Ask HN: Why in Windows shutting down the PC is not the same as restarting it? - kensai
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ghurkan
It's the fast start feature, that writes the RAM content to hard disk and
quickly starts back up when the computer is shutdown normally. When the PC is
restarted, it starts with a fresh state.

This feature can be toggled in settings and may impact perceived boot time.

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kensai
But why would this impact installed drivers or applications? I get this
warning "shutting down and starting up again" as different from rebooting from
new versions of software, usually.

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ghurkan
It's probably because the current state of drivers and applications is also
saved along the RAM content I guess. For example, when you install a new
driver and it asks you to reboot in order to start working, if you do it
manually by shutting down and starting up, it wouldn't have the same effect as
restarting, so driver wouldn't start as well. For recent versions of Windows,
you need to select restart instead of shutdown-start up to ensure fresh boot-
up.

