Windows fast startup is a kernel-only hibernation that significantly reduces the boot time when you next start your computer. It is also known as hybrid shutdown. This feature was introduced with Windows 8 and has now become one of the key features of the Windows operating system.
If you have not heard of fast startup, that is probably because the feature comes pre-enabled with your installation of Windows, necessitating no action from the user to interact with it. That is, unless you want to disable it.
So what benefits do you derive from fast startup? Is there a scenario where you might want to disable it? We have answers to these questions in the article below. Please read, and enjoy!
What is Windows Fast Startup?
Fast startup is one of the three startup modes in the Windows operating system. It was introduced along with Windows 8 in 2016.
The three Windows startup modes are:
- Cold startup,
- Wake-from-hibernate, and
- Fast startup.
Cold Startup
If your machine is configured for a cold startup, when you execute shut down, the OS safely terminates currently running threads, logs off user sessions, offloads drivers and kernel from the memory and finally powers off.
The next time you boot your PC, the OS boot loader constructs a kernel image by reading from the hard drive and loading to memory. The kernel then configures core system functions and loads essential drivers into memory.
Hibernate
Hibernate is a Windows feature that basically emulates sleep mode while shutting down.
Sleep mode is a power-saving feature in Windows that freezes the current state of the device by saving loaded applications, drivers, and kernel into memory while suspending activities. This allows the device to engage in a very low power mode, which is useful if the user wants to take a short break from working on their computer.
Hibernate essentially performs the same function. However, instead of saving the state of opened applications, drivers (kernel mode and user mode), and kernel into the memory, which is volatile, it instead stores these states into the hard drive in hyberfile.sys. Thus, the operating system is able to power down entirely.
The next time you boot, the saved states from hyberfile.sys are read and loaded onto memory, allowing the user to quickly resume where they left off.
Fast Startup
Fast startup combines the ideas of cold startup with hibernation to deliver a hybrid shutdown. With fast startup enabled, the state of the kernel and loaded kernel-mode drivers are written into hyberfile.sys when you initiate a shutdown command. Open applications and user-mode drivers are exempt from being written in hyberfile.sys.
The next time you boot up your device, the saved state stored in hyberfile.sys is loaded into memory bypassing initialization phases of a cold startup. Because of this, a significantly faster boot time is achieved when compared with a cold startup.
One caveat that users should be aware of is that hibernate must be enabled to enable fast startup. You cannot disable hibernate and enable fast startup in …….