0

I was under the impression that in Windows 10 and 11 Restart was a more dramatic refreshing and house-cleaning than Shutdown. Based on these...

https://www.computroon.co.uk/2020/10/16/restart-vs-shutdown-windows-10/

...and...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/218345/shut-down-and-restart-in-windows-10.html

But this morning my GF was connecting a MIDI keyboard via USB to her Windows 11 Lenovo Thinkpad laptop and despite repeated Restarts, her program, Piano 10, couldn't see the MIDI keyboard. But after doing a Shutdown the MIDI device was detectable and worked fine. Do Shutdown and Restart have different effects regarding external hardware devices?

1 Answer 1

2

Windows 10 and 11 use Windows Fast Start, which essentially makes start-up after a normal shutdown a "resume from hibernation" using a hibernation image of a system that's just been booted up, while Restart performs an actual full reboot process (and probably refresh the Fast Start image too). So on the software side, Restart can be a more thorough operation.

But Shutdown does something that may be significant for the hardware side of things: it actually turns off the power for most components of the computer. If some part of the hardware of the MIDI keyboard or the interface for it has been stuck in some weird state, turning off the power might well get it unstuck.

This is exactly why "turning a device off and then on again" is one of the standard tech support quick remedies for misbehaving hardware.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .