A comprehensive understanding of the hazard of a one-second fast shutdown

There is a quick shutdown method that is circulated on the Internet: call up the task manager, hold down the Ctrl key, and click to shut down, so that it can be turned off in three seconds, and the speed is very fast. In addition, there are some fast shutdown software, such as SuperFast Shutdown, which can also be used to quickly shut down.

We all know that a series of operations are required when the system is shut down, including: closing windows, ending processes and services, saving data, and so on. And does the quick shutdown like the above save some steps, and will this harm the system?

The shutdown command first informs the Windows subsystem CSRSS.EXE, CSRSS.EXE, and after receiving the notification, it will do a data exchange with Winlogon.EXE, and then Winlogon.EXE will notify CSRSS.EXE to start the process of shutting down the system.

Secondly, CSRSS.EXE queries the user processes that have the top-level window in turn, letting these user processes exit.

Then start to terminate the system process.

The above three steps are the most time-consuming part of the entire Windows shutdown process. Most of the reasons for slow shutdown are caused by these three steps.

Finally, Winlogon.EXE calls the NtShutdownSystem() function to command the system to perform the following sweeping work, and finally shuts down.

It seems that the Windows shutdown process is quite complicated. Using the Ctrl key to shut down or using some fast shutdown software does not go through the full four-step process, but often skips the first three steps and directly calls the NtShutdownSystem() function to shut down.

A lot of software writes data to memory at runtime and saves it to a file when it exits. If you do not go through the previous steps, it will lead to the program not exiting normally and losing data. This may cause some unexpected errors due to important data loss, which is harmful to the system.

Therefore, it is recommended that you try not to use the Ctrl key to shut down or some fast shutdown software. After all, the security of the data is much more important than the saving time.