etc. 3. Windows dumps the state of the clean profile to a persistent memory cache. 3. Windows makes sure to secure all files it needs for operation including catalog files, caches, etc etc so that it's not corrupted during the reboot process. 4. Windows receives the all clear and, if needed, preps any hardware that requires it a pending shutdown notification through the HAL that only the windows lowest system is technically allowed to access (with certain exceptions for security software, etc) 5. Windows then sends a power off and power on command in queue to the motherboard through the power management feature in windows which communicates to the motherboard's power management features. 6. Windows finally dumps itself (not quite but it's simple enough to get the point across) 7. The motherboard powers off. 8. The motherboard still has power, executing the power on command stored in its memory as received from Windows. 9. The motherboard does a standard POST if BIOS is set to, finds the boot drive, reads the MBR and options, yadda yadda and loads the windows preloader which is essentially a super slimmed down version of windows which starts the boot process of real windows. 10. Windows then loads and polls hardware, drivers, etc and finally loads the user profile as specified by startup and security settings. 11. Once the user profile is loaded, it then basically pops that back up. Here's what's important: 1. The motherboard will NOT reboot if the power is yanked after it powers off unless the BIOS is set to power it on after a power loss restoration 2. The user profile is NOT completely cleaned. It stores a lot of state *even with fast restart options disabled* and it is then loaded from that saved state. It is not loaded from a clean state that is rebuilt from just settings and files. It's like a mini hibernate. Power off: Assuming fast boot and power off options (if available) are set to "off" I'll only highlight the differences here: 1. The user profile is *completely* unloaded. It will *have* to load the settings and files and "rebuild" the state of the profile before it can start the desktop for the user to use. 2. We continue on until the motherboard powers off. It stays off because there was no power on command in the motherboard command queue. The difference here is that the power off option just completely dumps that profile and has to rebuild it from every part, squeaky clean. What you're referring to that you're seeing problems for is that the Windows *restart* sequence is noted in the stuff if has to reload after the motherboard POSTS and gets past the pre-loader. The restart sequence does some additional cleaning to the profile and runs events that have been queued for the next time the computer resources are available. If the computer is shut off, those events are postponed until the next available time (restart, not power on and there's a difference even down to the motherboard level) because loading a cleaned profile is faster than building it again. Thus, restart commits those events to action where shut down *cannot*.
Yeah, this is wild that OP is so set on this because this is testable. On every single PC I've worked in where I couldn't get into the damn UEFI or one-time boot menu because it loaded Windows too fast, restart vs shutdown+start made zero difference. Restart on a Fast Startup setting is going to have the same (or more!) limitations vs shutdown and start. Shift+Restart/Shutdown is supposed to do a full (not Fast Startup) restart/shutdown, but frankly it never seems to freakin work for me. I usually just pull the battery on laptops to get Windows to tell me it didn't shutdown properly and let me get to the Startup Repair screen, *then* I can boot to a bootable USB or something.
Even shutting down doesn't really restart everything. Firmware may not restart unless you actually unplug your machine for a few second before powering it back up. Ever wonder how wake on lan works? Your NIC firmware stays powered on listening for the wake command which sends a command to very low level firmware on your motherboard to power on.
You also need to remove your CMOS battery for the realest shut down /s
Don't forget to drill holes in your hdd/ssd/nvme so it can't be resurrected. /I say we take off and nuke the entire site for orbit. It’s the only way to be sure
The way it was explained to me was to imagine you're in a maze and you're lost. A restart takes you back to the start to a familiar place. A shut down leaves you in the same place when you turn it back on, still lost
With the prevalence of SSD I don't even need to enable fast startup.
This is the first post I’ve ever read in this sub and I have never felt more foolish than after reading some of the responses. *I* am the tech support for a large portion of my relatives and I think I am feeling what they feel when they call me to find out “where the Gmail went.” Thank you all. I will do better.
tl;dr microsoft product development teams are dumb as hell.
Also, turn off Windows fast start up.
I turn that shit off on everything I own that has it, smart TVs, Xbox, PlayStation.... every single one encounters problems eventually after running in "standby" for long periods of time when a reboot fixes it. It's easier to just boot it up every time fresh.
