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Why can't my machine hibernate? And how's that different than Stand-by?

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Summary: Hibernate and standby are ways to save power when you're not using your computer. Each has pros and cons. Hibernation, at least, must be enabled.

I have a 2 year old Dell Latitude on which the hard drive crashed a few weeks ago. I received a new hard drive from Dell and installed Windows XP. Everything works fine, except I have no hibernate function. Is there a step I missed in the XP setup? Standby/Shut Down/Restart etc. all work fine, but Hibernate is not an option.

It's not a step so much as an option that probably just needs to be turned on.

We'll do that, and while we're at it we'll explain the difference between standby and hibernate.

First the setting.

In Control Panel, open Power Options:

Power Options Properties

Click on the Hibernate tab:

Power Options Properties - Hibernate Tab

I'm guessing that Enable Hibernation isn't checked on your machine. Check it, click OK and you should be set. It might require a reboot before taking effect.

"Hibernation writes a complete image of your computer's RAM memory to the hard drive ..."

So what is hibernation anyway? And how does it differ from standby?

Over-simplifying just a bit:

Hibernation writes a complete image of your computer's RAM memory to the hard drive, and then completely powers down your machine. When you reboot after hibernating, the boot loader then simply reloads the memory image into RAM, reinitializes some hardware, and you're good to go.

The key is simply that the entire state of what your machine is doing at any point in time is almost completely contained in your system's RAM. So the theory is that simply saving and restoring your RAM (along with a few other details, perhaps) should be enough to completely save and restore what you were doing across a complete shutdown of your computer.

If you look closely at the second dialog image above, you'll see that it says "Disk space required to hibernate: 2,048 meg." That's the amount of RAM installed in this machine, and thus that's how much space is required to save the RAM on disk. That image, by the way, is written to the hidden file "hiberfil.sys" in the root of your boot drive which is always present to reserve that space if you have hibernation turned on. One way that people free up that disk space is to turn off hibernation.

Standby does not write your RAM memory image to disk. Standby instead turns all your hardware off except your RAM. Thus resuming from standby is often faster than resuming from hibernation, as the memory image does not have to be loaded from disk - it's still in memory.

The downside to standby, of course, is that your machine is not completely off. Some power is still required to maintain RAM. I've also seen some devices, particularly network cards, wake up periodically while on standby.

If the machine's battery drops too low while it's on standby, Windows will either put the machine in hibernate, if that's enabled, or attempt to cleanly shut down so as not to lose any work in progress.

Both standby and hibernate have been problematic at times in the past. Sometimes devices won't come back up properly after one or the other, or sometimes the machine won't resume at all. Standby in particular requires not only Windows support, but cooperation between the computer's BIOS and the various device drivers that may be impacted by a loss or partial loss of power.

The good news it that for the most part, standby and hibernate tend to work relatively well on current computers.

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Article C3203 - November 5, 2007

Recent Comments
27 Comments

I read a lot of your articles, and it was great. But this tips is not working on my laptop IBM R32
I don't know why..

http://windows-tipstricks.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Danish at June 6, 2008 9:22 AM

Same problem as Tricia. Once in BIOS, what do I (we) need to do to re-enable hibernation. I need my Dell Latitude D620 to be able to hibernate upon closing the laptop. Thanks!

Posted by: Brian at June 22, 2008 2:51 AM

my backspace disappeared so how can I get it back?

Posted by: Ladonna Clark at July 8, 2008 7:59 AM

cant hiranate or stand by enabled is checked for hibranate . Also get no sound

Posted by: james cave at July 29, 2008 3:41 AM

My computer Hibernates but instead of switching off it just resets and then boots. Is this because I am running a 32 bit version of Windows on my 64 bit machine?
Ubuntu Linux hibernates fine though.

Posted by: Jodie Robinson at September 7, 2008 5:37 AM

I used window XP and I have no tab to turn on Hibernate and standby. When I go to 'Turn off computer' I have an option to 'Stand-by' & 'Hibernate', but it is grey-ed out so I can't click it. Why is this? Is there something else I can download/update to repair this?
Thanks!

Posted by: adelly at September 24, 2008 7:39 AM

I used window XP and I have no tab to turn on Hibernate and standby. When I go to 'Turn off computer' I have an option to 'Stand-by' & 'Hibernate', but it is grey-ed out so I can't click it. Why is this? Is there something else I can download/update to repair this?

Posted by: nirav at October 14, 2008 8:02 PM

i have vista. power option does not have hibernate tab,or properties opp.

Posted by: carl at December 21, 2008 6:19 AM

My computer is doing this too: I used window XP and I have no tab to turn on Hibernate and standby. When I go to 'Turn off computer' I have an option to 'Stand-by' & 'Hibernate', but it is grey-ed out so I can't click it. Why is this? Is there something else I can download/update to repair this?

Posted by: nirav at October 14, 2008 8:02 PM

And i don't have the hibernation tab anymore either it is gone...???

Posted by: Laura at January 1, 2009 1:32 PM

No one realy answered the question. The thing is on some machines in the power option you don't get the Hibernation option at all. Why?

Posted by: Jerry at July 13, 2009 9:47 PM

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