Microsoft’s latest Windows 8 operating system has been designed for delivering better speeds than previous versions of Windows. Because of this, Windows 8 is faster in almost every department compared to its predecessors. It boots faster, takes less time to copy or move files, and finally it’s low on system resources as well.
With the introduction of Windows 8 Microsoft has introduced a new feature named Fast Startup. According to Microsoft, only a small amount of Windows users use the hibernate feature and the Fast Startup helps users who prefers to shutdown the PC rather than hibernate it. Because of this feature, Windows 8 boots in less than six seconds on a solid state drive (SSD).
Fast startup is a setting in Windows 8 that helps your PC start up faster after shutdown. Windows does this by saving system info to a file upon shutdown. When you start your PC again, Windows 8 uses that system info to rescue your PC instead of restarting it.
Please note that the fast startup setting doesn’t apply to restart. You need to shutdown and then start your PC again for fast startup to take effect. We recommend you check out this page of the official Windows 8 blog to know about the feature in detail.
Even though the fast startup feature is turned on by default in Windows 8, you may want to make sure that the feature is enabled. Follow the given below steps to enable or disable the feature.
Turn on or off fast startup in Windows 8
Step 1: Switch to the Start screen. Press Windows + W keys to see the search charm, type Power Options and press enter key to open Power Options window.
Step 2: In the left pane of Power Options window, click Choose what the power buttons do.
Step 3: Here, click on Change settings that are currently unavailable. Next, under Shutdown settings, tick Turn on fast startup (recommended) checkbox to enable the feature. Finally click Save changes button. You are done!
James says
I would (sort of) second Techland’s comment. Fast Startup is a kind of “semi-hibernate” feature, which therefore means that it relies on your computer only having one operating system on it. It MUST be turned off if you plan to dual-boot your Windows 8 computer with any other operating system (older versions of Windows OR any version of Linux), and plan to give the other operating system any sort of access to any of the drives/partitions that Windows 8 can access.
Fast Startup is an excellent feature if Windows 8 is the only operating system on your computer. If you are dual-booting, then accessing any partition that has previously been mounted in Windows 8 may result in problems. At best, the other operating system will report and correct disk (filesystem) errors. At worst, either Windows 8 or the other operating system will corrupt the files on that drive.
This is because hibernation (and therefore, by extension, fast startup) leaves several files and programs loaded in memory (i.e. running), and saves a snapshot of them for quick access next time you switch your computer on. Leaving these programs in memory requires leaving filesystems mounted. Put bluntly, if something is halfway through writing something to disk when hibernated, it will expect to find that disk in the exact same state when the computer is resumed, and will continue and finish its write operation from where it left off.
I love fast startup and have no issues with it, so my tip would be to enable and enjoy fast startup if you only use Windows 8, but switch it off if you plan to dual-boot.
Techland says
You should not make sure that this feature is enabled, but that it is disabled! FastStart is a buggy and basically complete obsolete feature. Instead they should have made hybrid mode standard/default (standby plus hibernation working together).
FastStart can make a disk unbootable and adds errors in this scenario: Run a computer with Windows 8. Connect a Windows 7 hard drive via eSATA (or any other interface) to read from it. That is already enough, not necessary to write to it. Now connect that W7 hard drive back to a W7 computer – errors require checkdisk to be run.
This problem has been communicated in an unclear way from Linux drives, where in reality it affects any drive that can be read and is not Windows 8.
Disabling FastStart immediately removes those effects and problems.
Admin says
Thanks, hb860. Fixed it!
hb860 says
Hi, thanks.
There is no link at “this page” words when you mentioned the Windows blog about restart.