Ways to shutdown, hibernate, Restart and put your computer to sleep Windows 10/11

Table of Contents

Ways to shutdown, hibernate, Restart, and put your computer to sleep

They’re several ways to shutdown, hibernate and put your laptop to sleep, in this article I will walk you through three ways to perform these three task.

This article is for absolute beginner to intermediate, so if you find some parts not relevant, you can skip to the next step.

MEANING OF TERMS

Shutdown: to shutdown simply means to turn off your computer.

Hibernate: in computer terms, it means to put your computer in a dormant state, we can also say hibernate is a utility designed to maintain both desktop and setting when the computer is in its dormant state, though hibernate has different meanings depending on the case study. For instance, in Java programming hibernate could be seen as a framework.

Restart: as the name implies it’s an automatic way of turning off and on the computer, in most cases, we restart when the computer is lagging or malfunctioning.

Sleep: you all know what sleep does to the body as a whole, same is applicable to the computer, it puts the computer to rest, sleep often occurs automatically if the computer has been dormant without being used for some minutes, depending on the power settings.

First of all, I will begin with the popular ways to shutdown or perform other power functions on your computer or laptop.

FIRST KNOWN METHOD.

Steps:

Shutdown your Computer.

When I say computer I’m referring to both desktop and laptop computers, let’s follow the steps below to perform generally used power functions on our computer.

Click on the Start button or press the Windows button on the keyboard, and the Start menu will pop up
Click on power and choose between the power options available, in most cases on Windows 10, you will only find shutdown, restart and sleep without the hibernate option being available.

The hibernate in this case is hidden and you can make it visible as well.

After the second option above, click shutdown if you want to shutdown your computer, sleep if you want to put your computer to sleep, and hibernate if you want to hibernate your computer.

Note: this step is a known method to the general public, the way this article is designed is to begin with the most frequently used to a non-frequently used.

SECOND METHOD.

Steps:

This method is a straightforward method to shutdown your computer I could vividly recall 10 to 15 years back while I was learning as a beginner in one computer institution that time when I learned this method I felt like I guru, a computer wizard, anytime I remember those days I will just smile to young self.

You might be wondering what method is this…

It is the almighty alt + F4. Once you press and hold alt and press the F4 key, a pop-up dialog box with power options displays. With shutdown as its primary option.

To access other power options click on the arrow button at the right edge of the shutdown text to see other options like hibernate, restart, and sleep.

Once selected press enter on the keyboard to initiate the command selected.

THIRD METHOD

Steps:

This method is not commonly used, only a few persons make use of this, let’s get started with it.

On your keyboard, hold the windows button and press X, I.e. Windows 🪟 + X, and a pop-up menu displays.
Press the U key on your keyboard to bring up the power options. To shutdown press S.

Though at stage 2 you can as well make use of your mouse, I’m only showing a means to perform these actions without your mouse.

Here is the key combination to access power options after step one.

To Shutdown: Press U and then press S. I.e. U and press the S key again your computer will shutdown

To Restart: Press U then R. i.e. U and press R to restart your computer.

To Hibernate: Press U then H. i.e. U and press H to hibernate.

Therefore if you want to shutdown your system like a pro you can quickly hold the Windows button on your keyboard and press X, then press the H key on your keyboard twice to shutdown your computer with ease.

FORTH METHOD:

Steps:

In this method, I will make use of the command prompt, CMD. I use this method any time my laptop is having difficulty shutting down and I don’t want to short-circuit the computer by pressing and holding the power button.

How to shutdown, restart and hibernate your computer with the command prompt.

Hold the windows button and press R, for the Run dialogue box to pop up.
Type CMD in the text area and press enter, wait for it to launch the command prompt.
Once the command prompt has been launched successfully, type shutdown/S or H or R

Let me state a brief explanation of the alphabet S, H, and R.

S represents Shutdown, H represents Hibernate and R represents Restart.

You might be wondering why the shutdown and the / before the alphabet

Let me give a brief explanation if you could remember vividly, the three methods above before now we access other power options with the primary option displayed as shutdown, to access other options we clicked on the arrow or pressed a key to further access other power options.

Therefore the shutdown denotes power options then the / gives room for other options to be inputted like the S, H, and R earlier explained.

Note: these four methods listed are some of the ways one can use in shutting down his/her computer and it has been tested to be working perfectly, out of the various ways I’ve seen.

Should in case you can’t find the hibernate features on Windows 10/11 follow this simple guide to turn it on.

Steps:

Press the Windows key on your keyboard and the X key, then O to open the power and sleep window, as shown in the image below.

Then click additional power settings at the top right of the window, then wait for the power options dialog to display as shown in the image below.

Click on choose what the power button does, a dialog box will display.

Below the shutdown settings, you will see options like shutdown, Hibernate, sleep, lock, etc. deactivated, this means you can’t edit nor alter it at its current state.

To activate the option on the shutdown settings, above the power button and lid settings, click on change settings that are currently unavailable.

Go back to the shutdown settings and all the options will be activated at this point

After clicking the hibernate check box to activate it, click on save changes.

Now you have the hibernate button activated as one of the power options visible while shutting down your computer.

Caution: pressing and holding the power button to shutdown it’s not the right way to shutdown your computer because it’s affecting the computer in some other ways which will be discussed in a later article.

If you have any contributions, or questions you can drop them in the comment section, please don’t forget to share.

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