You're Doing it Wrong: Rebooting! Find out why!

Dave explains why shutting down and restarting your system no longer does what you might think it does, and how to perform a REAL full reboot. He also explains the differences between sleep, hibernation, and hybrid sleep, as well as introducing how WOL (Wake On LAN) works.

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[Fiyaaaahh]

There's the possibility to disable fast boot In the "Choose what the power buttons do" menu of the Power Options. That way a shutdown becomes an actual full shutdown.

[MusashiOfRings]

I once had a customer come in with a computer that was really messed up. Big black sections of the screen, open apps not displaying properly, and very poor response from input. She had probably 20 apps open, as well. I was able to check with a backend tool, she hadn't restarted in over a year. She agreed to let me restart it. It functioned quite normally after that, and fortunately, she hadn't lost much work. She agreed to restart her computer periodically after that.

[VDNKh_]

As a desktop support tech I hated Fast Startup. I'd have to explain to everyone why restart and shutdown were now different, and if I told someone to reboot I now have to specify restart and not shutdown.

[cakeisamadeupdrug]

I do love that Fast Startup came in just in time for just about everyone to be booting from an SSD.

[totojejedinecnynick]

Dave I have a suggestion: A complete, step by step cold boot of a modern day PC - from PSU power on to login screen. Mobo, intelME, memory check, TPM verification, BIOS, bootloaders, kernel... To really show us what really goes on while we wait for PC startup. I saw an article about Linux booting and it was fascinating to learn how top-level user accessible OS actually is and what is REALLY happening underneath it - and before it can happen.

[braddixon]

I always find your videos informative about subtle things "under the hood" with Windows that I never knew before. Oh, you're of course entertaining as well and have an excellent delivery on the info. Great channel.

[michaelpezzulo]

Love your channel. I was a pc consultant from 83 to 2004 then retired. Trying to get back into the field now with studying for my A+. the background you provide is priceless. Thank you.

[MrnnStr]

In Windows, _Shift + Shutdown_ (or _Shift + Ok_ in the _Alt + F4_ dialogue, with “Shutdown” selected in the select-box) overrides Fast-boot. The OS will shutdown with Fast-boot _temporarily_ disabled. _Shift + Restart_ restarts into a boot-options (recovery) menu.

[RofStyx]

In the control panel under System and security->Power Options->Change what the power buttons do; there is a checkbox for turn on fast startup that is checked by default. Unchecking it makes shutdown a proper shutdown again.

[kevindondrea]

I KNEW Thank you!!!
I thought there was something odd about Rebooting. When we do it to help an end user, some programs are sometimes still running like Excel or Word.
Being good at troubleshooting and BS I tell people I think it may only be going to hibernate before starting again.

I just now shared this video with my coworkers to confirm what I have been telling them the past year.

[kote]

I usually turn off fast startup for two reasons:
1. This does not work correctly on some of my (slightly outdated) hardware.
2. As far as I understand, this does not record information that the NTFS partition was correctly unmounted. Which causes problems in other OSes. They assume that the filesystem has not been correctly unmounted, it may contain some errors, and, as a precaution, do not allow write-mounts.

[stephenstone]

A huge thank you, Dave. I have been having problems with my monitor thinking it, my cable, or my card were going bad; the bottom third of my screen display would flake out and get garbled. It would self correct and start the cycle again. I switched cables, reinstalled my graphics card and video drivers, and nothing worked. I also tried "cold" booting my system several times and it didn't help either. But, when I did the restart boot you mentioned, Voila, it has worked perfectly ever since.

[owlmostdead]

Fast Start in Windows is something I always disable, in today's age where SSD's are pretty much the standard, the bluescreens it often causes is more a bug than a feature.

[Cklodar]

Came into this video thinking I already knew all the things end users should know about But this video still taught me the new knowledge that hibernations, which I use daily on my laptop, still consume a tiny bit of power to facilitate WOLs. Since I have no utility for WOL, it's now disabled on all my network adapters. Thanks Dave!

[andydraw]

Another great video. Thank you Dave.
I got to 162 days on my MacBook several years ago. I bragged on some forum where a Windows guy (a friend) was complaining about having to reboot every week on average. Later that day, karma hit me. Xcode suddenly refused to compile my project. I tried all sorts. Reverted changes. Shut down Xcode etc etc. The errors made no sense whatsoever. Until I found a post online about Xcode having a memory leak. The humanity of it! I had to reboot.

Almost on topic - I once took a call from an elderly member of the public who started with "I believe I have information which will lead to the arrest of theee international hacker" (if you're trying to imagine the accent, think of Tucker out of something about Mary). Temptation was to hangup on the premise it must be a colleague winding me up. After a short chat, it became obvious his computer was "waking up" every time his phone line rang, which his modem was connected to.

[bite-sizedshorts]

I don't ever turn off my computer but once in a few months if the memory gets gagged by too many open browser windows. I cut the power to it and then turn the power back on. The computer runs fine for a few more months. I built it myself 12 or 13 years ago, and it does everything I want it to do, whether recording and cleaning up old records, editing videos, downloading thousands of file, editing my various web pages, writing books, or whatever. It just works. And if it ever quits, I can fix it. I'm 70 and can do almost anything I set my mind to.

[NetBandit]

No mention of modern standby (in newer laptops) which breaks all the normal power management settings. What a pain it was trying to figure out why my system would go to sleep even if I had power management set to never sleep.

[billandmyraclarke]

Great episode! I'm telling all my programmer friends about your channel.

3 things:
1.) So, for those us who got it but need reinforcement, like, need to write it down:
Restart - clears everything and brings up a fully reset state. AND
Hibernate (set for "When lid is closed") is more desireable than power off because it does power off but on wake quickly returns to where I left off with minamal power consumption. Right?

2.) To optimize the longevity of my laptop battery, I guess leave it plugged in and have "close the lid" hibernate the laptop?

3.) Do you happen to know or giess why MS doesnt have a battery meter that reminds the user to plug-in the charger when it drops below, say, 20%. And another notification or bell to tell the user the batts has reached 100% charge (or should it be 85%?) and to unplugg the charger?

I like watching your channel. It brings back lots of good memories: The PDP-11/70 days were lots of fun, UNIX and C had there moments too.

[johnpalmer]

Thanks, Dave. As a true geek who hales all the way back to the preDOS days, I truly enjoy your videos… I invariably learn something from each one and love the ‘inside baseball’ commentary.

[maalekar]

Nice. I consider myself one of the ancients as well sir. Started one of the earliest ISPs here in MN, owned one of the earliest clones available. Did all the memory mgmt of card installations in the old dos days. Saw the first browser come in with CERN, a DoD site, and one other (I think a college site) and that was it. I think people don't get the value of understanding how things work at a low level in relation to today's commonly accepted complexity. I learned a bit on this one and appreciate the vid :) I wish you the best.