If I shut down my windows 8 PC using the charms menu and restart 5 minutes later it restarts in under 10 seconds. If I let it sit shut down for a few hours or overnight it takes over 3 minutes to restart. It's a desktop and its plugged in all the time.

How the hell can the length of time it is shut down effect the performance of the restart???

To find out precisely why, in your computer's case, take a look here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158252-trace-why-windows-8-boots-shutsdown-or-hibernates-slowly/

tried that. Left PC in hibernation for 2 hours after starting the hibernation process with the command noted. PC never came back to life after that. I let it run for two hours. Needed to reset to factory preset conditions. Problem still exists. Restart from hibernation or shutdown shortly after hibernating/shutdown= quick start up. If I wait a longer period of time it takes longer to restart.

"5 minutes later it restarts in under 10 seconds" (?) It's ab...d. No way isn't possible. Or what the number - 10 seconds - actually means?
Or what mean, if You said, starts up faster than 10 seconds?

Are you sure you're not using some sort of hybrid sleep? That would explain it: when you send it to sleep, it first goes to sleep, but after a while it wakes up, dumps the RAM to the HDD and enters hibernation.

Frankly, I got tired of shutting down my laptop through charms button. It's much better to create a shutdown command shortcut and leave it in some corner of the desktop.

Or, you could right click on the start charm/press win+x and choose "shutdown" there. Especially now that the recent (optional) rollup update has solved the issue where shutting down via win+x would not trigger fast startup.

Or, even better, why not use the power button?

Edited February 26, 201412 yr by Soukyuu

Or, you could right click on the start charm/press win+x and choose "shutdown" there. Especially now that the recent (optional) rollup update has solved the issue where shutting down via win+x would not trigger fast startup.

I think that restart option is only in Windows 8.1.

Really? I didn't use win8.0 much before 8.1, but realistically speaking, why would you stick with win8 when the update to 8.1 is free?

I use both because I have to for support reasons. Not everyone will install the update.

@Tripedacus

I'm not sure what you mean exactly but Windows 8 have the "Restart" option among with all the others (Sleep, Hibernate, Fast Startup - you can add or remove them in the Energy Options)

As for the choice between Windows 8 and 8.1 I want to say that Windows 8.1 are simpler and take less hard disk space but they rather lack features in comparison to Windows 8. I also find outrageous that Microsoft tries to force you logging in with a Microsoft account (even if I have one anyway) and stay connected to their cloud - which you can refuse and change your account to a local one afterwards but the whole thing is too "aggressive" for me. For the moment I stay with Windows 8 for some reasons, I have the Windows 8.1 on a DVD I made from the store download as I state in another topic but I don't like the "Download Windows 8.1 now" attitude at the Microsoft site. Yes, it is a free upgrade but it isn't obligatory, is it?