June 19, 2020 by Tim
Hibernation and Fast Startup are two Windows features that let your computer save power and boot up quicker, but they can cause issues in some cases. Here’s how to disable them.
Hibernation saves your computer’s running state to a file on disk, allowing the computer to essentially completely shut down and use no power, but still maintain your open programs when you wake it. Hibernation is kind of an advanced version of the normal computer sleep.
Fast Startup uses some of the power of Hibernation to help your PC boot a little faster. Some of the essential components of the Windows operating system are saved to disk in the same “hiberfile” that Hibernation uses. This way, Windows doesn’t have to load from scratch when you boot up your PC.
Normally, you won’t need to disable these settings unless you are having an issue.
You might want to disable Hibernation and Fast Startup if you experience:
Don’t worry if you need to turn these features off. Modern computers do not use much power and with today’s hardware, boot times are very quick, even without Fast Startup.
Start by right-clicking the Start Menu, then click Windows PowerShell (Admin).
Right-click the Start Menu and select Windows PowerShell (Admin)
The PowerShell window appears. You can type in commands here to control you computer.
Type in exactly “powercfg.exe /hibernate off” (without the quotes), then press Enter.
If you did it right, you should see no error messages. Congratulations! You’ve successfully disabled hibernation.
Type exactly the command as it appears above and press Enter.
To disable fast startup, again right-click on the Start Menu, but this time select Power Options.
Right-click the Start Menu and click Power Options.
At the bottom (or possibly the right side) of the Settings window, click Additional Power Settings.
Click Additional Power Settings on the right side of the screen.
This opens the classic-style Control Panel. On this screen, you need to click Choose what the power buttons do.
Next, click Change settings that are currently unavailable.
Then uncheck the box for Turn on fast startup.
Click Change settings that are currently unavailable and un-check the box for Turn on fast startup
Note: In certain versions of Windows 10, the setting for Fast Startup may be missing. In this case, Fast Startup may have already been disabled by your network administrator.
Done! You’ve successfully disabled Fast Startup on Windows 10.
