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:
- the computer fails to wake up from hibernation
- the computer fails to hibernate
- 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:
- if your computer wakes up at a consistent time, make sure there are no scheduled tasks (Start menu -> search for “task scheduler”)
- 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
- 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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This is why I’m still stick with XP. thanx for the info d-_-b
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
It worked!
Stumbled too!
Rocks
!
Thanks man!
Hi Nabin,
I’m glad it worked for you. Out of curiousity, which tip did you try?
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
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.
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!
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 :)
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.
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).
Great tips, Gav. I had forgotten about the Power Management angle. Thanks for the heads up on the differences between S1-S4.
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?
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.
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!
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.
Thanks a million. This issue have been bugging me and Vista help is no help at all.
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.
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.
I am going to write a short how-to about this hibernation problem with a link back to you!
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
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
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
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)
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.
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)
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.
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!
Wow Lee. No wonder you needed Microsoft support to help you out with that! It’s certainly not an intuitive solution.
Thanks for sharing.
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.
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!
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??
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
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?
this works 100%!!!
thanks man!!!!!
my hibernate button is back!!!
woohoo!!!
Thanks very much, this helped a lot. I deleted the hibernation file cleaner with disk cleanup. Now it works again!!
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…
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
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
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
my laptop has not show the hibernate option..
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….
powercfg -h on
solved my problem.
one of many vista nightmares solved.
should have bought a Mac.
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. :(
thanks a lot
100% work
Prashant,
Try looking for an option in the BIOS called PXE boot from/to LAN. That is the one you should be disabling.
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
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
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
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.
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
Thanks! It worked!
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!
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..
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!
My vista hibernated itself when i left the laptop alone. How not to enable hibernation?
@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.
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!
MY VISTA ULTIMATE CAN’T FIND THE HIBERNATE OFTION
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
@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.
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
great!!
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.
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….
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
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
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
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.
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.
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…
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.
Thanks a lot, if i`ll find a way to solve the problem then i`ll share with you.
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.
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
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
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…
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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 :-]
It did not fix my problem…Windows is crappy!
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.
It worked Thnaks
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
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
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.
Hey Michael Tsz Hin Chan,
To possibly fix your problem, try going to Power Options, then click “Change When the Computer Sleeps”, then click “Change Advanced Power Settings”, then scroll to where it says “Sleep”, then open it and go to “Allow Hybrid Sleep”, and turn that to OFF. Then I would double check if it’s actually off. It might still be on even though you already set it to off. (Happened to me)
Hello, I was able to turn back on the hibernation key, but now every time I press hibernation it just ends up locking the computer and that is it. I tried restarting it and also shuting down for a few hours but iy still did not work. I also tried what Dylan suggested to Tsz Hin Chan, but that also did not work.
Thank You For Your Time
my little sister put my computer into hybrid sleep because we were going on vacation for some time,now when i trie to turn it on it comes on asleep,and does not send a signal to my screen, all it says is no signal and stays sleep
Does anyone have a idea why a otherwise absolutely superb and stable running computer
(core 2 duo e8400,Asus Striker Extreme 1(nforce 680 I, bios is up to date), ATI 4870,4 GB corsair,creative X-FI Music) does have a bazillion issues with VISTAs sleep and hibernate functions?
OS : VISTA X64 Ultimate SP2
Ok i can put it to sleep or hibernate if i want. I can mostly also wake it up too.
Now the unpredictable results that follow.
A) The Cherry cymotion Keyboard (which has only standard keys and needs no special
driver) is not detected until about 1 minute after i reach the Logon screen
B) USB functionality may be completely offline after i resume and i have to not only
turn the pc off i also have to unplug the power cord completely to regain it under vista, while at the same time a XP Pro would have no problem at all (dual boot)
C) LAN adapter completely loses function after resume( deactivating/enabling it may help but sometimes you have to do a full reboot for it to operate normally. (All kinds of of driver revisions tried including default vista driver)
D) Rarely computer will not resume at all doesnt respond to keyboard and mouse at all,
but it did shut down normally. have to use power switch to boot cold.
E) And especially weird…the computer has decided now to wake up by itself although it
has NO wake on LAN active (not in bios,not in energy options not elsewhere)
Even weirder none of this behaviour is reproducable at will, its completely RANDOM.
The only one persistant is the detection lag of a the standard usb keyboard (cherry)
i use and very often i resume the computer without ANY of the other problems mentioned.
