Windows 11 Fast Startup suddenly stopped working

1) Do you have the latest bios ?

2) Do you have the latest firmware for the nvme?
-https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/wd-sn580-firmware-and-conflict-with-win11-24h2.328618/

3) Did you made cmos reset with pins so the motherboard to redetect the uefi gop from gpu and efi partition

4) the nvme is the only drive and use the windows default driver?

5) original from you " The only thing I did was change the graphics VBIOS switch once when the system was off, and the system wouldn't boot"
It seems to me some partition is dirty or at least windows think it.
Remove all disks and scan all partitions in nvme with checkdisk.

Even if you recreate the EFI and MSR partitions it dont fix it even in my case because it seems that in the windows partition somewhere writes something that stuck and it cant be fixed even with windows repair from windows update.

Are you sure in registry have only the two reg files i mention with hyberfilesizepercent=0.

boombastik said:

1) Do you have the latest bios ?

PRIME B660M-K D4｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global

ASUS Prime B660M-K D4 Intel® B660 (LGA 1700) mATX motherboard features PCIe® 4.0, DDR4, two M.2 slots, front panel USB 3.2 Gen 1, Realtek 1Gb Ethernet. Prime B660M-K D4 caters to daily users and all builders looking for well-rounded specs and a range of options for performance tuning via...

www.asus.com

2) Do you have the latest firmware for the nvme?
-https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/wd-sn580-firmware-and-conflict-with-win11-24h2.328618/

3) Did you made cmos reset with pins so the motherboard to redetect the uefi gop from gpu and efi partition

4) the nvme is the only drive and use the windows default driver?

5) original from you " The only thing I did was change the graphics VBIOS switch once when the system was off, and the system wouldn't boot"
It seems to me some partition is dirty or at least windows think it.
Remove all disks and scan all partitions in nvme with checkdisk.

Even if you recreate the EFI and MSR partitions it dont fix it even in my case because it seems that in the windows partition somewhere writes something that stuck and it cant be fixed even with windows repair from windows update.

Are you sure in registry have only the two reg files i mention with hyberfilesizepercent=0.

Click to expand...

1. Yes, I installed the latest BIOS update just a few weeks ago.

2. I’m sorry I didn’t include this in the specifications. The NVMe drive where Windows is installed is a PLEXTOR PX-256M9PeGN, with firmware version 1.07. I added the SN580 NVMe to the system several months after the Fast Startup problem occurred, but I forgot to include the complete list of drives here.

3. At the moment, no. However, when the Fast Startup problem first occurred, one of the things I tried was resetting the BIOS directly from the motherboard.

4. At the moment, yes. However, before that, I also had a Windows 10 installation on a SATA drive, and its layout was MBR. During the Windows installation, I disabled all the other disks through the BIOS by disabling their SATA ports. Likewise, after the Fast Startup problem occurred, I disabled all the SATA drives again using the same method, but this had no effect on resolving the Fast Startup problem.

5. I checked all the drives related to the operating system, including the EFI, Windows, and Recovery partitions, using the same CHKDSK command. Naturally, the check of the Windows drive was performed after the system restarted.

I don’t know which drive Windows identified as Dirty, but it was not the NVMe drive containing Windows. It also seems unlikely that it would be related to the SATA drives, since they are only used for storing files and have no connection to the Windows system drive. In any case, I had already disabled those drives through the BIOS as well.

As I mentioned, I purchased the SN580 later. However, at the moment, there is no option in my BIOS to temporarily disable the NVMe drives.

Regarding the registry keys, yes, I kept only the two keys you mentioned and deleted the rest. However, please note that in this configuration, the Hibernate option becomes enabled again after restarting Windows, and it is not possible to use hiberfil.sys in reduced-size mode solely for Fast Startup. If we do that, two additional registry keys are added back to the registry.

Overall, at this point I have no idea how Fast Startup can be enabled again without completely wiping the disk and reinstalling Windows.

As a test, I once installed another copy of Windows on a SATA drive using the exact same hardware I am currently using, and Fast Startup worked normally on that installation.

The problem is that even if I completely reinstall my main Windows installation from scratch, there is no guarantee that Fast Startup will not become disabled again in the future. Of course, in that situation, perhaps having a System Restore point or a complete backup/image of the Windows disk would allow us to restore it to its previous working state.

Once again, thank you very much for your help. If you have any other ideas or possible solutions, please let me know so that we can investigate those as well.

Update: I checked all the drives using the fsutil dirty command. I even assigned drive letters to the drives that didn’t have any using DiskPart, and none of them were marked as dirty.

Bofore you try anything can you remove the sata cable from the sata that had the windows 10 install?

Install windirstat and check c drive.
Do you see hiberfil.sys? if yes, Disable hibernation.
powercfg.exe /hibernate off

Recheck windirstat do you see hiberfil.sys removed?

If yes , go to registry and remove the registry entries except these two above.

Restart your machine and check it with windirstat. The the hiberfill.sys will recreated (by default at 40% percent)

Now scan only the efi partiton like above(with checkdisk).

Then restart your machine in safe mode dont login and wait there 30 seconds.
Then restart again.

Also check the event viewer in case that it fixed it and now it writes something in event viewer.

boombastik said:

Bofore you try anything can you remove the sata cable from the sata that had the windows 10 install?

Install windirstat and check c drive.
Do you see hiberfil.sys? if yes, Disable hibernation.
powercfg.exe /hibernate off

Recheck windirstat do you see hiberfil.sys removed?

If yes , go to registry and remove the registry entries except these two above.

Restart your machine and check it with windirstat. The the hiberfill.sys will recreated (by default at 40% percent)

Now scan only the efi partiton like above(with checkdisk).

Then restart your machine in safe mode dont login and wait there 30 seconds.
Then restart again.

Also check the event viewer in case that it fixed it and now it writes something in event viewer.

Click to expand...

Thank you. Initially, I disconnected that SATA drive's cable from the motherboard then I disabled hibernation using the powercfg /hibernate off command and checked that the hiberfil.sys file, which was 6 GB in size, had been deleted.

I also deleted the two unnecessary registry keys, HiberFileType and HibernateEnabled. I restarted the system, and I noticed that the hiberfil.sys file had been recreated with a size of 6 GB.

This time, I ran the powercfg /h type reduced command and checked again. I saw that the hiberfil.sys file size had been reduced to 3 GB.

I repeated the previous steps again, meaning I ran powercfg /h off and confirmed that the hiberfil.sys file was deleted. I then deleted those two unnecessary registry keys and restarted the system. However, this time as well, the hiberfil.sys file was recreated with a size of 6 GB.

What could be causing this problem?

I will attach a screenshot of the registry keys. The two keys I have selected are the ones I delete. The two keys above and below them, which you mentioned, are the ones I keep.

Yes leave it 6 dont run the reduced command. Yes delete the two keys that you have selected.
so delete again the hibarnate file and the keys and restart.
But not run the reduced command. I want the default 40 percent like a new install.

Also in the meanwhile i found this:
The nvme PLEXTOR PX-256M9PeGN uses the Marvell 88SS1093 that uses 1.2 nvme protocol.
NVMe 1.3 protocol also adds much needed support for boot-partitions, without needing the motherboard UEFI firmware to store it.
Old motherboards with 1.2 NVMe booting support involves storing a tiny boot partition with the bootloader on the SPI flash chip of the motherboard which stores the UEFI firmware.

-https://nvmexpress.org/nvme-readiness-part-three/
<<<The NVMe 1.3 Spec. was released in June 2017 and added new features including – Boot, Emulated Controller Performance Enhancement, Sanitize, Streams, Telemetry, NVMe-MI Send, NVMe-Receive among others.

• Boot provides a simplified interface to access Boot Partitions that may be used for platform initialization code.>>>

Also i found that this nvme has a 1.08 firmware but i cant find it.
-https://smarthdd.com/database/PLEXTOR-PX-256M9PeGN/1.08/


The nvme is small, it is possible with macrium reflect to make and image to another ssd and then run the fix.

boombastik said:

Yes leave it 6 dont run the reduced command. Yes delete the two keys that you have selected.
so delete again the hibarnate file and the keys and restart.
But not run the reduced command. I want the default 40 percent like a new install.

Also in the meanwhile i found this:
The nvme PLEXTOR PX-256M9PeGN uses the Marvell 88SS1093 that uses 1.2 nvme protocol.
NVMe 1.3 protocol also adds much needed support for boot-partitions, without needing the motherboard UEFI firmware to store it.
Old motherboards with 1.2 NVMe booting support involves storing a tiny boot partition with the bootloader on the SPI flash chip of the motherboard which stores the UEFI firmware.

-https://nvmexpress.org/nvme-readiness-part-three/
<<<The NVMe 1.3 Spec. was released in June 2017 and added new features including – Boot, Emulated Controller Performance Enhancement, Sanitize, Streams, Telemetry, NVMe-MI Send, NVMe-Receive among others.

• Boot provides a simplified interface to access Boot Partitions that may be used for platform initialization code.>>>

Also i found that this nvme has a 1.08 firmware but i cant find it.
-https://smarthdd.com/database/PLEXTOR-PX-256M9PeGN/1.08/


The nvme is small, it is possible with macrium reflect to make and image to another ssd and then run the fix.

Click to expand...

Yes, every time I use the powercfg /h /off command, the hiberfil.sys file is deleted. Then I delete those two unnecessary registry keys, and after restarting the system, the hiberfil.sys file is recreated with a size of 6 GB!


I don't know what is causing the problem, but this time I managed to restart the system without the two additional registry keys being recreated. After the restart, I noticed that they had not been recreated. I don't know how that happened, but the hiberfil.sys file is still 6 GB in size. I don't know whether this is a bug or what the problem might be. In general, yes, it is true that by default, after Windows is installed, it creates this file with a size of 3 GB.


Please see the attached image (It was taken after Restart).


Thank you. I cannot rule out the possibility that the problem is related to the firmware. However, if that is the case, why was Fast Startup enabled and working for two months. In general, Fast Startup is designed to provide the best performance on hard disk drives and even SATA drives, so it doesn't make sense for this feature to be disabled on an NVMe drive because of the type of firmware.


Another point is that if there is some kind of incompatibility, why does the system hibernate without any problems while Fast Startup is the exception.


Honestly, I am completely exhausted. I have tried every possible solution, but the problem still isn't resolved. And why doesn't Windows log an error or warning that could help us determine the cause?


If this isn't a bug in Windows itself, it seems to be a long-standing issue that has existed for years. During my research, I found that many other people have also experienced problems with Fast Startup. For some of them, Fast Startup mysteriously became enabled again, while for others, like me, it remained disabled.


Thank you.

I believe you because i had two affeced pc with hibernation to work, hybrid shutdown failure and eventviewer not saying anything.
But i fix it with the above workflow.

In picture it seems ok. Now make again the steps 2 and 3.


I also in early days i had a kingston ssd that hybernation work and fast boot no and they released firmware update.
But in that case i had in event viewer a log error.

But we dont know if windows has a flag for the hybrid shutdown that bypases manual activation.
For example if it see and nvme version 1.2.


I also want to say that the default reg key to create hiberfil.sys is the HibernateEnabledDefault after 2021 update.
See here option 3
-https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2859-enable-disable-hibernate-windows-10-a.html

When we run a command powercfg -hibernate off for example, i don't know why it creates the key HibernateEnabled, as this key was to be used before the 2021 update.


Also with the two default reg entries you cant use hyberfiletype 1 like you it has a bug. That is the reason that you need only the two default keys.
read more here:
-https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2859-enable-disable-hibernate-windows-10-a-8.html
post 72

boombastik said:

I believe you because i had two affeced pc with hibernation to work, hybrid shutdown failure and eventviewer not saying anything.
But i fix it with the above workflow.

In picture it seems ok. Now make again the steps 2 and 3.


I also in early days i had a kingston ssd that hybernation work and fast boot no and they released firmware update.
But in that case i had in event viewer a log error.

