Fixing Hibernate Problems in Windows Vista

by Shane Perris on Friday, 25 January, 2008

in how-to, tutorials

One of the most regularly reported problems with Windows Vista is that the hibernate function – one of the power-saving modes – does not work. I have been using Vista daily since February 2007 and although the experience has been generally positive, hibernation has failed to work a number of times. Through trial and error (and a lot of time spent trawling through blogs of both users and Windows developers) I have come across some solutions that seem to work for most people.

Hibernation problems on Vista fall roughly in to three categories:

  1. the computer fails to wake up from hibernation
  2. the computer fails to hibernate
  3. the computer keeps waking up from hibernation when it is supposed to be sleeping

Waking Vista from hibernation

Right from when I bought my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1501, a mere matter of weeks before they sexed up the Inspiron range with colours, new gadgets and upgraded specs that make my laptop blush with shame at being so weak and puny and unworthy of calling itself a “computer”), my computer would not so much hibernate as enter into a terminal coma from which there was no waking.

The number one reason that Vista fails to wake from hibernation is a problem with video drivers. In my case, the answer was simple. All I needed to do was to update the drivers for my Radeon Xpress 1150 onboard video chipset. A quick visit to the ATI drivers page to download the latest drivers and I was back in business. As easy as that.

Making Vista hibernate

Sometimes the hibernation option is not available, or your hardware key combination (on my Dell it is Fn -> F1) simply does not work. The first thing you need to check if your computer supports one of the hibernation options. To do this, go to the start menu and type Command in the search box. In the results, right click and select “Run as Administrator”. When the command prompt opens up, type powercfg -a which shows you all of the available types of hibernation that your hardware supports. In the video below you will notice that my laptop supports s(3) which is the “deep hibernation” that saves the state of the system to disk before shutting the hardware down.

If your hardware does support hibernation but it still stubbornly refuses to bunker down for the winter, either the hibernation option has been disabled or the Hibernation File Cleaner has been deleted by the Disk Cleanup Utility. Both these options are easily fixed using the powercfg utility again. To turn hibernation back on, type powercfg -h on. The short video below shows you how easy this really is (toggle full screen mode on the flash player for best results).

I can personally vouch for this method as well. Like many people, when I first ran the Disk Cleanup Utility, I saw the the Hibernation File Cleaner took up around 1GB of disk space and I thought “Surely it wouldn’t be an option if it wasn’t safe to delete it? Surely?” Like many people I learned the answer was “Hmm. Not so much” which isn’t exactly grammatically correct but does get its meaning across while inspiring a healthy dose of Friends nostalgia and yearning for Courtney Cox that I thought had long since worn off. Not so much, obviously. But I digress. In my case, the option to hibernate had disappeared from my shut down options and Fn -> F1 didn’t work either. powercfg -h on worked immediately.

Vista Keeps Waking Up From Hibernation

This one is a tricky one. In theory, hibernation physically shuts down your machine so issues such as scheduled tasks (eg system updates, virus scans and so on) shouldn’t be able to wake the machine back up. However, I have seen reports all over the internet of Vista machines waking up and doing strange things. I have never experienced this problem myself but the following suggestions have worked for various people at various times:

  1. if your computer wakes up at a consistent time, make sure there are no scheduled tasks (Start menu -> search for “task scheduler”)
  2. check your BIOS settings to make sure that “Wake on LAN” (also sometimes known as “Wake on Ring”) is disabled. Check your bootup screens to see what key combination you need to hit to access your BIOS
  3. check in Device Manager (Start menu -> search for “device manager” – your life will be much easier if you run this program as Administrator) and see if any of your devices have an option that allows it to wake the computer. I’ve seen reports that blame everything from a wireless mouse to an ethernet device that isn’t plugged in to the network for waking a computer from hibernation.

If any of the above suggestions help, or you have an even better suggestion to make about Vista hibernation modes, why not drop me a line in the comments?

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02.07.08 at 13:32
Power problem with Vista on my Compaq Presario - Page 2 - Computer Forums
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No more hibernation in Vista like in XP? - Page 2 | keyongtech
01.19.09 at 4:29

{ 98 comments… read them below or add one }

1 fr33mumia 02.07.08 at 23:07

This is why I’m still stick with XP. thanx for the info d-_-b

2 shane 02.09.08 at 12:52

Hope the info is of some use to you.

A number of these problems pre-date Vista, especially the ones that wake the computer up from hibernation. All of those solutions were ones for sleep issues in XP that were tested on Vista and worked.

In my own experience, I’ve had more system problems with XP on my desktop than I have had with Vista on my laptop. On new hardware, I think Vista is a better piece of software.