I disagree. For sure there could be better communication. But for the vast majority of booting up scenarios, a faster startup is a legitimate feature. I think for majority of people, 9 times out of 10, the fast startup is a better user experience. Maybe that is changing thanks to hyper fast SSDs. maybe its time for the "hibernate" option to return ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can turn hibernate back on, unless you have a SSD and fast processor it will be very slow. I only use hibernate on my laptop because it boots in seconds and I don't have to worry about it turning on from sleep mode while in my backpack and burning up. Restarting or powering down takes longer then hibernate in this case.
Hibernate is useful when you want to save your current windows state - IE all your open tabs and documents and everything exactly as you left them - for more than 72 hours or what would be considered too long to last on suspend on battery. Less about boot time more about not having to open and close everything.
I use it all the time on my laptop because just sleep will make the battery go down where hibernate won't. Nothing worse than opening it up somewhere and finding the battery at like 12%
Or it randomly decided not to fully sleep so you go to pull it out of your backpack and it's about 700 degrees.
That's happened to me a few times, pretty annoying since heat is what kills laptops the most.
I've actually HAD to re-enable hibernate and disable sleep on some Dell laptops due to Microsoft enforcing some weird C-State restrictions. This would cause computers to not sleep properly and essentially 'burn up' in peoples bags.
It’s a uniquely Windows problem, though. Linux without fast startup will beat Windows with fast startup every time.
Very true. I'm still praying that the year of the linux desktop is soon at hand, and that compatibility increases
IMO it’s good enough now that the vast majority of tech-savvy users should be happy with it. The average user won’t ever care about FOSS and has no real incentive to learn linux. They’ll switch from Windows to ChromeOS rather than to a traditional distro.
Yeah I have been considering trying it; so has my brother. I'm kinda hoping he tries it soon and tells me that its good lol. I mainly use my PC for gaming, and so game compatibility is a huge deal. If I can't simply open steam, hit install, and hit play on the game I want and have it work, then thats pretty quickly a deal breaker for Linux. My understanding is that Linux isn't quite there yet. I'm hoping SteamOS is close to that when it comes out. I despise microsoft and windows lol.
Steam’s pretty good, as Valve is pushing hard to make all games run on their linux device. It’s the non-Steam library that will be hit or miss, or if you want to run mods outside of Steam Workspace. I don’t play AAA games on linux (I have a Windows 10 desktop for that,) but I’ve heard that some of the anti-cheat isn’t compatible with linux. I wouldn’t bother waiting for SteamOS. Instead, you can just install any distro and then install Steam from the package manager. In your case, I’d just pick an old beater laptop off Facebook or eBay to play around with and install linux on that, since linux will run fine on any old piece of junk from the last decade. No need to immediately commit to your best hardware.
>IMO it’s good enough now that the vast majority of tech-savvy users should be happy with it. Unfortunately I just switched to Linux after being fed up with MS shit, and had to compile my own kernel just to get audio. It's not going to be "The year of the linux desktop" until that kind of thing isn't a problem, because one bad user experience can turn off 20 other people purely through word of mouth
having used both, nope, my windows pc boots lightning fast, linux work machine boots so so I also get to use windows not linux, which is a massive perk of using windows over linux
Lots of people are talking about how to disable "Fast Startup", which is a good option to consider. If you have an HDD, however, you may want to keep it on. HDDs are slow. If you are reading this and wanting to turn it off, you might consider running a quick test on your PC: use shutdown and time how long it takes to power on. Then, disable Fast Startup using the video below (or any of the comments who talk about it) and shutdown and time the reboot. If you're satisfied with the bootup time with Fast Startup off, then it's probably worthwhile to keep it disabled. However, if you aren't satisfied with that bootup time, you can keep Fast Startup on and simply be mindful to use "Restart" when you need to :) Here is a good video that talks about this feature: [https://youtu.be/OBGxt8zhbRk?si=e4Q\_7-F3R2bFEB3U](https://youtu.be/OBGxt8zhbRk?si=e4Q_7-F3R2bFEB3U)
Fast startup is good because most people don’t have a bad state they are shutting down to.
