In Windows 8, when you shut down your computer, you actually perform a hybrid shutdown by default. What is Hybrid Shutdown? As you’ve probably heard, Windows 8 boots much faster than Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows.
This is because of the way it shuts down. Rather than performing a cold boot where everything has to be loaded, i.e. the OS kernel, applications, etc., Windows 8 performs partial hibernation, in which the kernel session and device drivers are saved to disk.
When you start Windows 8, it boots from this hibernation file, which greatly speeds up boot times.
In previous versions of Windows, the hibernation file was much larger because, in addition to the kernel and device drivers, the file also contained all the application data. Now that the file is smaller, the download times have improved.
In Windows 8, this is called Fast Startup and is enabled by default. You can check this by going to Power Options in the Control Panel and clicking Choose What the Power Button Does in the left pane.
Scroll down and you should see a checkbox that says Enable Fast Startup (Recommended). Note that if you don’t have the Enable Fast Startup checkbox at all, it means that hibernation is not enabled.
To enable hibernation in Windows 8, open an elevated command prompt and enter the following line:
powercfg / hibernate on
Now when you go to Power Options, you should see that the checkbox is visible and checked. So how do you complete a full shutdown in Windows 8? There are three ways.
1. You can disable Fast Startup in Power Options or
2. You can simply reboot instead of shutting down.
3. You can use the following command on the command line:
shutdown / s / full / t 0
Oddly enough, when you restart Windows 8, it first performs a complete shutdown, followed by a cold restart. So, these are different ways to completely shutdown Windows 8, which will come in handy if you’ve recently installed new hardware, etc.
Also, just in case you don’t know how to actually shut down your Windows 8 computer, you need to move your mouse pointer to the upper right or lower right corner. The Charms bar will open.
Then tap “Settings” and then “Power”. Finally, click Shut Down in the list.
This is a rather complicated process of shutting down your Windows 8 PC and one of the many reasons Windows 8 crashes. If you have questions, please leave a comment. Enjoy!
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