How do you completely shut down windows 8?

Question

I have noticed that pressing the shutdown button makes the laptop go into hibernation, is it possible to completely shut down windows 8 without going into this hibernation/sleep mode?

Answer 1

Go to control panel/power settings/ change advanced settings. Change when you press the shutdown button from hibernate to complete shutdown. Simple. You have to do it only ones.
And if your comp is powerfull enough boot up time from 0 will be minimal. This feature is mainly for underpowered comps....

Comments

Thanks, this works.

Answer 2

I would ask why would you want to do such a thing first?

I would guess at some hardware/software issue that needs a cold boot but as per the following article which also answers your question -  http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/windows8/force-full-shutdown-windows-8-closing-kernel-session-140921

"Windows 8 starts so fast normally is because it doesn’t shut down the kernel session, which contains the system state and takes most of the time to start to initialize during system boot. Instead, the kernel session is actually hibernated...
 
This does mean that between boots, the system isn’t re-initialized (because it’s not typically needed). If you do make a hardware or system change that requires a system initialization, the system typically handles this for you automatically. "

to actually perform a full shutdown and cold boot:

open the command prompt
run the following command: shutdown /s /full /t 0

the /full flag performs a full shutdown instead of only hibernating the kernel

its worth pointing out that Win 8 shutdown is not really hibernation as it will shutdown all your applications, it only hibernates the core kernel to improve boot speeds

Comments

Why I would want to shut down completely? Well for starters I don't want to be in hibernation/sleep mode!!!!! And with windows 7 I never had this "problem" ... also I don't use my laptop that much, at least when I am not doing school stuff so yeah I need it to shut down completely.

Well I ain't one to fancy running commands each time I want to shutdown, so I guess I will have to stick with it for now...

Thanks though.

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I'll rephrase then, why would you want to cold start the laptop if its not changing physical hardware when the newer method of shutdown/reboot doesn't have any known and significant negative attributes compared to traditional hibernation in say windows 7/vista/xp etc

its key to explain that the laptop isn't truly hibernating/sleeping, you still have to start your applications when you turn back on. and the laptop is fully powered off when you shutdown (eg no power/battery being used) the only part that "hibernates" is the kernel of the OS itself which only changes for system updates or hardware changes anyway(a reboot will reload it properly in that case and it will in 99% of cases detect changes that need a full reload of the kernel)

Hibernation as microsoft defined it is basically saving your whole ram to disk and reloading that into ram when you restart - this new "hyrbrid" boot method is nowhere near as heavy as this (talking about at most ~200MB of disk space compared to 2GB/4GB or more dependant on the amount of ram you have) - the 200mb is an educated guess based on looking at my bootcamp/win 8 install

Windows 8 shutdown and bootup does not even compare to hibernation and the negative issues with hibernation should not be attributed to the new win 8 shutdown and start up sequence

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to solve your answer for not running the commands everytime you want to shutdown you could create a basic bat or powershell script and put it on your desktop and run it everytime you want/need to do a full shutdown

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Ok maybe I hadn't understood, thanks for making it clearer

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Alternatively, disabling fast startup in settings prevents windows from hibernating the kernel, which results in a full shutdown