3 frank 02.12.08 at 18:29

Hi,
I have a Dell M1330 with Vista ultimate. My system supports S(3) hibernation and I used powercft -h on and then rebooted my laptop, but it still does not hibernate. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you

4 shane 02.12.08 at 22:39

Hi Frank,

Can you give any more details on your problem, like if any error messages come up, or is the hibernate option still missing from the shutdown menu (like in the beginning of the second video)? Or is it that you select hibernate and nothing happens?

As a final thought, does “standby” work? Standby puts the computer into a sleep type mode where it can still be woken up almost instantly.

With a few more details I might be able to help you track down a solution.

5 Frank 02.13.08 at 4:19

Hi Shane,

There are no error messages and I have the hibernate option on the shutdown menu. However, when I close the lid or choose the hibernate option, Vista locks the machine and takes me to the login page. I tried the sleep or standby option as well, but that does the same thing and takes me to the same place where I need to log back in again.
If there is anything else you would like to know please let me know.

Thank you for your help,

6 shane 02.13.08 at 10:44

Hi Frank,

I found this thread on Notebook Review where someone seemed to have the same problem. In the end it looked like it was a problem with some Intel drivers.

There are a couple of suggestions of things to check in that thread. In particular, have a look in your Event Viewer to see if any drivers or services are causing problems. You should be able to search for Event Viewer within the auto search on the start menu if you’re not sure where it is.

If that doesn’t help (or you have already seen that thread) let me know and I’ll keep looking. Badly written drivers or corrupted files are often the culprit when Windows systems don’t play nice.

Let me know how you get on.

7 nabin 02.14.08 at 5:21

It worked!
Stumbled too!
Rocks
!
Thanks man!

8 shane 02.14.08 at 8:22

Hi Nabin,

I’m glad it worked for you. Out of curiousity, which tip did you try?

9 Frank 02.14.08 at 18:54

Hi Shane

I tried the tips from the website you gave me and installed the new versions of matrix storage and turbo memory, but they didn’t work and my laptop still fails to hibernate. I’m going to call Dell Support during the weekend. If you have any other suggestions in the meantime please let me know.

Thank you for your help

10 shane 02.14.08 at 22:01

Frank,

There’s probably not much else I can do for you between now and then. It’s often difficult to troubleshoot without the computer in front of you. I’m sure it is something simple that can be fixed quite easily.

I want to point out that at least once a week I get vists from the dell.com domain referred from Google doing searches for variations on Vista and hibernation. I find it quite amusing actually. It would be nice if any of the tips work, they could leave a note in the comments :)

Good luck and please stop back again if they can’t fix it. I’m sure there is a way and I’d be glad to help out where I can.

11 Andrew 02.21.08 at 9:44

I tried the powercfg -h on command and so far so good…my m1330 so far has no problems getting in and out hibernation since. Thanks for your help!

12 shane 02.21.08 at 14:37

That’s great news, Andrew. I’m really glad it’s working out for you.

Thanks for letting me know that it worked for you. I love to read success stories :)

13 Gav 02.23.08 at 2:39

Have a couple more for you:

Advanced Power Management
=========================
Open Control Pannel, click “System And Maintenance”, click “Power Options”. Under your currently selected plan click the “Change plan settings”. You’ll now seel the “turn off display” and “put the computer to sleep” times. Underneath, click the “Change advanced settings”.

In the advanced settings you have “Sleep->Allow hybrid sleep”: This should be on (allows suspend to RAM & disk).

A common one for stopping Vista sleeping is the “Multimedia Settings”->”When sharing media”. Switch this to “Allow the computer to sleep”, if your PC is sharing any files this can cause the PC not to hibernate or sleep.

Mouse, Keyboard & Other USB Devices
===================================
You can tell Vista which devices are allowed to wake your PC. Some miss-behaving USB devices like Mice & Keyboards can be a problem. Open device manager and open the properties (double click or right click the device) of your mouse (or keyboard, or other USB device). If it has a “Power Management” tab, un-tick the “Allow this device to wake the computer”.

If you are having problems then it is worth turning all these off until you can sleep/hibernate and then turn them on individually to find out which one is causing it.

14 Gav 02.23.08 at 2:49

And this explains the difference between S1,S2,S3 and S4:

http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/05/11/129553.aspx

S3 – Suspend to RAM (keeps RAM alive, uses about 5W, instant wakeup).

S4 – Suspend to HDD (saves RAM to HDD and switches off, about 20 seconds boot up).

