Fast Startup - Turn On or Off in Windows 8

How to Turn "Fast Startup" On or Off for a Hybrid Boot in Windows 8 and 8.1​

Fast Startup (aka: hybrid boot or hybrid Shutdown) is a new feature in Windows 8 to help your PC start up faster after shutting down. When turned on, Windows 8 does this by using a hybrid shutdown (a partial hibernate) method that saves only the kernal session and device drivers (system information) to the hibernate (hiberfil.sys) file on disk instead of closing it when you shut down your PC. This also makes the hiberfil.sys file to be much smaller than what hibernate would use (often 4GB or more). When you start your PC again, Windows 8 uses that saved system information to resume your system instead of having to do a cold boot to fully restart it. Using this technique with boot gives a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems tested). If you have a motherboard with UEFI, then fast startup will be even faster.



For more information about "Fast Startup", see:

Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8 - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

and

Designing for PCs that boot faster than ever before - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs


This tutorial will show you how to turn Fast Startup on or off in Windows 8.

You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial.

The fast startup setting doesn't apply to Restart.

This is not the same thing as hybrid sleep/hibernate in Power Options.

If you shut down from the WIN+X menu in Windows 8.1, it will perform a full shutdown instead of a hybrid shutdown even if you have Fast Startup turned on.

   Warning

There have been many Windows 8 users complaining about various restart and shutdown issues when Fast Startup (aka: hybrid boot or hybrid Shutdown) is turned on. They report that their computers restart themselves as soon as the sign in screen appears, and some that their computer systems hang while rebooting or shutting down the system.

If you experience any of the issues, then you might turn off "Fast Startup" to see if it was the cause.

If you dual boot Windows 8 with a previous version of Windows (ex: Windows 7, Vista, XP), then it is recommended to turn off Fast Startup to avoid the issues above.

If you have Fast Startup turned on and have an external hard drive connected when you shutdown, then connect the external drive to another computer, it will create issues with Fast Startup. In this situation, it would be best to leave Fast Startup turned off.

OPTION ONE

To Turn "Fast Startup" On or Off in System Settings

1. Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click on the Power Options icon.

2. Click/tap on the Choose what the power buttons do link on the left side. (see screenshot below)





3. Click/tap on the Change settings that are currently unavailable link at the top. (see screenshot below)





4. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.

5. Do step 6 or step 7 below for what you would like to do.

6. To Turn On "Fast Startup" (Hybrid Boot) for a "Hybrid Shutdown"
NOTE: This is the default setting.

A) Under Shutdown settings, check the Turn on fast startup box, and click/tap on the Save changes button. (see screenshot below)

NOTE: If the Turn on fast startup setting is not listed, then you will need to close the System Settings window, enable hibernate, then start back at step 1 again.





B) The Shut down Power option will now perform as a hybrid shut down when used.

C) Go to step 8 below.


7. To Turn Off "Fast Startup" for a "Full Shutdown"

A) Under Shutdown settings, uncheck the Turn on fast startup box, and click/tap on the Save changes button. (see screenshot below step 6A)

NOTE: If the Turn on fast startup setting is not listed, then hibernate has been disabled that removed this setting and also disabled fast startup.

B) The Shut down Power option will now perform as a normal full shut down when used.

C) Go to step 8 below.


8. You can now close the Power Options window if you like.

OPTION TWO

To Turn "Fast Startup" On or Off using a BAT File Download

   Note

The .bat files below are for the registry key and value below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power

HiberbootEnabled DWORD

0 = Turn off Fast Startup
1 = Turn on Fast Startup

1. Do step 2 or 3 below for what you would like to do.

2. To Turn On "Fast Startup" (Hybrid Boot) for a "Hybrid Shutdown"
NOTE: This is the default setting.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the BAT file below, and go to step 4 below.


Turn_On_Fast_Startup.bat







3. To Turn Off "Fast Startup" for a "Full Shutdown"

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the BAT file below, and go to step 4 below.


Turn_Off_Fast_Startup.bat







4. Save the .bat file to your desktop.

5. Right click or press and hold on the downloaded .bat file, and click/tap on Run as administrator.

6. If prompted, click/tap on Run and Yes (UAC).
NOTE: If you like, you can stop getting the Run prompt by unblocking the downloaded .bat file.

7. You will now notice your screen flicker as a command prompt quickly opens and closes to apply the registry changes.

8. You can now delete the downloaded .bat file if you like.

OPTION THREE

To Turn "Fast Startup" Off by Disabling Hibernate

1. Do step 2 or 3 below for what you would like to do.


2. To Turn On "Fast Startup" (Hybrid Boot) for a "Hybrid Shutdown"
NOTE: This is the default setting.

A) UseOPTION ONE or OPTION TWO above.



3. To Turn Off "Fast Startup" for a "Full Shutdown"
NOTE: This will turn off Fast Startup and also disable hibernate.

A) Disable hibernate.





