Fixing Hibernate Problems in Windows Vista

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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171 Responses to Fixing Hibernate Problems in Windows Vista

  1. Krishna S says:

    Prashant,

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

  2. Michele Funk says:

    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

  3. Michele Funk says:

    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

  4. Arun Singh says:

    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

  5. 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.

  6. Omar Salar says:

    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

  7. Peter says:

    Thanks! It worked!

  8. Xuan says:

    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!

  9. Hugo Granados says:

    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..

  10. Doug Turner says:

    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!

  11. alan says:

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

  12. Shane Perris says:

    @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.

  13. Samuel says:

    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!

  14. MARJUN says:

    MY VISTA ULTIMATE CAN’T FIND THE HIBERNATE OFTION

  15. Babe Brown says:

    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

  16. Babe Brown says:

    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

  17. Babe Brown says:

    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.

  18. 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.

  19. Pingback: No more hibernation in Vista like in XP? - Page 2 | keyongtech

  20. Rebecca says:

    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?

  21. chuck seyler says:

    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

  22. Shane Perris says:

    @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.

  23. Nils says:

    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

  24. sean burke says:

    great!!

  25. Richard says:

    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.

  26. Tavvaris says:

    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….

  27. Tim says:

    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

  28. Shane Perris says:

    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

  29. Lil says:

    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

  30. Vovan says:

    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.

  31. Shane Perris says:

    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.

  32. Vovan says:

    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…

  33. Shane Perris says:

    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.

  34. Vovan says:

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

  35. Adam says:

    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.

  36. Bill Bennett says:

    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

  37. darcy says:

    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

  38. Vovan says:

    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…

  39. Paga says:

    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.

  40. RS says:

    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!

  41. Jason Sanchez says:

    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.

  42. Jason Sanchez says:

    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.

  43. Jees Augustine says:

    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.

  44. saurav says:

    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

  45. Aivjiol says:

    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 :-]

  46. norwenasale says:

    It did not fix my problem…Windows is crappy!

  47. phil says:

    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.

  48. Annonymous says:

    It worked Thnaks

  49. Ling-cheng says:

    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

  50. Michael Tsz Hin Chan says:

    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

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