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Is fast startup on Windows worth it?

Have you ever heard about “Fast Startup” feature on Windows? Well, if you haven’t known it yet, fast startup is a feature to make Windows booting faster.

How it works? When you shutdown your computer, rather than just dumping everything in RAM, Windows will save an image of your loaded kernel and drivers in something called the hiberfile. This way, when the system boots up again, it simply reloads this file, making boot times much more faster. The improvement it does is actually a lot. From my experience, usually on my laptop with HDD it takes about 50 -60 secs to be on desktop. With fast startup on, it only takes about 20 secs. Of course, your mileage may vary.

It does come with cons. First, your computer will not do a full shutdown even after using the Shut-Down button on start menu, because well, basically this is hibernation but your apps and user session closed. Second, it’ll lock your hard drive. Usually it’s not dangerous, unless you need to dual-boot with Linux or using encryption.

This feature turned on by default in your computer. If you want to disable it, or enable it (if it hasn’t), follow the steps below:

  1. Go to Control Panel → Power Options. On the left sidebar, click “Choose what power button do”.
  2. Press “Change settings that are currently unavailable”. It will ask for admin permissions.
  3. View the shutdown options section, and check/uncheck fast startup settings, then press save changes.
shutdown settings with the fast startup option highlighted

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