You're Doing it Wrong: Rebooting! Find out why!

There's the possibility to disable fast boot In the "Choose what the power buttons do" menu of the Power Options. That way a shutdown becomes an actual full shutdown.

I once had a customer come in with a computer that was really messed up. Big black sections of the screen, open apps not displaying properly, and very poor response from input. She had probably 20 apps open, as well. I was able to check with a backend tool, she hadn't restarted in over a year. She agreed to let me restart it. It functioned quite normally after that, and fortunately, she hadn't lost much work. She agreed to restart her computer periodically after that.

I do love that Fast Startup came in just in time for just about everyone to be booting from an SSD.

Dave I have a suggestion: A complete, step by step cold boot of a modern day PC - from PSU power on to login screen. Mobo, intelME, memory check, TPM verification, BIOS, bootloaders, kernel... To really show us what really goes on while we wait for PC startup. I saw an article about Linux booting and it was fascinating to learn how top-level user accessible OS actually is and what is REALLY happening underneath it - and before it can happen.

As a desktop support tech I hated Fast Startup. I'd have to explain to everyone why restart and shutdown were now different, and if I told someone to reboot I now have to specify restart and not shutdown.

Love your channel. I was a pc consultant from 83 to 2004 then retired. Trying to get back into the field now with studying for my A+. the background you provide is priceless. Thank you.

It didn't take me long to notice that Windows 10 Shutdown was actually hibernating: 1: I had 64 GB RAM. 2: I used DriveSnapshot to backup my system, and it would not backup a hibernated system. Disabling Fast Startup in Power Options is easy enough, but I decided that I didn't want to keep blasting my SSDs with massive writes, so I simply disabled hibernation, and would just use Sleep. If I had a power loss, I wouldn't lose much, as I would make sure any current work was saved before Sleeping. If the power loss corrupted my system, I could just restore my system image if Windows was unable to repair the damage. Why Microsoft didn't simply add a Fast Shutdown option and keep Shutdown to mean what EVERYONE had got used to was just madness!

I always find your videos informative about subtle things "under the hood" with Windows that I never knew before. Oh, you're of course entertaining as well and have an excellent delivery on the info. Great channel.

Fast Start in Windows is something I always disable, in today's age where SSD's are pretty much the standard, the bluescreens it often causes is more a bug than a feature.

In the control panel under System and security->Power Options->Change what the power buttons do; there is a checkbox for turn on fast startup that is checked by default. Unchecking it makes shutdown a proper shutdown again.

Thanks, Dave. As a true geek who hales all the way back to the preDOS days, I truly enjoy your videos… I invariably learn something from each one and love the ‘inside baseball’ commentary.

A huge thank you, Dave. I have been having problems with my monitor thinking it, my cable, or my card were going bad; the bottom third of my screen display would flake out and get garbled. It would self correct and start the cycle again. I switched cables, reinstalled my graphics card and video drivers, and nothing worked. I also tried "cold" booting my system several times and it didn't help either. But, when I did the restart boot you mentioned, Voila, it has worked perfectly ever since.

Thanks for this video! I'm going to direct my clients to this video when they ask why after I tell them to restart instead of shut down when their computer is acting wonky. Using the uptime counter in the task manager is another great way to help people vizualise the difference.

Always a fan of your videos... The bit of history always brings me back to some period of tinkering around... This time adding hibernate to my win98 desktop PC back in the day and feeling cool. 😎

Very well made video. To be honest, I didn't learn anything new, but for users it is explained perfectly well and in understandable language. The most interesting part for me was your bio. I'm kind of an old dude and I've been using probably all or almost all of the OS you have worked on in the past -starting with MS-DOS. Interesting channel, so I've just subscribed.

Came into this video thinking I already knew all the things end users should know about shutdown/restart/sleep/hibernation... But this video still taught me the new knowledge that hibernations, which I use daily on my laptop, still consume a tiny bit of power to facilitate WOLs. Since I have no utility for WOL, it's now disabled on all my network adapters. Thanks Dave!

Thanks Dave, your videos always teach me something while being emotionally calming. All the best, keep the content coming. :)

Helpful: When using `shutdown -s`, Windows won't do a hybrid shutdown. I'd also recommend using "restart", just to be sure. You can also use the Task Manager to see if you've done a "proper" shutdown by looking at the uptime in the performance tab. Often, you can observe time spans spanning a couple of days despite using "Start -> Shutdown". There is also Shift + Shutdown to force a "proper" shutdown.

Thanks for sharing Dave! I didn't know there were so many major differences between reboot & restart. Wake on LAN is pretty sweet. I've always liked the idea of WOL but never had a reason to implement it.

Thank you so much for the description of these states, Dave. I've known about them for a long time, but never been completely clear about them.