That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Check if Last Boot was from Fast Startup, Full Shutdown, or Hibernate
• How to Force "Fast Startup" to Always be Turned On in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Enable Fast Boot or Ultra Fast Boot in UEFI Firmware Settings for Windows
• How to Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Change the Size of the hiberfil.sys File in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Create a "Hybrid Shut Down" Shortcut in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Lock, Log off, Restart, Shut Down, and Switch User in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Add "Shut Down" Computer to the Desktop Context Menu in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Add a "Power" Cascading Desktop Context Menu in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Speed Up the Shut Down Time in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Reduce the Startup Delay Time for Desktop Apps in Windows 8 and 8.1

[/note]

 

[johnchuang95]

Hi,
After enable the new fature "Turn On Fast Startup" then shut down my computer, I found my computer can not be wake up LAN, is it a bug or something wrong?

PS. If disable the feature, my computer can be waked up normally.

 

[Brink]

Hello John, and welcome to Eight Forums.

I'm not sure why. Fast startup may not support using Wake-On-LAN (WOL), or there may be some sort of issue with the BIOS or drivers not supporting WOL with fast startup yet until a update for them is released.

I would certainly hope that Microsoft or the motherboard's firmware updates will hopefully have this sorted in the Windows 8 Release Preview version being released the first week of June.

 

[johnchuang95]

Appreciate for your reply, I will confirm the next Windows 8 preview which release on the first week of June.

 

[eternalx]

Hi Brink,

Is there any disadvantages to using hybrid boot? It seems to be turned on by default for me, hinting to me that the advantages outweighs any side-effects.

 

[Brink]

Hello eternalx, and welcome to Eight Forums.

It's a great new feature to help Windows 8 startup faster from a shut down, when one prefers to not use sleep or hibernate. There's no disadvantage, but more of a personal preference.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[eternalx]

Hello eternalx, and welcome to Eight Forums.

It's a great new feature to help Windows 8 startup faster from a shut down, when one prefers to not use sleep or hibernate. There's no disadvantage, but more of a personal preference.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thank you for your help! I have notice that shutdown time is a tad slower with Hybrid Boot on, but that is to be expected.

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome. Yeah, it'll take a bit longer at shut down while it's saving to the hiberfil.sys file.

 

[FSeal]

Normal hibernation was already mighty fast, especially on an SSD.

The only problem is, I've not had a computer that would survive more than 3-4 hibernations in a row before some device driver or another craps out and this won't change that. Though on the plus side of this hybrid boot, when the computer DOES crap out to a driver not liking being hibernated for the 4rth time, you are not to lose any program data like happens on a full hibernate though since all the apps will be closed before hibernation...

 

[nonpasaran]

Hi Shawn,

Maybe you can add a third option: Disable Hibernate in Windows 8

Because if you disable Hibernate, Fast Startup also disabling automatically

 

[Brink]

Hi Shawn,

Maybe you can add a third option: Disable Hibernate in Windows 8

Because if you disable Hibernate, Fast Startup also disabling automatically

Hello Nonpasaran,

Added.

 

[nonpasaran]

Hello Nonpasaran,

Added.

I see

 

[cycledoc]

I dual boot with Ubuntu on my laptop and share some files between the systems. If I use the hybrid shutdown the windows partition won't mount in Ubuntu. I simply turn it off, accept the slower boot and everything works.

 

[jgarland]

Hello eternalx, and welcome to Eight Forums.

It's a great new feature to help Windows 8 startup faster from a shut down, when one prefers to not use sleep or hibernate. There's no disadvantage, but more of a personal preference.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

The disadvantages are with Fast Shutdown enabled If you dual boot to another OS, like Win 7, then chkdsk will run at boot. As I understand it, this happens because Win 8 flags the drive as dirty on shutdown. I have experienced this first hand several times. And on one of those times chkdsk hosed my Win7 install while trying to "fix" it. It is highly recommended to disable the Fast Startup option if you dual boot.

Chkdsk incompatibility in Windows 7 Windows 8 dual boot..

 

[Brink]

Hello jgarland,

Thank you. I have not had that issue with my dual boot of W7 and W8, but I'll add a note in the tutorial for this.

 

[isdop]

Thanks
^
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V

 

[Brink]

Welcome to Eight Forums isdop.

 

[modd1uk]

I had to turn off fast boot in order for my network drives to connect properly. Windows was loading too fast and the drives were not being mapped, I have read online that windows tries to map the drives before the network connection is established and just fails.

Disabled fast boot and its perfect now, windows has enough time to map the drives properly...although it seems a bit of a waste to have a 256gb SSD and UEFI and then turn fast boot off

 

[xraiderv1]

I've literally had a fast bootup time of 10-20 seconds, fast enough I dont even have time to get dressed in the morning after turning the machine on.
I timed it.
then I timed it again.

next I grabbed the kitchen digital egg timer and repeated, convinced my watch's timer was busted.

shutdown is equally fast.

 

[Atif]

Hi Brink

Thanks for this lovely info... My Pc startup is lightning fast now. But I am having a minor problem. Every now and again my DSL Modem shows the yellow mark (of not being connected to internet, and even turning it off and back on does not help) and as a result I have to soft reset my network settings from control panel and everything goes back in order again. This wasn't the case before enabling the fast boot option. and again even now, it does not happen every time but after every three or four shut downs, it happens once. Any suggestions???? why is it happening all of a sudden?