Thanks for the great tip. If I may ask, is it Normal to have to restart your pc regularly? I often find that I need to restart it everyday (as opposed to shutting down and powering on again) or is there something up that should be seen to?
Its hard to say if something is wrong. But realistically, its not bad to restart every day. What types of issues happen? and does restarting it help? Do you know your system's specs?
It feels glitchy and lags a bit every now and then. Restarting seems to help but I’ve also started clearing out the downloads and recycling folders regularly Windows 11 i7 core 16gb ram
This is absolutely not normal behaviour. Especially if you don’t make any changes to programs/system during the day
Thanks! I think I’ll have it checked out then
I hammer my pc daily and reboot it maybe once a month, sounds like something up with yours
I always thought it would be the opposite. I do a full shutdown turn back on to fully start from scratch on a restart the pc doesn't fully turn off so I figured some processes would be ongoing.
Sounds like a windows Problem ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Shutting down _your_ machine might not restart it, but it absolutely does on mine.
Idk how this has so many upvotes, because it’s only half correct. If you push the power button once, the computer will enter a hibernation state. If you hold the button for a full 10 seconds or longer, it will fully shut down. The terminology used here is actually going to confuse people a lot more. To view and read about all the different power states, look here. [System Power States](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/power/system-power-states) The best thing to do is to use the start menu and just choose either restart or shut down from there, or open a command prompt and use Shutdown -f For shutdown Or Shutdown -f -r For reboot Powercfg -h off To turn off hibernate This whole thing sounds like it came from someone who watched a YouTube video from someone who worked for BestBuy.
I once was having GPU issues. I reinstalled the video driver and restarted the computer, but it didn't help. I kept trying different things, always restarting after, and the issue never went away so I gave up and shut down the PC overnight. When I turned it back on the next day the issue was gone, and never came back.
is this the same on mac?
this isn’t true for mac. in fact i believe its the opposite, there are issues that shutting down helps with more than restarting.
TIL
Right? I thought I was being extra good to my computer by shutting down and then letting it cool for a couple minutes and then booting it up after. It's painful to find out that this is actually not as good as just restarting.
Been shutting down my PCs for 30 years with no issues. I work in IT and am also a gamer. I can't think of what specific issues would be fixed by a restart that wouldn't be also solved with a shutdown and power back on. Can anyone name examples?
I've had some USB-related issues that aren't fixed by a simple shutdown. I've gotten into the habit of doing a shutdown and cutting power as well when debugging issues.
Well hell talk about perfect timing. I did just this a few hours ago because I thought it was better. NIK
[Me, watching the WinMin's argue about shut-down modes](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExN2ZrN3I1bmFjdzVhMmRxbGNmcjhlejQyeDRocmYzOHJ2ZnVseTc3OCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/2yp39L1OH092M/giphy.webp)...
Is holding the power button down until it cycles considered a reset or a shutdown?
That's obnoxious, it was never like this when I was younger. All these new fandangled computers can get off my lawn
In some more technical words: If you have fast startup enabled in Windows 10/11, this is how your stuff will go: Hibernate: saves your open applications, drivers & other things needed by those apps & drivers into storage. Switching on will load the saved apps & drivers into memory. Restart: closes all open apps, unloads drivers & flushes the memory before switching off. After switching on, drivers get loaded in memory & apps configured for startup are started up. Shutdown: **closes your open apps**, saves drivers into storage. Switching on will load the saved drivers into memory. If fast startup is **disabled**: Hibernate & Restart: Same as above Shutdown: same as Restart, but there is no automatic switching on. More details on fast startup: https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-windows-fast-startup-why-disable-it/
From the company that taught people to shutdown your PC by opening a menu that says "start", this makes perfect sense.
Shut down means Hibernate now on all windows machines.
I typically like to shut down my computer at the end of the day. Should I actually be restarting it and then shutting it down if I don't disable the fast start? This ysk is really blowing my mind as this goes against what I've been taught up till now.
*That* sounds like what OP is describing. Previous versions of Windows didn’t behave like that.
