Don’t Shut Down your computer!

Window shutdown doesn’t actually  shut down your computer but a restart  does that makes no sense but it could  explain why your computer is still  running slow and some of those issues  are still not getting fixed well in  order for windows to work with its  graphics card, sound, motherboard, keyboard, wi-fi, mouse etc. 

Windows relies on  something called a kernel, this kernel basically enables your hardware  and your software to work together, you type a letter on your keyboard and somehow it appears on your screen, you  click play on this video and your speakers start to play.  

The kernel is responsible for that, it has complete  control and therefore it’s always  running in memory so when you click on  shutdown your windows closes all your apps, logs you out of your computer and  it seems like your computer is actually  switched off.

However, what it actually does is keeps  the kernel in the state of sleep in hibernation so that when you press that  power button on windows doesn’t have to reload the kernel, it has all the info and ta-da!! windows appears  for you to log in. 

How is this called?

This is called fast  startup and Microsoft actually  introduced this feature back in windows  8, so why should you care about this?  now since it doesn’t work on every  computer and every laptop you may not be  aware of it or maybe your computer  hardware at that time didn’t really  apply to you, but it may apply to you. 

Don’t shut down your computer!

Now by not properly killing the kernel it means that if you have any issues such as your sound stop playing, all of a sudden or your wi-fi, all of a sudden doesn’t connect when you click on that  shutdown, those issues still remain  inside the kernel, you should also care  because when you update some apps, they  require a full shutdown to take effect  those apps. 

Therefore don’t actually get  updated because your system hasn’t  really shut down. 

Some people also report  issues if you’re encrypting your hard  drive or you’re trying to dual boot  system that can actually cause  corruption when it’s in the state. 

Have you tried switching it off and on  again? 

because a restart actually does it,  a restart actually kills the kernel  shuts everything down and you start up  with a nice clean boot but what happens  if you don’t want to restart your  computer but you still want to go back  to the good old days when shutdown was  actually a shutdown. 

Let me tell you, click on the windows icon  click on power and hold the shift button  as you click on the shutdown, this will  bypass the fast startup now if you don’t  want to keep remembering to hold that  shift button down then you can actually  disable fast startup with a few simple  clicks in your windows. 

Head down to the  search bar and type the control panel,  there’ll be an icon,  we want the section that says hardware  and sound, open that up,  under the power option there’s an option  there called change what the power  buttons do, select that now you’ll see,  turn on fast startup is ticked what we  want to do is click on the option that  says change settings that are currently  unavailable.

Now simply untick this box  click on save changes and now when you  shut down your computer it will do it  the right way,  now note here if you don’t see fast  startup option it probably means your pc  doesn’t support fast startup and it’s  basically shutting down correctly, so no  change is necessary for you.