How to Enable or Disable Fast Startup on Windows 11 & 10

Optimize your PC’s startup time with Fast Startup

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon Reviewed by Stan Kats

Last Updated: December 11, 2025 Fact Checked

How to Turn on Fast Startup

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Fast Startup: On or Off?

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Are you experiencing slow computer boot times? If so, you might want to enable Fast Startup. Fast Startup is a Windows feature that can reduce the time it takes your computer to boot up. Turning on Fast Startup is thankfully super easy and only takes a few minutes. In this article, we'll go over how to enable Fast Startup, as well as whether you should have Fast Startup enabled or disabled. Read on to learn more.

Quick Steps

Open the Control Panel.
Click on Power Options.
Click Choose what the power buttons do.
Click Change settings that are currently unavailable.
Tick the box next to Turn on fast startup (recommended).
Click Save changes at the bottom of the window.

Section 1 of 2:

How to Turn on Fast Startup

The easiest way to do this is to type control panel into the taskbar search bar, then click Control Panel in the Start menu that pops up.
If you don't see this option, click the dropdown next to "View by" that says Categories and change it to either Small icons or Large icons. You'll see Power Options after switching away from Categories mode.

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It's in the left-hand sidebar, at the top.
If you notice that the options at the bottom of your screen are not grayed out, you can skip this step.
By default, this option is turned on, so you may notice that the box is already checked. If it's not, however, check it now.
If you want to disable Fast Startup in the future, simply return to this menu and uncheck the box next to Turn on fast startup (recommended).^{[1]
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Section 2 of 2:

Should Fast Startup be on or off?

Some users have found that their computer won't shut down fully when Fast Startup is enabled. This is because Fast Startup saves your Windows session to the hard drive, which is essentially a type of hibernation. When you start your computer back up, Windows will load the saved session instead of starting everything from scratch. This can help save some time during startup, depending on your system.^{[2]
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When you tell your computer to shut down, you should see the monitors go dark, and you'll hear the fans stop running. If your computer appears to fully shut down, you can leave Fast Startup enabled. However, if you notice that your computer is having trouble completely powering down when you tell it to turn off, disabling Fast Startup might help.
There are two types of storage drives commonly used in computers: HDDs (hard disk drives) and SSDs (solid-state drives). HDDs are bigger and store your data on platters, while SSDs are smaller. Most modern computers boot from an SSD, but if your computer still boots from an HDD, you should not disable Fast Startup. Disabling Fast Startup will make your computer boot extremely slowly.^{[3]
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One Redditor warned that disabling Fast Startup when using OneDrive caused their computer's boot time to increase exponentially, and also broke many of the services on their computer. While this doesn't seem to be a widespread issue, you may want to keep Fast Startup on if you use OneDrive.^{[4]
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