Hybrid – Does both S3+S4 (still using 5W). Wakes instantly as in S3, except if there has been a power failure or you switched off at the mains inbetween, then is wakes via S4 (HDD).

15 shane 02.23.08 at 19:47

Great tips, Gav. I had forgotten about the Power Management angle. Thanks for the heads up on the differences between S1-S4.

16 Davey 03.26.08 at 13:28

My problem is the direct opposite – my Dell 1720 laptop goes to sleep/hibernate while I am actively using the keypad and/or mouse.
Frustrating part is Dell tech couldn’t help me after their suggestion – downloading updated BIOS, video driver -8400M-GS.

The last thing I want to do is reload the software all over again. Also, I went to the power management advanced settings and have the sleep options to “never” sleep etc.

Any suggestions?

17 shane 03.28.08 at 22:01

Hi Davey,

I can’t test this myself as it’s not a problem I’ve run up against before. However, I do a scope around and one possibility is that the Dell, for whatever reason, isn’t playing nicely with S3 hibernation. I’m pretty sure you can change to S1 mode within the BIOS setup itself.

I can’t guarantee that this will fix it but it might be worth a try. This MS TechNet thread doesn’t exactly match your problem but it does shed light on the problems poor drivers can have with S3 – http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2933624&SiteID=17

Let me know how you get on. It’s a strange problem but I’m sure you’re not the only one who is looking for an answer for it.

18 Davey 03.30.08 at 8:09

Thanks Shane for your comment as I am a rookie and not an expert in computers. I went to the gpedit.msc>admin templates>power mgmt and disabled all sleep/hibernate settings.

So far it helped, but occassionally there’s a conflict somewhere as I get a black sreen(BSOD?) for less than 2 secs.

The good thing is I did not have to wait for the HD to shutdown and hit power button and re enter password again and fo several times.
Will look into the forum/s suggested. Thanks!

19 shane 03.30.08 at 13:12

Davey,

It really does sound like a driver issue that might take a few months to shake out. I remember when I got my Dell there was driver issue with the included CD burning software and Vista that wasn’t fixed for quite a few months. Lucky for me I prefer to use my full version of Nero and it didn’t bother me but it caused quite a hassle for others.

I’ll keep my eye out and if anything else pops up, I’ll add it here.

20 Danielle 04.25.08 at 6:09

Thanks a million. This issue have been bugging me and Vista help is no help at all.

21 Doug M 04.30.08 at 4:39

Thank you for the hibernate fix. I had done just like you had and cleaned out my hibernate folder and just like you said vista had disabled the entire function for some reason.

Very quick fix to get it back though. Really a life saver.

22 shane 04.30.08 at 8:33

Glad it worked out for you, Doug. It’s amazing how quick and easy some of these fixes can be once you know where to look for them.

23 nabin 06.22.08 at 9:34

I am going to write a short how-to about this hibernation problem with a link back to you!

24 Alexander Cheung 06.30.08 at 1:15

hey!
you were a GREAT help in restoring the hibernation button on my vista laptop!
thanks ever so much!
much appreciated amigo!
best regards
alex

25 Lawrence 07.30.08 at 23:09

So bought brand new computer. She (my computer) has 4 gigs RAM. Made the histake of putting her to SLEEP. She (my computer) will not wake up. Took out 2 GIGS of RAM (as suggested), Baby still sleep. Help!!! She (my computer) acts like she wants to start, then she just stops after a couple seconds of warming up to idea of waking up. Motherboard still working because external Passport harddrive is still lit up. How do I wake my girl (my computer) up? I can’t do all the other neat things suggested to correct hibernation problems if baby-girl will not wake up. HELP!!!

Lawrence

26 shane 07.31.08 at 22:06

Lawrence,

I need a little bit more information from you. Some of my questions might seem obvious but I’m just trying to rule things out.

Is your computer running XP or Vista?

Have you tried booting the computer up without the external hard drive attached?

What happens when you unplug the computer from the power source (or remove the battery if it is a laptop) and try to boot up again?

Have you tried booting the computer up with the Windows installation CD in the drive? To pop the CD tray open when there is no power, poke a straightened out paperclip in the little hole in the CD drawer and you should be able to manually open it.

If you’re tried all those things and still no luck, let me know and I’ll see if I can think of something else.

Shane

27 Lee Burdus 08.04.08 at 15:59

My hibernate worked fine until I removed BitLocker on vista, now if i set it to hibernate I get a screen saying “windows error recovery” when I try and boot back up.
Says the computer didnt shut down properly and gives me options to boot noramlly or safe mode etc.
Really annoying as I always used Hibernate instead of shutting down.
I have tried turning off hibernate and turning back on but it still wont work.
Can anyone help with this problem at all?
Lee :o)

28 shane 08.04.08 at 22:37

Hi Lee,

I don’t have any experience with BitLocker myself as I’ve only got Home Premium and not Ultimate.

