How To Shut Down Your Windows 8 Device

With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft made its most aggressive push into revamping the way Windows does things. Chief among these things is the way the Windows 8 completely reimagines the user interface for Windows. Gone is the Start Menu of yore, and with it, the only way many users are familiar with turning off their PC.

Before you dive into turning off your Windows 8 device, there’s a few things to understand. First, because of the changes that have been made to Microsoft’s flagship operating system since Windows 7, completely shutting down your PC could be unnecessary. Though a complete shutdown remains an option, Hibernation achieves many of the effects that a user might want such as very little power consumption. What’s more Hibernation does this while allowing users to open their laptop or press their desktop’s power button and have Windows 8 spring back to life immediately from where they left off.

In short, that gives you the immediate responsiveness of pressing the power button on an iPad or a smartphone. Yes, the device is still consuming a small amount of energy, but it’s nowhere near what it consumes in a powered on state, and quickly allows you to jump back in on the action.

Still, if you want to completely shut down your Windows 8 device, here’s how.

Whether you prefer to press the hardware Windows button on your device, or hit the Windows Key on your keyboard, head to the Start Screen.

If you have a touchscreen swipe from the right edge of the screen or place your mouse cursor into the right top hand corner. Once you see the Charms Bar, hit settings at the bottom to pull up the Windows 8 setup menu.

A fly-out menu should now appear on the right side of your screen with buttons at the bottom that says ‘Internet’, ‘Volume’, ‘Brightness’, ‘Notifications’, ‘Keyboard’ and finally ‘Power”. Tap or click on the Power button.

A small fly-out menu will present you with options for putting your Windows 8 device to sleep, Shut down, and restart.

Now just simply hit shutdown. The Windows device should immediately begin closing any applications you have available and prompt you to save any documents that you already have open. Just in case, it would still probably be a good idea to save anything you are working on.