Disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 8/8.1


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When you shutdown your computer, power from its components, such as CPU, RAM, CD-Rom, and hard disk is removed in a controlled manner. As opposed to plugging the power cable out, or a power outage, during the shutdown process, Windows closes all the open applications one by one and turns off the system in the end. When you boot the computer, it starts in a refreshed state.

Fast Startup is a new feature which is introduced in Windows 8 RTM. It allows your computer to start faster than normal by logging off the user session and then saving a part of system related files and drivers to a hibernation file.

When you turn on your PC again, it resumes from hibernate and logs you in again. In other words, the fast startup feature combines the classic shutdown mechanisms with hibernation, so it can be called 'hybrid shutdown'. Hybrid shutdown is enabled by default in Windows 8 and its successor, Windows 8.1.

Why use Fast Startup?

The first case is if you are dual booting with some other OS. For example, if you have Linux as the second OS on your PC, it will not provide access to your Windows 8 partition due to the hibernation state of the partition caused by hybrid shutdown.

The second reason might be the reboot requirement. As you might be knowing, when Fast Startup is enabled, Windows 8 can't install its updates without rebooting. So it require a reboot to finish the installation of updates. Also, it can perform an automatic reboot, if the user ignores the reboot requests from the OS.

Another reason to disable fast startup is if your PC is simply incompatible with the feature and does not correctly shut down, but instead restarts. In all such cases, you may want to disable hybrid shutdown a.k.a. fast startup.

Disabling...

To disable Fast Startup, follow these simple instructions:

Open the Start screen. Type "po bu" right on the Start screen (short for power buttons). It will bring you directly to the Change what the power buttons do applet in search results. Click it.

Disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 8/8.1

The following window will appear on the screen:

Disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 8/8.1

Click on the Change settings that are currently unavailable link to make the Shutdown options available and then untick the Turn on fast startup (recommended) option:

Disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 8/8.1

That's it. Now the Fast Startup feature is disabled.

To enable it again, perform the steps as described above and tick the Turn on fast startup (recommended) checkbox back. While you keep the Fast Startup feature disabled, it make increase the boot time. However, it may not matter to users with high-end machines, especially those with SSD drives.