Maybe there was an error when you removed BitLocker. Have you tried re-installing it to see what happens? If the problem goes away, maybe try removing the BitLocker service again.

29 Lee Burdus 08.07.08 at 5:13

I managed to resolve my issue thanks Shane, although it did involve contacting microsoft tech support to get it sorted.
So glad to have the hibernate feature back though :o)

If anyone else encounters this problem after removing BitLocker I will be happy to post the solution on here.

Lee :o)

30 shane 08.07.08 at 8:35

Lee,

I’d love for you to share the solution if it’s no hassle. I’m sure you’re not the only person who has experienced it and would love to know more.

31 Lee Burdus 08.07.08 at 21:08

No problem Shane here it is:

Restoring Hibernate after Removal of BitLocker

1. Click “Start”, type “cmd” (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box. Right-click CMD listed above and click “Run as administrator”.

2. Run the following command: bcdedit -enum all

3. Locate “Resume from Hibernate” in the output from the command above (example below):
Resume from Hibernate
———————
identifier {fdf2c6d2-40b4-11dd-a524-806e6f6e6963}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winresume.exe
description Windows Vista (TM) Enterprise (recovered)
inherit {resumeloadersettings}
filedevice partition=C:
filepath \hiberfil.sys
pae Yes
debugoptionenabled No

3. Once you have found it, copy the value for identifier (example below)

4. Run the following command: bcdedit /deletevalue {fdf2c6d2-40b4-11dd-a524-806e6f6e6963} inherit

5. Restart and Hibernation should be ok!

32 Shane Perris 08.07.08 at 22:31

Wow Lee. No wonder you needed Microsoft support to help you out with that! It’s certainly not an intuitive solution.

Thanks for sharing.

33 Lee Burdus 08.08.08 at 22:26

No problem Shane…always glad to help.

I do like vista but still has a few problems that need to be resolved with it. I guess XP was the same when it was first released though.

It was a lovely lady called Betty from Microsoft who gave me the solution and I owe her a big kiss for it haha!

I prefer to use hibernate on my desktop, it’s a handy feature, as opposed to shutting down all the time.
I like the fact you can unplug from the mains and still have your session stored.
I do restart occasionally, mostly after I have done a software installation, or a vista update.

34 Lee Cooper 08.15.08 at 3:36

Hi matey

Thanks SOOOO much! Tried the powercfg -h on command but forgot to run as an administrator duh! Once i sorted that i got it working fine!

Again — Thanks!

35 Laura 08.16.08 at 6:06

My laptop keeps trying to go into hibernate mode whenever I turn it on. It can’t actually hibernate, but it just stays on the screen telling me it’s trying to hibernate and won’t let me access windows. So I can’t change options on the control panel etc as I can’t get to it. I tried turning it off and on again, but itjust goes straight back to trying to hibernate the second the desktop has come up on the screen. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could sort it??

36 Shane Perris 08.16.08 at 9:11

Hi Laura,

Have you tried booting your laptop in safe mode? If not, that might be worth a go to see if you can at least get access to the settings without hibernate activating.

Let me know how that works out.

Shane

37 Srikanth 09.04.08 at 14:55

i own a compaq presario cq50-106au laptop running vista home basic. my problem is that when i snap my monitor panel shut, my laptop goes to hibernation, but when i open it up again, it shows the IRQ_NOT_LESS_EQUAL blue screen of death and restarts. any suggestions please?

38 Jack 09.16.08 at 22:10

this works 100%!!!
thanks man!!!!!
my hibernate button is back!!!
woohoo!!!

39 Ben Bishop 09.20.08 at 19:38

Thanks very much, this helped a lot. I deleted the hibernation file cleaner with disk cleanup. Now it works again!!

