Is there a way to have Windows 11 actually shut down?

Hi EPeterik, hope you're doing well. I'm Ian, and I'm happy to help you today.

Windows 11 includes a feature called Fast Startup, which is similar to hibernation. When you select “Shut Down” from the Start menu, it doesn’t perform a clean restart. Instead, it saves the operating system state to a file called hiberfil.sys, allowing for faster boot times when you power up your PC again. To disable Fast Startup go to In Control Panel, select Power options, and then Choose what the power buttons do. Then uncheck the Turn on fast startup checkbox.

This is a user-to-user support forum, and I am a fellow user.

I hope this helps, but please let me know if you need anything else.

After further digging around on the internet found out the issue is caused by "Modern Standby". After running a sleep study ("powercfg /sleepstudy" from an admin prompt) found out that my laptop is actually going from a full battery to 0% in roughly 12hrs. This is a "feature" in Windows as an actual (full power down) shutdown appears to be no longer supported. The two solutions are to put the laptop in hibernate mode (via command line) or disabling the power button via the control panel power options and holding down the power button until bios shuts off the laptop (on bootup windows will complain of an improper shutdown, but dealing with that prompt takes less time than plugging in the laptop and waiting 15-20 minutes for it to get enough charge to turn back on).

To disable Fast Startup go to In Control Panel, select Power options, and then Choose what the power buttons do. Then uncheck the Turn on fast startup checkbox. this is the setting to shut off if you want the laptop to act on rea shut down like it used too in windows 10, it is called fast start , shut it off

For many users, this option will not be visible and is instead inside the BIOS and is called Fast startup. Disable Fast startup and after Windows will perform true exit and therefore also true full startup.