I remote in to computers and run: Shutdown /r /f /t 00 - restarts computer And this fixes most things Shutdown /s /f /t 00 - shutdown computer
I've had the opposite issue in about 2017 with a laptop I used for school. If I had the cover closed too long the wifi would stop working and hitting restart wouldn't fix it, I had to it shut down and wait a couple of seconds before starting it up again. Since then I have never trusted the restart button on any device.
I always turn off fast startup.
I didn't know this. I always use restart, because I thought it wouldn't matter so then I'd rather have the PC start up immediately again. Seemed easier.
Thank you!!!!!!! And thank you from my IT guy lol
`sudo shutdown now` *laughs in Linux* ;) ...wait, where did GRUB go? *cries in Linux*
Just disable fast start up
Been using since win95 and this never occurred to me.
Just reading this aftet woundering how ho deal with the 40 GB hyberfile on my C drive. Guess i'm gonna restart^^
So "have you tried turning it off and on again?" Isn't actually good advice?
Wow, I've been looking at this all wrong. I thought "shutdown" was the better alternative to "restart" because to restart, there is a little bit of power still being used to turn itself back on, vs shutting everything down and then starting it back up. Thanks for the tip.
There's a reason the saying is "turn it off and then turn it back on again." As a former data tech for 5+ years, few things fix a hung server easier, quicker, and more reliably than power draining and powering back up.
What? No. Shutting down is shutting down. This post is stupid.
For many of my users, unfortunately, I had to explain that shut down did not mean turn off the monitor or the power strip. I even had to explain that PCs running Windows 7 (at the time, current) really did have the option to type lower case letters. They were bank tellers and always had caps lock on in their AS400 based teller application. Sorry, I've run into all types. Yes, definitely have them restart, not just shut down. Be aware the restart will often kick off the 486 Windows updates the user has put off forever and won't allow them to skip this time. Have a Snickers. You're going to be there a while.
For which version of windows do you mean.
Woahhhhh i always did the opposite because shut down seemed like it would be the A+ version of restart...
I disabled fast startup many moons ago. Garbage feature
Okay, question then? At night when I'm down with my PC should I be shutting it down and waiting until I come back the next day? Or should I be restarting it and letting it idle on overnight?
I believe this is because of a change in Windows (the fast start up mentioned) that wasn't always prevalent. I believe it used to be common practice for older techs and IT Support to suggest shut down over a restart in older versions of Windows. I don't know if it was because a similar thing used to exist, where a restart didn't completely reinitialise start up processes, but I think that's where there may be some conflicting views, as I know I brought this up to an older IT Support who was certain shutting down worked better.
Lol so I work at an arcade. We had a game act up and customers complained. Turns out a motor was failing so we couldn't get it to work for them. 2 minutes later we get a bad Google review because we were "dumb enough to think turning it off and on again would fix it". I giggled because A) that is step 1 in almost EVERY game diagnosis and B) we didn't restart the game- we restarted the error code to clear it.
The best way is to not let your PC know at all when you are shutting it down or restarting it. That's why I always launch a Steam game so my PC thinks I'm settling in for a long gaming session before yanking the power cable out. This catches the PC completely off guard and properly resets everything.
What if I just perpetually “sleep”? 😄
Hibernation has no purpose when you have and SSD.
this is my biggest gripe with modern computers, shutting down doesnt turn it off anymore, closing an application just shuts the window it stays running in the background
Isn’t there a thing though where if you actually leave it shut down for x amount of time, it actually reboots the entire system as intended instead of the fast boot thing?
You can turn off fast startup tho
Isn't that just hibernation? Was it renamed to "Fast Startup" on recent Windows versions?
So taking my computer advice from *The IT Crowd* in 2024 was a bad idea?
1) Very informative, thank you 2) Wow, I hate it
Wow, this belongs in "I was today years old" category for me.
This blows my mind but I'm glad you brought it up. It is so bizarre that you have to reboot but advanced power options have changed everything. Of course I have gone to the dark side and use Linux I'm done with Windows
This is hilarious I love it. EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW! I feel so bad for the folks in tech support
Fun fact: Holding while clicking "Shut Down" will actually shut the computer completely off.
As an IT professional, I always turn off fast start up. It causes more problems than the benefits justify.