40 chris 10.06.08 at 17:41

thanks this advice worked perfectly. once i updated the driver i ran powercfg -a and then ran powercfg -h on . this re-enabled hibernation and i was away.

your a legend…

41 E 10.12.08 at 6:44

Hey, i have a dell vostro with vista and recently everytime i turn it on, a couple seconds after starting up it goes straight into hibernation mode before i can do or type anything, can you help me??
thanks

42 Howard 10.16.08 at 2:51

Hello,
My Computer goes right in and does not come out of hibernate. Using windows vista tried safe mode etc. Still just a black screen with moving arrow, does go into screen saver. Was able to do diegnostic check, found errors in ide disk:
code ofoo:0240-block 20474292, ofoo:0244-block
20474293, ofoo:1a44-block 20474292, ofoo:1a44- block 20474293. Do you know how this can be fixed? Sure can use some Help! Thanks, Howard

43 Roger 10.27.08 at 3:46

My problem is totally opposite!!!
I am in middle of something and my laptop goes into hibernation.Does anyone know how to solve that , its very annoying… I wake it up from hibernation sometimes and then it goes back in a minute or two again …Some days theres no trouble at all , but recently it seems to occur more often . When i bought it 2 months back it was working fine , no such problem . laptop is any HP Verve , Vista came with the laptop

44 Praful 10.27.08 at 20:27

my laptop has not show the hibernate option..

45 Praful 10.27.08 at 22:05

One week ago I have formatted my pc that time it is display hibernate option after 2 days it is not display that option i have very very use that option….

46 biff packaroba 11.05.08 at 19:28

powercfg -h on

solved my problem.
one of many vista nightmares solved.
should have bought a Mac.

47 Prashant Khanal 11.10.08 at 4:34

hi folks,

i am still stuck in the problem of “Vista Keeps Waking Up From Hibernation”. I din’t find where to disbale the wake on lan setting in the bios. :(

48 myanmar 11.18.08 at 11:22

thanks a lot
100% work

49 Krishna S 11.20.08 at 1:44

Prashant,

Try looking for an option in the BIOS called PXE boot from/to LAN. That is the one you should be disabling.

50 Michele Funk 11.24.08 at 6:44

I also have a problem with hibernation waking after a few minutes..I know that
it is my Lan connection causing it, if I unplug it, the sleep stays on..I went to bios, and the only 2 things listed under
power management were:after power failure and xd, so how do I disable wake up in Lan
if it isnt listed.

Thanks

51 Michele Funk 11.28.08 at 3:54

The following info may be of help to you, it worked for me. To prevent your internet modem from waking up your computer while
in hibernation..follow the following steps:
Click Start
Right click Computer
Select properties
Click Device manager from the left pane
Click on the(+) sign next to Network Adapters
Right click on the Network card and then select properties.
Click on Power Management tab.
Uncheck the following option to remove the
selection:
*allow this device to wake the computer
Click ok, close windows then restart the
computer.It works, after two weeks of trying to find the solution, HP techs helped me
out on this one..hooray for them

M

52 Arun Singh 11.29.08 at 0:39

i have dell inspiron 1525, past couple of months i am facing this prob, my system hibernates but when i start the laptop it doesnot start the hibernation rather it shows an error saying that ur sys was not shutdown properly shud windows start normally ?… can anyone help me out in this..

thanks in advance

53 Raul X. Garcia 12.01.08 at 13:12

I’ve worked as a computer sales and service specialist for over 7 years, and I can tell you from my experiences, depending on the motherboard, allowing your computer to hibernate can be a invitation to disaster.

Not all system bios and drivers are fully compatible with the OS.

Going into stand by and powering down your display and drives should be more than adequate in your efforts to conserve battery life.

Use at your own risk.

54 Omar Salar 12.02.08 at 3:35

Hey! Thanks for the great write up.. ive got all my hibernation options back again. But there is a small issue. I had set the power button on my laptop for hibernation but it doesnt work anymore. It goes into sleep mode and the only way to hibernate it is to click the shut down button in the start menu.

Appreciate all the help in advance.

Regards,
Omar

55 Peter 12.06.08 at 16:03

Thanks! It worked!

56 Xuan 12.09.08 at 18:25

I have the same problem that Frank had.

The thing about the computer locks instead of hibernating. I have tried the Intel things but it doesn’t really help.

I was just wondering if you had the solution to this problem.
Thanks!

57 Hugo Granados 12.10.08 at 17:55

HI….
well my problem satarted when I formated my computer and Installed vista home premium and everything was workin fine … but the hibernated button was not there the sleep button is still there…. I have a gateway GT5692 Desktop Computer… 4 gb ram triple core …. I tired powercfg -h on… but it does not work… can some one help..

58 Doug Turner 12.24.08 at 11:48

Shane,

Thank you so much! I regularly had problems with hibernate when I installed Vista Service Pack 1 or other random events, but the solution using powercfg worked great!

59 alan 12.27.08 at 16:03

My vista hibernated itself when i left the laptop alone. How not to enable hibernation?