The computer is clean,no viruses, no spyware, no strange autostart applications, no exotic hardware, no exotic programs. Residents software is AVIRA antivir, Ati CCC,
and Daemon Tools Pro Advanced. I have no WLAN stuff, no other computers in LAN,
its a simple setup connected to a DSL -Router via cat5 network cable. I also have no
extra firewall software besides Windows Firewall.
My drivers are all checked and either up to date or the ones proven the most stable.
These problems are persistantly occuring over VARIOUS reinstallations of the complete
OS. They do NOT occur on the same machine in XP Pro SP3.
I have DEMONS IN MY VISTA !!!!! Im starting to get superstitous and paranoid.
What can it be !!!?
EASY Solution laready prooved – get out the battery for a while and put it again. Problem solved! No more hibernation of any kind!
Well, I just wanted to briefly share a Vista Ultimate issue I solved yesterday, which consisted of an unexpected suspend states issue caused after installing critical Windows updates, which came to be installed after a fresh install of the already-patched-with-Service-Pack-1 OS DVD. The system specs are ommited and you’ll realize why after reading the lines below.
So, I can tell that what really saved my day was a System restore point, manually created right after the system and just the missing hardware drivers were installed and everything worked just fine. After installing the critical updates (to which I created another System restore point manually before letting Service Pack 2 to be installed too), I didn’t -and either couldn’t- realize why and/or which one(s) of those updates caused the system to be suspended or hibernated seamlessly JUST ONCE, and thus resuming and trying to call any of these states again simply made the keyboard freeze and the screen to shut down.
Looking at the Events viewer I noticed a Kernel-Processor error stating that my hardware had a “known” firmware issue and that I had to contact the manufacturer, but I would have done that without doubt if the problem arised after the fresh install procedure, don’t you agree? So well, I’m not sure if it was a lucky shot or a well developed patch (SP1 in this case), but invoking the first System restore point made my day for a while.
I guess I’ll have to go the long way and install each critical updates one at a time, with its own restore point, as to get the one to blame, but I guess that would be a much longer story.
Best regards to all of you.
u’re the man!! Had the number 2 problem, exactly as you described it: reason and consequence; and your suggestion just worked, snap!!! Thanks man!
Thanks for the information at this site. I had a brand new Deell Vostro running Windows XP which was spontaneously coming out of hibernation. It might go into hibernation for a few seconds to several minutes before waking on its own accord. The info on this site helped track down the problem and the fix. Basically
“powercfg /help” gave me enough background to poke around.
“powercfg /devicequery wake_from_any” showed that both the ethernet and wireless controllers were set to wake up the machine, and
“powercfg /devicedisablewake ” disabled them from waking up the machine. This fixed the problem.
Hi I tried the powercfg -h on but it results to this message — You do not have the permission to enable or disable the hibernate feature… but when I tried the first instruction it showed this message — available features hibernate and sleep
Is there any other way to restore the hibernate feature??? thanks so much
On my Dell XPS, it says it only supports an S3 state, which I assumed was a normal hibernate, but it appears to be labeled as a “Hibernate Hybrid Sleep”. When it goes into hibernate, it looks like everything is powered down correctly, but then I realize the USB ports are active. Not a big deal, except I have a laptop cooler attached to it, so unless I unplug it, it continues to run. I’m kinda bummed I don’t have S4 support, which fully powers down the PC, since if I forget to unplug the fans, the battery dies quickly.
OOPS, please disregard the post above, or delete for inaccuracy; its late, I’m tired, and after the changes I made, I never rebooted the laptop lol. After a reboot your suggestions worked fine, and my hibernate works as it should. Thanks!
I had encountered hibernate problem with my laptop ever since I bought it till now.
My laptop (Window Vista Premium) always went on hibernation mode randomly, sometimes once or twice, a day and sometimes as many as 6-8 times consequently. Sometimes, it doesn’t hibernates at all throughout the whole day.
I has tried to adjust the hibernate option in Control panel from XXXX minutes to “Never”.
I had tried to sent to Compaq service center for repair, and ended up being strongly advised to re-format my laptop, but after doing all these steps, the problem still occurs.
