The Fast Startup feature, which was introduced in Windows 8 RTM, is enabled by default in Windows 10. When enabled, it saves a part of your memory (loaded system files and drivers) to a hibernation file after the user session has ended. This allows your computer to start much faster than normal. However, there are plenty of cases when Fast Startup creates issues and needs to be disabled. In this article, we will see how to disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 10.
There are several cases where you might want to disable the Fast Startup feature. Let's look at some common reasons.
The first case is if you are dual booting with some other OS. For example, if you have Linux or another version of Windows in a multi boot configuration, it will not provide access to your Windows 10 partition due to the hibernated state of the partition caused by hybrid shutdown. The second reason might be the reboot requirement for updates. As you might be knowing, when Fast Startup is enabled, Windows 10 can't install its updates without rebooting. So it requires 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. Instead if you simply shut down Windows without hibernating it after your work is done, the reboot is avoided. 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.
To disable Fast Startup in Windows 10, follow these simple instructions:
- Right click the Start button or you can press Win + X shortcut keys together to open the Power Users menu / Win + X menu.
- In the Win+X menu, click the Control Panel item.
- Go to the following applet:
Control Panel\System and Security\Power Options
- Click the link "Change what the power button does" on the left.
- The following window will appear on the screen:
- Click on the 'Change settings that are currently unavailable' link to make the Shutdown options available.
- Untick the Turn on fast startup (recommended) option:
That's it. Now the Fast Startup feature is disabled.
To enable it again, perform the steps as described above and turn on the checkbox option Turn on fast startup (recommended).
While you keep the Fast Startup feature disabled, it make increase your boot time. However, it may not matter to users with high-end machines, especially those with SSD drives. Most users don't even need to change this setting if everything works properly for them.
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Hi,
I have followed the steps above but I couldn’t find on shutdown setting the option “turn on fast startup”
On my windows 10 pro appears only “sleep” and “lock” options under shutdown setting.
Can you please help?
Tanks in advance!
This means your hardware does not support hibernation or your disabled it with something like
Close control panel, open the elevated command prompt and run the following command:
Open control panel and try to enable the fast startup option.
Please, can you help me because always when I try to switch on the laptop first time start and shout down and always start from second time. I have win 10 installed and laptop is almost new.
Working on windows 22h2! Customizing windows is always annoying, I really don’t get why Microsoft don’t just let us do as we want with their software. But at least I got you to save me again! Thanks for all your work Sergey!