60 Shane Perris 12.30.08 at 17:36

@Alan

To turn Hibernation off, follow the steps above to turn hibernation back on, except instead of typing “powercfg -h on”, type “powercfg -h off” instead. That should turn hibernation off for you.

61 Samuel 01.10.09 at 10:15

I tried the rips you said and it worked on my Dell vostro 1400 after seven months of hibernation failing and now is restored! Thanx a lot!

62 MARJUN 01.12.09 at 18:22

MY VISTA ULTIMATE CAN’T FIND THE HIBERNATE OFTION

63 Babe Brown 01.13.09 at 17:06

I have the same issue you detail at the beginning of this page. “Hibernate” has disappeared from my Start > Shut Down menu on my Dell Inspiron 1520 and my F1 key no longer works to put it to sleep. I ran Command Prompt as Administrator and entered the powercfg -h on command, restarted, and nothing has changed. Is there something else I can do? It worked fine for the last year, right up until about a month ago.

Thanks, Barbara

64 Babe Brown 01.13.09 at 17:30

OK…I found out why the powercfg -h on command wasn’t working.
Hybrid Sleep was enabled in my Power Settings. I’ve no idea how that happened, as I did not initiate that change in my settings.
In any case, maybe this will help somebody.
Control Panel > Power Options > Change Plan Settings (of whatever plan you currently have selected) > Change Advanced Power Settings > expand “Sleep” in the tree and then disable “Allow Hybrid Sleep”.
Then follow the directions detailed on this page for entering the command “powercfg -h on”
Now your “Hibernate” option should work again.

Thanks again, Barbara

65 Babe Brown 01.14.09 at 2:56

Me, yet again!
Although this brought the “Hibernate” option back to my Start > Shutdown menu, my F1 key that I used so frequently before will still not work. : – (
I guess I’m going to have to call Dell techs.

66 Eliseo Ocampos 01.15.09 at 0:14

Shane, thanks for making my life easier ;)
I turned off some devices that could wake up my pc so it doesn’t reboot after hibernation anymore.

67 Rebecca 01.20.09 at 6:43

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525, and whenever I try to put my computer into hibernate mode, it basically restarts. It does do as hibernate is supposed to, and saves all the files and programs that I had open, but it just will not stay in hibernation – it doesn’t even ever turn off all the way, it just gets almost to the point of completely shutting off, then boots itself back up again. The only times this doesn’t happen is when I have no programs running, but then, what’s the point of using hibernate and not shut down?

68 chuck seyler 02.01.09 at 1:09

After reading your article on vista hibernation, I found my laptop supported S3 ( I had implemented the hibernation patch some time ago), but the powercfg -h was not supported. Has MS removed this. Note, it used to hibernate, but I probaly screwed it up with disk clean-up.

Thanks… Chuck

69 Shane Perris 02.01.09 at 13:25

@Chuck: what do you mean when you say powercfg -h isn’t supported? Did you right-click “Run as administrator” for the command line or just open it up as normal user?

As far as I am aware, powercfg is a basic tool of Vista and not something likely to be removed or disabled by a system update.

70 Nils 02.03.09 at 1:16

I have the same problem as Xuan and Frank. When I select hibernate from the shut down menu, the screen turns dark and then a message appears: Locking computer. After that the login-screen pops up.
Unfortunatly Frank mentioned he will contact the DELL support, but did not post any solution or results of this.
Can anyone help?

I habe tried to switch hibernate on and off a number of times in various ways as described here, in order to reinitialise hibernat, but that didn’t help.
Hibernate used to work quite well in the beginning and I have no idea what went wrong.

I am thankful for any help.
Nils

71 sean burke 02.08.09 at 18:05

great!!

72 Richard 02.22.09 at 8:14

Thankyou . It worked. In the device manager there was a allow device to wake up. Even after this it did not work. But in the advanded Tab of the same network device, there was a property called “Wake up and Lan” This was set to Link and Magic packed. Changed it to None and it started to work . No longer my system was waking up from hibernate. Thanks a lot again.

73 Tavvaris 02.23.09 at 3:08

Hey Guys,

I got a big problem with my Vista on my HP laptop.. For some reason it goes into hibernation by itself, i will be in the middle of something and boom my screen is blank and laptop begins to save my session to hard disk for hibernation.

Can someone Plz help me it’s driving me Nuts….

74 Tim 02.24.09 at 6:36

For Shane Perris
Regarding your solution to the problem of Windows Vista not waking up from Hibernate;
I have an HP Pavilion(laptop) dv215nr, WinVista is 32 bit, how do I know which driver(s) to choose at the link you gave?
Regards

75 Shane Perris 02.24.09 at 15:16

Tim,

I’m going to assume you mean the DV2125NR because I could find no record of a 215NR HP laptop.