My computer is a desktop HP that I just bought two months ago. My problem is, sometimes when I “wake” my computer up after it has been put into sleep mode, you can hear it start up, the monitor wakes up, but my mouse and keyboard will not funtion. I have to hold down the power button , the computer will appear to shut down, but when I press the button to restart the computer a message appears saying that windows did not shut down properly and one of the options that i have is to start windows normally. I click on that and everything loads and works fine again. This has happened several times and is quite annoying. Any solutions out there please? Thanks
Hi Shane,
I have compaq presario cq61 and when i bought hibernate and sleep function was actived.. and now its not active and does not work. I used the option powercfg -h on in command prompt, but it shows message as below:
“The request is not supported, the following items are preventing hibernation:
There are one or more legacy drivers installed trysftnt”
Please help me to resolve this issue.
Thanks,
Kapil
bcdedit.exe /create {resumeloadersettings} /d “Resume Loader Settings”
(sorry above wouldnt post several times)
Above fixed my wifes DELL Vostro 1400 Vista Business with just 2 gig memory
HTH
Craig
Gav (#14) just solved a problem that has plagued me for almost a year. I must have changed those power settings in a moment of crazy, and have been actively trying to figure out what was up. THANK YOU!
Bless you! I did the silly cleanup thing and lost hibernate on my laptop. You fixed it! Thank you!
I had a problem with my Dell Optiplex 755 system with Windows Vista. I discovered that it is the LAN waking my system by disabling the LAN (Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center -> View Status -> Disable). To prevent the LAN from waking your system follow these instructions:
Click Start and type “command” in the search box.
Right-click Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator” (give admin p/w if needed)
Type: powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
This will list the devices that can wake your system. To disable the LAN, type:
powercfg -devicedisablewake “Intel(R) 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection”
Just put in the quotes whatever LAN device is listed from your query.
Shane, you sound like a wickedly smart person, but the one thing that has my completely puzzled is that you said “On new hardware, I think Vista is a better piece of software”, now that its almost 2010. do you still really believe that vista is better on anything??? And how many vista machines and configurations do you work on? i work on hundreds unfortunately and vista has proven itself not to be better on hardware, software or anything for that matter.
Thank you!! This helped a lot :)
Shane
Great information and ‘could’ be what I need. Right now the desktop vostro w/vista ultimate is in the shop awaiting pick up. From the start it had hibernation problems that needed to be remedied by uplugging everything then starting from cold.
Zip forward to Atlanta floods – it drank a few pints which were promptly emptied. Dried him off and fired up – no problems. Took him for a quick tune up at the shop – they said the motherboard was fried, so 4 wks later it came back.
Still had hibernation problems but these have gone from simple reboot to plugging-in, uplugging several/multiple times before it will respond. The shop just ran diagnostics – came up with nothing, said it has died.
So…. could this still be a hibernation problem that has got so wound up that it is criplling the whole system? My thoughts until I read your thread was that I had a worm-type virus that has spread. My current idea is to get the baby back home and format all drives and reinstall the factory software.
Of course it could be cheaper to just bury this thing and buy a new one with os7 in the New Year.
Thanks for the site – great information
Kate
Thank you very much, it really helped me solving this issue, i use Acer 4730z and i deleted hibernation while cleaning my C drive and my laptop didn’t hibernate after that but now with this article its working again now. I really appreciate for the work you have done. Thanks.
my hp dv 5 1215ee when i’m using hibernate mode my battery was drain in 8hrs hibernate…what should i do?is there is a problem my laptop motherboard?thankz
@Josh,
Given that the original post was written in early 2008, I stand by the statement that at the time that Vista was a sound option when installed on new hardware. Even today, Vista has given me less problems than XP. I don’t claim to be an expert, I just speak from my own experience.
OTOH, I had the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 quite cheaply and jumped at the chance. Windows 7 has proven to be an improvement on my own machine at least. I am in the process of slowly switching to Macs as finances permit, so this will be less of an issue for me as time goes on.
My case is rather different
Althrought everything worked fine for about 6 months. Now computer fails to hibernate. It success for about 1/3 times and fails 2/3 times.
There are two different scenarios of failures which occurs randomly:
1. During hibernation screen goes of, HDD is working for few seconds and after that HDD stops working but PC is still powered on. After powering down by pressing power button for 3 sec. and powering on again Windows starts like a normal clean start, like it was just shutted down instead of hibernated.
2. This one is more strange. During hibernation screen goes off, HDD is working for few sec. and finally goes STANDBY instead of hibernate.
In summary: in 1/3 times goes hibernate, 1/3 hangs during hibernation, 1/3 goes standby instead of hibernation.
