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?
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?
ok my sisters problem is this, she has an hp entertainment pc special ed with vista not sure which vista though, she was watching a dvd last night and opened the dvd without stopping the disc and it immediately turned the screen off now when she turns off the comp with the power button and then turns it back on it boots up the screen comes on and a box with welcome to vista appears,the screen stays on for a few seconds and the goes black,the blue lights on the comp are on and we can hear the fan running,now when i put the comp in safe mode it will stay on so I just cant figure what is going on with her comp,im not to comp savvy but i do know a little please help me can i do anything to help this in safe mode? help my sis so she wont have to spend a small fortune.
Angela: Sounds like some of the system files have become corrupted. You should be able to do a system repair. Press F8 during the boot process and select the repair installation option.
Alternatively, if your sister’s HP came with Vista on DVD, try turning the computer on with the Windows DVD in the drive, let it boot from the disc and select the repair option that way.
Just make sure you “repair” and not “restore”. Restore to factory settings will generally wipe all data and return the computer to the same state it was in when brought home from the shop.
I had the same problem and I solve it (window vista)
To enable the hibernation feature and the hybrid sleep feature, follow these steps:
1. Click Start>>All Programs>> Accessories.
2. Right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or click Continue.
3. Type powercfg -h on, and then press ENTER.
it work for me
Source : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928897
I had the third problem with my HP PC (Windows Vista Home Premium). The machine kept waking up from sleep/hibernation. I followed your third suggestion and solved my problem. Thanks.
To help others with the same problem, I show here what I did in detail:
Start menu -> search for “device manager”. Double-click on “Network adapters” and then double-click on “NVIDIA nForce 10/100 Mbps Ethernet” (You may have a different network adapter) to open the “NVIDIA nForce 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Properties” dialog box. Under the “Power Management”, de-select “Allow this device to wake the computer”. That’s all!
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I have a Compaq Presario CQ40 and I’m using windows vista Home basic. During the first few months, I had no problem with hibernation. But just last month every time I try to wake my laptop from hibernation, it won’t. Turns out that my battery is already drained, although I let it charge the night before. I tried some battery tests and it says that my battery is still in good shape.
Just the other night, before I left the house, i hibernated my laptop. I saw the screen turn of and all. I came back after about an hour and my laptop was now turned on, but was requiring my password. After I read this website, I concluded that my computer does wake up from sleep by itself.
I tried the first and second remedy you have provided, but it didn’t resolve the problem. As for the second one, I don’t know how to do it and I’m afraid that I would cause further damage to my computer….
Do you have any idea on how I can resolve my problem??? I hope to here from you soon a and that you have a solution to my problem….
Best regards,
LJ
Vista Keeps Waking Up From Hibernation
First solution did work for me for the third issue posted above.
If your computer wakes up at a consistent time, make sure there are no scheduled tasks (Start menu -> search for “task scheduler”)
That time I found 12 scheduled tasks.
I disabled everything which includes:
1. Two Real player tasks …
2. One task for SKYPE
3. Five Google Tasks
4. Some of system automatic schedule tasks
basically everything that I saw on task scheduler…
Then hibernated computer… whala…
I was planning already to do system restore 16 days before, but because of you guys, no need for me to do that.
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks…………………………
Best Regards,
lastluke18
Very good thread. Thanks!
I have the same problem, I was using Hibernate for a while but all of sudden it stopped working and even though the Hibernate option is shown its not working. If I use that option its simply shutdowns and when I start the system, its says improper shutdown. I have tried all the above options, but in vain, any ideas?
I tried to read most of these, but mine is a bit different. it’s an Acer, Vista worked for about 1 1/2 years correctly and then it started hibernating, but not wake up without having to reboot to get it working again. I have gone in as administrator and run the
powercfg -h on which works maybe 6-8 times, no matter what I do or how long I wait, it won’t come out of hibernate after that. So, about every 3-4 days I’m having to go in and put back the setting. Any ideas?