The link to the ATI drivers won’t help you much. According to the HP website, your laptop uses the competing NVIDIA software (the GeforceGO 6150 apparently). I couldn’t find any downloads for this hardware on the NVIDIA site.

When all else fails, check the website of you manufacturer, which in your case is HP. Hopefully the following link will be of some use to you – http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3245594

76 Lil 02.27.09 at 12:21

I have a Hp Pavillion desktop((Vista). A few days ago i shut down ( i thought i did)the comp but when i woke i found that the hard drive light was on so i moved the mouse for video but the monitor would go off almost immediately and read Monitor in Sleep Mode. there was no way of turning off the computer except to push down power button for 10 secs. I turned it back on and the same thing still and there is no power going to the keyboard. Since then, I have tried unplugging it, taking out all cables and putting them back in but nothing seeems to work. The light is on, there is fan & driver noise etc. coming from hard-drive. Will it help if i insert the Hp reboot cd?Please help

77 Vovan 02.28.09 at 19:43

Hi. I have a problem with my Vista hibernate option on Acer Aspire 5920.
Sometimes, when i`m trying to put computer to hibernate mode (no matter from power button or from Start menu) it`s just switches off the screen, but not actually hibernates (when screen switched off i can hear system sounds just like TheBat cannot connect to the Internet to get new letters and other sounds – this shows that all programs are still working). All that i can do after is to shutdown by pressing power button for 5 sec…if i don`t there will be a BSOD after 5 min nearly. But nothing special i can see in crash dump log – just that rasl2tp.sys can be probably the cause – i don`t think that it is really the matter, because it takes nearly 5 min the BSOD to be shown. No errors i can find in event log.
I have the latest drivers from acer and latest updates of Vista.
Problem disturbs me for a month or so. No new programs seemed to be installed just before i started encountering such a trouble.
I really need help, cause i have to use hibernate every day.

78 Shane Perris 03.01.09 at 20:24

Vovan,

Have you run a complete virus and malware scan on your system? Some trojans have been known to replace rasl2tp.sys with their own files.

I’m not saying that is the problem but that is all I can think of. Hibernation seems to be a fickle thing at the best of times. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you have to hibernate every day? I try not to hibernate too often myself as I personally think there are benefits in getting you computer to shutdown regularly. The shutdown process closes everything down and clears out some buffers etc which I find to be good for system health.

79 Vovan 03.02.09 at 19:14

Shane Perris, thanks for answer
yes, i`ve already checked my system for viruses using two different antiviruses – system is clear. I agree that shutdown process closes everything down and clears out some buffers, but benefits of hibernate option is not to clear anything at all, cause i have to run too many different kind of programs and it takes too long to open all i need after shutting down my Vista…

80 Shane Perris 03.02.09 at 20:03

Vovan,

The only other thing I can think of is that a system file somewhere has become corrupted. Have you tried repairing Windows using the Vista installation disc? Another option might be to turn hibernate off and on again a few times to delete the system hibernation file. Maybe rewriting the hibernation file will clear something out.

I’ll admit that I’m reaching around for answers here. I’m not a hibernation expert I’m afraid.

81 Vovan 03.03.09 at 0:30

Thanks a lot, if i`ll find a way to solve the problem then i`ll share with you.

82 Adam 03.03.09 at 12:28

Thanks for the help. My hibernate all of sudden stopped working due to the disk cleanup deleting the function. This is a massive oversight from Microsoft and its a wonder they havent released a patch to fix this. Once again thanks alot for the excellent help – all is fine now.

83 Bill Bennett 03.03.09 at 16:04

My daughters Dell computer with windows vista is locked with computer trying to go into the hibernate mode. The start menu is not available, turning computer off and bringing it back up it is still trying to go into hibernate mode. Control Alternate Delete does not nothing. It still remains trying to hibernate. No start menu available.
Bill

84 darcy 03.04.09 at 16:42

I am having problems with my windows vista jsut hybernating or falling a sleep when I have everything turn off. I could be doing stuff and then next thing you know it just goez into hybernate. So can someone tell me what is worng with my laptop? Thanxz

85 Vovan 03.07.09 at 19:40

Shane Perris,
i found out one more interesting thing with my problem. When system won`t hibernate, but the screen switches off, computer is actually showing Logon screen (i understood that after rapidly pressing Tab and Enter buttons many times – i heard voice of “Ease of access center”). So computer is just showing Logon screen (but the screen is switched off).
Do you have any suggestions on that? Next time i`ll try to choose Shutdown or Restart using combinations of Tab and Enter buttons…

86 Paga 03.20.09 at 23:30

I have a pretty new Gateway that has gone into hibernation and would not wake up. The blue light in front of the system unit blinks on and off but there is no output to the screen. I have unpluged the mouse, the keyboard etc but still no output to the monitor. I am running on Vista Home premium. All the software was preinstalled. I do not have the installation disks. I need help.

