Every week I try to have a social media "theme" and this week it's Tips and Tricks.
Last week we helped a client who couldn’t get Act to open after Windows did an update without him asking. Nothing appeared to be wrong. I asked him if he had rebooted and he said yes, multiple times.
Then, I did my normal “call in the guru” (that being my husband) and he said have him do a RESTART and not a reboot. I’ve been working with PC’s forever and I “thought” reboot and restart were the same thing. Shame on me for believing that.
What I learned made me think it would be a good blog article because I believe other people had the same idea as I.
Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft came up with something called Fast Start/Boot. Basically, people were complaining about how long it would take Windows to start up after being shut down – especially those who saw that Mac’s came up so quickly. Their response was the Fast Start. If this is enabled on your computer (which it is by default) then Windows basically does a hibernation. The machine only saves a snap shot of the operating system but not applications (or in this case, Act).
A restart, however, reloads the operating system intact, sort of a like a clean refresh.
When we told the machine to restart, Act opened up just fine. Confusing. Indeed. Grateful customer, indeed. New lesson learned, you bet.
If you are curious and want to see where this option is set, go to Power Options in the control panel. Click on Power Options. Then click on Choose what the power buttons do. 
When you click on the Change settings that are currently available, it will make the checkboxes active where you can change them. You will probably notice the Fast Start is checked.
After doing some research on my own, I didn’t see the boot time taking any longer – and if anything I saw some of my apps load faster by unchecking Fast Start.
Strange things once again in Microsoft land. And once again, it’s so true you learn something new every day.