The other day I noticed some of the computers I was working on were reporting the wrong time for their last boot. I thought that was odd. I knew for sure they had been shut down the night before. But Windows was saying they had not been rebooted for almost a month. So after doing some digging, I discovered this thing in Windows 10 called Fast Startup.
What is Fast Startup
When fast startup is turned on the computer goes into a deep hibernation when you shut down. Only the core of Windows hibernates. Unlike a normal hibernation that saves the state of open programs and folders. The theory behind this is to achieve faster boot times by no longer needing to fully load windows.
Does it Actually Help?
I have been running tests on my computers and I have noticed no speed difference as far as I can tell. My guess is this would come in handy with an older hard drive but with today’s SSD drives I do not think it even matters.
Problems From Fast Startup
So with fast modern SSD drives I think fast startup may be more problematic than helpful.
What I have seen at work are users who turn their computers off every day but still have these odd issues. Like, excel thinking it is low on memory.
But when you tell windows to restart it will do a full cold reboot and that magically fixes the issues.
I have also heard reports of issues with disk encryption among other things.
Turning Off Fast Startup in Windows 10
Since I can not detect any noticeable speed difference in boot time I have decided to start turning fast startup off on my computers. At this point, there seems to only be downsides to having it on.
To do this go to the control panel and then to power options. Then click “Choose what the power buttons do”.
After that, you may have to click “Change settings that are currently unavailable”.
Then you should see a checkbox to turn on fast startup. Just uncheck it or check it depending on what you want to do then save changes.
If you do not see this option that means hibernation is not turned on or not available on this system. In that case, fast startup is not being used anyway. But if you want to turn on hibernation to see the option you can open an admin command prompt and type.
powercfg /hibernate onAll Done!
Now your computer should not have any odd issues related to fast startup! Of course, if you have any experience or info about fast startup I would love to hear about it in the comments below. We have to keep learning every day!
