Hiberbation in W7
 

How do I access hibernation in Windows 7? I can use sleep mode and I can use it if I use an app called Smart sleep but then I have to wait a minimum of 5 minutes. I want to click on the arrow next to shutdown and have it as one of the options. Can the Pprune posse help?

Have a look at: How to disable and re-enable hibernation on a computer that is running Windows

Not sure if that earlier response works with Windows 7 - if it doesn't, try this: Hibernate - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Forums

My experience with hibernation on several versions of Bill Gates's beloved OS is that going into hibernation works well. Waking up from hibernation is, however, something else.

Yes, it's a bit like cryogenics in that respect! ;)

SD

Ooo-er. I must be doing something wrong, 'cos setting up hibernation has worked for me all the time, every time.... 2000; XP; Vista :ugh: and currently W7.

W7 = Control Panel -> Power Options -> "Choose what power buttons do" on LHS of the box, and make your choice from the drop-downs.

Yes, it's worked for me too...now and then. But I can't see much difference between hibernation and standby (I'm sure someone will flame me for this statement) and coming out of standby is almost instant. Whereas sometimes I have had to apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a lot of thumping of the chest to get my PC to start again after hibernation. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

TD: the next PC I build will be very steampunk with an opening brass porthole in the side so I can reach into the innards and twifddle it instead of having to take the side off.

OFSO,

Not flaming, but the difference is that in Standby, the content of RAM is maintained in RAM (requiring power), while in Hibernation it is written out to disk (the hiberfil.sys file) and the system powered down completely. Thus Standby on battery power is time limited, while hibernation is not.

That's the theory - in practice hibernation still draws some power, and standby has been improved to draw less and less power, to the point that the difference in power draw now is not that large. However, hibernation is "fail-safe" in that RAM has been saved to disk, so that if the battery runs out you have not lost anything.

SD

Allow Hybrid sleep
 

I've had trouble with Hibernation on all MS OS's. Bit like my tortoise when I was a kid - completely failed to come out of hibernation in the springtime.

Allowing hybrid sleep in Win7 seems to work fine for power saving. Hadn't realised about the RAM thing until advised by Saab below - but I think I can live with that.


Regards
Exeng

if the battery runs out

System is a main-powered PC fed by a UPS (because of reliability of Spanish electricity) which triggers a save when down to 10% power. But I take your point and would use hibernation if I trusted it !

Standby has problems, especially in Windoze 7. My GF has a brand new W7 PC (not one I built, for a change ;) ) and it was regularly crashing when Standby was used.

I can see why; the hardware state needs to be saved and restored and (as a hardware designer of many years) this is almost impossible to make 100% reliable especially on a legaly-compliant IBM PC compatible.

Hibernation is a lot more reliable because the hardware is actually powered off, and re-initialised when you restart. It also doesn't draw power.

Switching right off (Shutdown) is the best way however because everything gets cleaned-out, including memory leaks and all other garbage in the memory.

The only advantage of Hibernation is a slightly quicker startup, and possibly unusual situations like running the AFPEX flight plan filing app which fairly randomly forces a re-download of the 3GB Java app from NATS, which can be a right PITA if you are abroad on £10/MB 3G :) Hibernating the laptop, with the app running, usually avoids the app download.