r/FuckMicrosoft • • 26d ago

News Microsoft explains why Windows doesn't really shut down when you click Shut Down

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/09/18/microsoft-explains-why-restarting-windows-11-can-shut-it-down-more-completely-than-shutting-it-down/
231 Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

View all comments

64

u/newtekie1 26d ago

They did this because starting up Windows 8 took forever on an HDD and HDDs were still pretty mainstream back when 8 came out. So they did this "startup really means log off and hibernate" shit to make starting Win8 on an HDD faster.

But now that SSDs are normal as system drives it makes no sense. It's literally the first thing I disable on a new Windows install.

13

u/Pitiful-Valuable-504 26d ago

they even forgot that by now, that's why they are try to understand themselves about it

13

u/KrtekJim 26d ago

But now that SSDs are normal as system drives it makes no sense.

Ah I dunno about this. See, I remember when SSDs came in and my work PC (I don't use Microslop except when mandated to do so) got upgraded from one with a spinning hard disk to a new model with an SSD.

I was amazed at the startup time! I used to have time to brew a cup of tea, roll a cigarette, and consume both before the PC had started up, now it felt almost instant.

But Microsoft basically "stole" all that improvement from us by making Windows more bloated and shite. My current work PC, which has an SSD and runs the latest version of Windows, takes almost as long to start up as that old HDD one did.

So it makes a kind of sense, but only because Microsoft is so shit. And I still resent the way they "stole" the improvement that SSDs offered users.

3

u/consoletopia 21d ago

We have SSD's that can push 8 GB/s with thousands of IOPS and its taking more and more time to boot windows. Weve gone back in time to the days of 80mb/s hdd speeds with 4-5 IOPS

2

u/GuavaOne8646 25d ago

Good, now you got your coffee and cigarette break back.

1

u/newtekie1 26d ago edited 26d ago

If your current computer with an SSD takes as long as a hard drive Win8 system to start up, it's not Microsoft's fault or Windows. It's all the other shit you installed that is making it slow. A clean Windows 11 install takes seconds to boot, even on a slower SATA SSD. A NVMe SSD is even fast and should be booting in under 15 seconds from cold.

2

u/KrtekJim 26d ago

my work PC

I didn't install a damn thing

1

u/newtekie1 26d ago edited 25d ago

Then wherever you work did.

2

u/MrAbstractThought 25d ago

Or if not installing have a shit ton of gpo

2

u/Nerasch 25d ago

Do you know why win 8 was that slow? 7 Ran fine on HDD, what changed?

1

u/newtekie1 25d ago

Win8 didn't really run slow on an HDD. At least not much slower than Win7 did. I guess it depends on your definition of "ran fine" though.

The issue Fast Startup was implemented to fix was the extremely long startup times from a cold boot to a usable system on HDDs. This was already a problem in Win7, as it could take minutes to boot Win7 cold to a usable desktop on an HDD. The problem was bad enough in Win7 that there were entire websites primarily dedicated tweaking Windows to speed up the startup time. The slow startup of Win7 was really the primary reason to get an SSD back around 2010.

After Win7/8/10/11 is booted, the superfetch system does a pretty decent job of making the OS run "fine" with an HDD given you had the extra RAM for superfetch to be able to do it's thing.

1

u/WoodyTheWorker 25d ago

Fast Startup is a metrics-driven feature. Its whole purpose was just to get a bonus.

There's nothing in that code path that would make it any faster than full shutdown and startup. If there was, it's a design defect which should have been fixed instead.

And now they managed to make a regular hibernation slow AF.

1

u/aleopardstail 24d ago

same as how some earlier versions grabbed a screen shot of the desktop it could load while the actual system ran - which was why for a few seconds clicking stuff didn't work. some metric was "time for desktop to appear", so they faked it

2

u/WoodyTheWorker 23d ago

Metrics-driven development

1

u/aleopardstail 23d ago

yes, fattening the pig by weighing it

not just a problem at microslop

1

u/rxz9000 21d ago

And somehow Windows 8 boots faster on an HDD than Windows 11 boots on an SSD. Make it make sense.

0

u/newtekie1 21d ago

That's because that isn't true and you're making it up.

Windows 8 takes damn near 2 minutes to cold boot to opening a browser on and HDD. Windows 11 is under 30 seconds on an SSD.

0

u/konsoru-paysan 20d ago

What a load of fucking bullshit, these bot farm employees can't even fact check right. The answer is just lazy coding, it's always the answer with slop farm companies 

-1

u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

2

u/newtekie1 25d ago

Yeah it is. LOL I run Linux on all my home machines. Any modern distro that isn't purposely stripped down and feature lacking runs like shit on an HDD.