87 RS 03.22.09 at 0:33

Hi i have this lenovo laptop with windows vista home premium….I dont know how, but for last few days i m not getting the hibernation option from the start menu neither fn+f1 is putting it in hibernation mode. It jsts sleeps. I run powercfg -h on from command prompt. I am getting this error warning:

Hibernation failed with the following error: A required privilege is not held by the client.
The following items are preventing hibernation on this system.
The system could not create the hibernation files. The specific error code is 0xc000007f.

Can anyone please help.
Thanks in advance!

88 Jason Sanchez 04.07.09 at 0:36

Hello! I would like to know if anyone else has had this problem…

I put my computer into hibernate mode last friday. I came home from the gym and booted right back up. Only this time…..i noticed everything began to run very slow. within 10 minutes, it totally stopped responding. A total lockdown. Then only thing I could do was move the mouse…but nothing would respond.

I restarted naturally and sure enough…it locks up within 5 minutes! IT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE TIME NOW! I cannot, for the life of me, figure out this problem. I have tried everything. I have viewed everything in event viewer ..and tried every single solution.

What happens basically is …services begin to shut down. I open explorer and says “explorer has stopped working”. Sometimes it says the WMI Indexing service has stopped responding…etc etc.

All I have done is come from hibernation and now..my laptop will not work. I have not had one hiccup with this since I bought it last year.

I own a Gateway p-7811fx. I updated my graphics drivers after reading all over the internet…but it still does not fix the problem. If ANYONE has any idea what causes this, please let me know!

I have all the stock specs of the p-7811fx. I am also running Vista Home Premium x64.

Thanks and I pray that someone will give insight to this.

89 Jason Sanchez 04.07.09 at 0:38

My e-mail is Kempatsu@verizon.net

@Paga

Hey, e-mail me at Kempatsu@verizon.net….I think I have the disk your looking for.

Also..if anyone else can respond…please do.

90 Jees Augustine 04.08.09 at 15:19

Hai thanks in helping me. I was stuck without the hibernate option after a disc clean up.Now its back after trying the powercfg -h on command. please let me know the happenings in the vista world.
Thanks again.

91 saurav 04.14.09 at 2:00

i bought my HP-pavillion dv2762-tx around 9 months back…………it was running fine. recently it has started to hibernate suddenly without prior notification…ne suggestions??..plzzz help

saurav

92 Aivjiol 04.29.09 at 17:12

This is exactly what i was looking for. thank you sooo much you have no idea.. the videos are a great help. better than just screen shots :-]

93 norwenasale 04.30.09 at 15:33

It did not fix my problem…Windows is crappy!

94 phil 05.15.09 at 9:33

you were spot on for me – windows vista, power options, when sharing multimedia allow sleep was off so i switched to on and now my notebook is sleeping properly, way-hey, thanks a million.

95 Annonymous 05.19.09 at 15:44

It worked Thnaks

96 Ling-cheng 06.08.09 at 7:51

I have a hp 6735s with Vista home premium sp1 32. And when i try to hibernate the screen goes blank and the hard drive light flashes (indicating disk activity) then it stops and the fans go off but there is still power going to my usb’s and the power light remains on, then the fans start again and the screen stays blank and the hard drive light stays off.. Then i have to hold in the power button for 5 seconds to turn it off then when i turn it back on again sometimes it says system restore did not comple them gives me 2 options. Continue with system restore. Or delete retoration data and proceed with boot. Then it sometimes just restores normaly and it sometimes just boots normaly, the hibernate only works properly about 1 every ten times.

My e-mail is ben.kewley@gmail.com

97 Michael Tsz Hin Chan 06.26.09 at 19:31

Hi, I have vista Business. My computer used to hibernate until recently. The problem is that when i press hibernate, the screen goes black and then after a while it SHOULD turn off. BUT it doesnt and just goes windows has locked and just goes to he “log on” screen like when u turn on ur computer. It just logs off when i press hibernate.
Any suggesttions”??

THankyou

98 ashley 06.30.09 at 13:43

omg this ish worked really well. && u made it seem so easy, i have a feeling if sum1 would hav explained it to me it wouldve seemed like rocket science. thank you so much.

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