Things done to resolve problem:
1. Disable/enable hibernation using powercfg -h tool
2. Change hibernation file size to 100% of amount of RAM (powercfg -h size 100)
3. Run deep CHKDSK during system boot
4. Run deep antyvirus scan using Avast 4.8 (in boot mode)
5. Check system logs. All (maybe) usable information I found was – Application and Services Log -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Kernel-Power -> Thermal -> Working of processor 0 (or 1) was reduced by process different than kernel power manager (ID:91).
6. Check running processes to find any strange or suspicious. Didn’t find anything suspisious ;-)
Nothing specific has changed to my computer software/hardware
Hardware is: Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo V5545.
Any help?
I want to share something that just worked for me! I just had the problem where my dell laptop wouldn’t come back out of hibernation after I had saved a session. I would turn it on, and then it would eventually come to a bluish screen that said “hibernating…” with the little rotating ring thing next to it.
I tried to reboot in safe mode, but my f8 key wasn’t doing anything. Tried the f2 set up options but found no safe mode option. Frustrating!
Anyway, I powered off and then back on, but this time I pressed ctrl+alt+delete when I got to the black screen with the f2 & f12 options on the lower right. This made the screen black out for a few seconds, and then come back. Then I pressed ctrl+alt+delete again when I got to the vista “resuming your session…” screen. Again it blacked out for a few seconds, and then when it came back I was given the option to discard the restoration data or try to restore the session again. I chose to discard and then my pc started up fine.
I’m not sure exactly what I did by pressing ctrl+alt+delete when I did, nor do I know if this is harmful or hazardous. But it got me out of the perpetual hibernation nightmare. So if anyone could comment on why this works or whether it is harmful, please let me know!
I’m also curious why pressing f8 does absolutely nothing for me as far as getting to safe mode.
Thank you very much! – seems to work better now.
Hi there,
What if my laptop switch off totally instead of hibernating when closing down the lead?
It take ageis to boot system every singiel time from the beginning…
Any sotution for that?
Thanks
sorted out, it was’nt so bad:)
My Laptop is a Toshiba P300 and I am totally confused, as my hibernation works when I close the lid and when I press the power button, both of which I set up under the advanced power options. However under the “sleep” option there are 3 for me to choose from: sleep, hybrid, and hibernate. When the laptop is left idle for any period of time I cannot get it to hibernate and I’ve tried every combination of settings going :( Any ideas?
Regards.
i can’t believe not more people have put the powercfg solution on the internet! you are a godsend! it’s so simple yet i have no idea what it means, so i just needed someone to tell me. hibernate is now an option again :)
THANKYOU!!!!!
Hello
Please help!!
I have DELL VOSTRO 1520 Windows Vista and I turn it off correctly, however, on a couple of occasions when I switch it back on, the start-up mode states that the laptop wasnt closed down properly, and offers to start in safe mode…however I opted to start windows normally and now I have lost all documents and windows office?
Is anyone able to help… I am usless on computers so PLEASE use very simple language.
Thank you
i have a dell demension c521 with vista black ediotion ‘09 it works great but hibernation keeps acting up. when it eventually goes into hibernation and i want to go back on, the monitor turns on like it should coming out of hibernation but nothing comes up just a black screen. but when windows is restarted it works fine. can anyone help?
Same as you, I had deleted the Hibernation File Cleaner with the Disk Cleanup Utility, seeing as it took so much space and of course, if it was that important then they wouldn’t let me delete it, right?! Wrong!!
The powercfg utility worked for me too, when I typed in “powercfg -h on” – easy as can be!
Thanks for your help, really appreciate it!
Hello,
i have this problem when trying to resume my laptop (toshiba sattelite a215-S6804)
Screen says windows resume loader – Last attempt to resume the system from previous location failed. Attempt to resume again? but keyboard won’t type enter command. I’ve tried everthing I can think of for 8 hours.
Hey Shane I have a Windows Vista Home premium and some times, even if I click hibernate it still loses power! After a while it shuts down and after it says that it only has 1% battery and it says that it is sopposed to not waste any battery while it is in hibernate mode. Any solutions for the problem? If there are I will post your website on my website and reccomend it in Bold and underlined words. Thanks, Michael Xu
cannot hibernate my laptop having vista. i’ve tried powercfg -h . hibernate option is avalable but neither my laptop hibernates nor sleeps.
plzzzzzzzzzzzzz help,,
i tried option given but hibernate option not enable in the laptop having vista even the file hiberil.sys not showing in root directory, can anyone help for solution?