How to shut down Windows 10 properly

Windows 10 may still divide opinion, but if your PC or laptop has it, there are plenty of features to like. One of the default features is Fast Start-up, and it’s turned on by default. This means you computer boots up quicker, but it can make it difficult to get rid of certain issues that stop Windows from working properly as it doesn’t really ever turn off.

Here’s how to find the Fast Start-up setting and toggle it off or on:

1. 1 – Head to the Control Panel and click on Power Options
2. 2 – Click the link of the left-hand side ‘Choose what the power buttons do’
3. 3 – Click the ‘Change settings currently unavailable’ link
4. 4 – Tick the ‘Turn on fast start-up’ box under Shut-down settings

If you run into issues, here’s some extra information which should help.

Fast Start-up is linked to hibernation, and it’s used on desktop PCs as well as laptops. In case you’re wondering, Fast Start-up is a bit like Windows 8’s Hybrid Sleep, except that it enables Windows 10 machines to start faster after being shut down, rather than put them into sleep mode. When you turn off your PC or laptop, Windows 10 saves the current state to the hibernation file, and reads this when you turn it back on.

And that explains how you can carry on where you left off even if you choose shut down instead of sleep in Windows 10. But it’s also the reason why errors can be persistent even if you ‘shut down’ your PC.

A top tip is that choosing ‘Restart’ instead of ‘Shut down’ will cure some problems because no hibernation file is created. It’s actually more like a proper shut-down process.

By default Fast Start-up is enabled in Windows 10, so you shouldn’t have to do anything if you were planning on enabling it.

If you can’t see ‘Turn on fast start-up’ under Shut-down settings in the Control Panel, it could be because hibernation is disabled for some reason.

The quickest way to enable it is to right-click on the Start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu that appears. This has been replaced by Windows PowerShell in a recent Windows 10 update:

Now type powercfg –h on and press Return – or Enter.

Here are some more quick fixes for common problems with Windows 10.