But we dont know if windows has a flag for the hybrid shutdown that bypases manual activation.
For example if it see and nvme version 1.2.

Click to expand...

Thank you. Please check these values as well, and let me know if there are any differences compared to your registry.


There are a large number of registry keys related to Hibernate. Is it possible that one of them is preventing Fast Startup from working?

For example, I’m curious to know what HBFlagsSwitch refers to.

HBFlagsSwitch default is 1 and i don't know what it does.
The other seems to me also ok.

Do you have bit-locker enabled in windows?

Do you have fast boot enabled in bios?
To mount correctly after the fix it may need to disable it.

Update:
After extensive investigation and checking the events one by one in Event Viewer, I have now found a message in Event Viewer that, unfortunately, I had not noticed before.

It is clearly related to a disk check. However, I have already thoroughly checked all the drives using the CHKDSK command, and no problems were found or fixed.

Still, it is very helpful that this message has appeared, as it may give us a clue about the underlying issue. The main question now is how we can resolve this problem.

boombastik said:

HBFlagsSwitch default is 1 and i don't know what it does.
The other seems to me also ok.

Do you have bit-locker enabled in windows?

Do you have fast boot enabled in bios?
To mount correctly after the fix it may need to disable it.

Click to expand...

Yes, BitLocker is disabled.
Fast Boot is also enabled in the BIOS, but the EFI partition was checked properly and no errors were found.
The Event Viewer message also correctly indicates that a disk check has been requested. Is there any way to cancel this disk-check request? Or is there any software or in CMD command that can be used to view and change this flag for each drive?
As I said before I also checked whether the drives were marked as dirty using the fsutil command, but it wasn't related to that issue.

-https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/40957-cancel-scheduled-chkdsk-boot-windows-10-a.html

this maybe help?
You are near to solve this!

boombastik said:

-https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/40957-cancel-scheduled-chkdsk-boot-windows-10-a.html

this maybe help?
You are near to solve this!

Click to expand...

Thank You! Guys, the problem has finally been solved!!

I am extremely grateful to all of you, especially for posting that last post. Overall, this entire thread of posts eventually saved me. After more than a year, we finally found the cause of the problem, and Fast Startup is working again!

It’s honestly unbelievable. I’m so happy right now that I really don’t know what to do!

The root cause of the problem was ultimately related to a registry key that had made the boot status dependent on the SmartDefrag program. However, I had never actually installed this program. I had only used the portable version once, and apparently the program was run once in January 2025.

I attached a screenshot of the registry key in the post. I scanned all the drives, but that wasn’t the problem, which is why it had no effect. The issue was related to this defragmentation program.

If I remember correctly, and if I’m remembering the dates accurately, the Fast Startup problem started in November 2024. It is possible that, initially, the Windows drive being marked as dirty was what prevented Fast Startup from working. However, after I fixed that issue, Fast Startup was still being prevented from working because this defragmentation program was the next underlying cause.

In the end, the problem has been completely resolved, and I’m marking this thread as SOLVED.

I would like to sincerely thank everyone who guided me through this process or shared their own experiences. I truly appreciate all of your help!

Yes there if you have another entry from the default autocheck autochk * , the fastboot may not work.

I though that you have checked that

Anyway it seems that was 2 problems in one.
My solution fix the hybrid shutdown as it logged something in event viewer and then the reg of smartdefrag stopped from working for second time.

Now it is all fixed and we have our fast boot back.

Just one final point I would like to add: I am completely and 100% certain that the Event with ID 100 and the name Wininit was not being logged in the Event Viewer in the past, dating back to November 2024, when Fast Startup stopped working.

I found the first occurrence of this event in March 2026. As you can see in the attached screenshot, there is no trace of this event in the past, including during the times when the computer was being shut down.

It is quite possible that Microsoft added this event in one of the more recent updates so that users could understand why Fast Startup is not working. Unfortunately, because I had monitored Event Viewer many times in the past and had never seen anything relevant there, I eventually stopped checking it.

Finally, I hope this thread will be helpful to others who have experienced a similar problem and will enable them to resolve the issue as well.

Best Regards.