[Meatloaf] Interesting Win 10/11 "shutdown" feature

[Bob Raicer]

A while ago (I think mid August) PT started a thread regarding
Winblows 10/11 shutdown and "Fast Startup".

There are a few things which were stated that are not quite
accurate.

The default state of "Fast Startup"/"Hybrid Sleep" (I'm going to
abbreviate this as FSHS in the remainder of this message) is
different for laptops versus desktops and servers.  For laptops, it
is OFF by default.  For desktops/servers it is ON by default.
According to Microsoft developer Raymond Chen, there were multiple
reasons for the different defaults, including specific requests from
laptop manufacturers.  You can see his (somewhat old) explanation
here:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110510-00/?p=10703

All of the FSHS nonsense can be controlled by using the Winblows
command line program powercfg.exe (which must be run in
Administrator privilege level).

This URL gets you to Microsoft doc on disabling/enabling hibernation
on winblows 10/11:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/setup-upgrade-and-drivers/disable-and-re-enable-hibernation

FSHS can be totally disabled by running the command shown below,
which also removes the hiberfil.sys file from the system:

powercfg /h off

You can see the available "Sleep States" on the system by executing
the command shown below:

powercfg /a

Winblows Sleep States are described here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/kernel/system-sleeping-states

I can tell you from personal experience that enabling FSHS can cause
data corruption on USB attached SSDs.  The scenario shown below
corrupted the NTFS file system resulting in data loss on a Samsung
T5 USB SSD:

- The Samsung T5 was connected to a USB C port on a desktop machine
   running Winblows 10 Pro 64-bit 22H2.

- The system was shutdown using the Winblows Start -> Shutdown path.

- After the system appeared to be shutdown, the Samsung T5 was
   disconnected, i.e., the USB cable was removed from the device.

- The Samsung T5 was then connected to a different machine, also
   running the same edition of Winblows 10.

- Nearly immediately, Winblows produced a pop-up stating that
   "problems were found" on the Samsung T5.

- I ran chkdsk.exe /f against the Samsung T5, which reported errors
   in the NTFS Master File Table (MFT).  These errors lead to data
   loss.

Researching the problem I discovered that other users had similar
experiences with USB SSDs from various vendors (not just Samsung).
Disabling FSHS always prevented the corruption issues.

I ALWAYS disable FSHS on my systems; most of this power saving stuff
is neither reliable nor trustworthy.

As one last tidbit, you can use the winblows "shutdown" command line
utility as shown below to fully shutdown the machine, regardless of
the FSHS state (the "/t 7" argument is the time, in seconds, to wait
before the shutdown is actually performed):

shutdown /s /t 7

Bob