So what actually is Fast Startup? Well, when performing a shutdown, what actually happens is that Windows closes your apps but then hibernates the kernel, which is the core of your operating system, as well as your hardware drivers to your SSD. This means if a driver is glitchy or the kernel has a memory leak, that error is saved to your disk and reloaded the next time you turn the PC on. Ironically, the restart is technically more thorough because it bypasses fast startup to fully refresh the kernel from scratch. This happens so that when your PC next switches on, the state of the operating s
Restarting isn’t enough — you should always shut your PC down…Your GPU has driver updates, your OS has feature and security updates, and your motherboard has BIOS updates . Beyond that, it's easy to ignore things like SSD firmware, especially when everything…
…My custom draw pipeline ended up slower than I wanted, and when I dug in I traced most of the delay to the on_update() path in the IT8951 driver itself. An…
…It sometimes felt like kernel updates brought more harm than good, especially when they resulted in broken drivers that could only be repaired by recompiling them. NVIDIA is perhaps the worst culprit…
…AM6 may very well arrive when AM4 is still supported with long-term driver and security updates, but by that point, the performance delta will have reached a level where upgrading is…
…drivers can load into the kernel, is bypassed so the unsigned hypervisor driver can install. VBS and HVCI, Microsoft's hardware-backed security features that use Hyper-V to protect kernel memory…
…Driver updater tools deserve the same skepticism. The best approach to "update your drivers" is a targeted one; download the GPU driver from Nvidia or AMD, the chipset driver from your motherboard…
…I didn’t know driver support, firmware updates, or even BIOS settings could impact performance. Something as simple as not having the right NVMe driver installed prevents the SSD from performing at…
…flash memory that's already on the board doesn't, and that's really what it came down to. If you're chasing this bug, start with a BIOS update. If that…
…update if you switch to a processor with a newer architecture. Over the years, capacity has grown linearly alongside complexity. While earlier BIOS chips shipped with 8KB or 64KB of memory, modern…
…Well, what I failed to realize was that my virtual guests wouldn’t work unless I modified their configs and removed the old GPU drivers to accommodate my Team Blue (specifically the…