Beware of Windows Vista Hibernation
May 25, 2007 by Milo Riano
Filed under Microsoft, Tips & Warnings, Windows Vista
More information on Windows Vista.
If I were you, I would think twice putting my computer in hibernation mode when you have a lot of important things going on.
Reports are circulating that Windows Vista hangs-up when bringing it from hibernate mode — something I have not experienced until this morning.
To my disappointment, when I opened my computer from hibernation mode the operating system suddenly popped up a message — “logging off” then afterwards it said it was updating windows configuration. Ok fine, maybe it was just making tweaks to make my experience better.
Unfortunately, something terrible happened — the computer shut down as I lost three opened virtualized environments with a lot of applications running, two important documents I am editing and a lot of internet pages I have not yet bookmarked.
I was so sleepy last night that I clicked on the hibernate menu thinking it was fine. Anyways, be careful when using Windows Vista hibernate option.
More information on Windows Vista.
I have had Vista Home Premium installed for 2 months now and have looked everywhere for a fix for this hibernation bug. I was hoping your article would shed some light on solving the problem. Guess we’ll have to wait for SR1?
I have just bought and installed Windows Vista Ultimate edition on my brand-new home theather PC and am incredibly frustrated by the hibernation/sleep issue. My machine hangs almost every time I wake the machine. I can’t believe I paid $200 for this software and it doesn’t even work properly! I wish I could return the software for a refund! Its outrageous!
My PC’s stops sound ourt put!!! sometimes after hibernating. i’m using Realteks vista compliant driver but…its still showing tht symptom.but wen i logoff/sleep/hibernate again it will be alright
I bought a new computer last week, with Vista home premium. I have been hibernating it over night for the last three nights, Every night at 3 am, within 6 seconds each time according to the event recorder, it wakes up. The salesman says it is working normal and I should not be using hibernation. I am sceptical of his knowledge, have I a problem or not?
If it wakes up every night at 3 AM then (as far as I can tell) one of two things is going on:
1. Your computer is Evil (see the excorcism of Emily Rose) or
2. Windows Update is by default scheduled to do automatic updates every morning at 3. It could be waking up to do the updates.
I’ve never used hibernate / sleep / etc…
…Since their introduction these options have been considered to be problematic at best and disastrous at their worst. I agree and have not seen any evidence of improvement. I am currently half of a leading computer repair technical team whose primary customer base is the general public and it is not all uncommon to find yourself working on a computer to determine why it stopped working and won’t boot up anymore and has all the symptoms of a dead or dying motherboard. They are systems that fail to properly “come out of their state or mode”. This is not always the cause of serious damage. Often the diagnostic procedure is misdirected resulting in lost time, lost data, and un-necessary hardware replacements.
My first computer still works after ten years (in always running state) and in that time it has been powered down for 6 months. (Original battery is still good).
For me, even the slightest chance of a problem isn’t worth risking for a few extra pennies of electricity bill savings.
I think it might have to due with a BUG dealing with USB and power management. Go into
device manager and uncheck the box under
power management for your mouse if it is a USB
mouse. Remember to do the same for you keyboard if it is USB. you will be able to wake it up using the power button.
Click Start the Start button, type device in the Start Search box, and then click Device Manager in the Programs list.
2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
3. In Device Manager, expand Mice and other pointing devices.
4. Right-click the USB mouse, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Power Management tab.
6. Click to clear the Allow this device to wake the computer check box, and then click OK.
LINK: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930091
Found it at the link above for the mouse, then I realized I needed to do it for the keyboard also.
Michael
Hello ive had that boot up problem one time it will work without my mouse of lan connection and one minute it makes a stupid sound ive not been able to get on my machine and now have to wait for my machine to get repaired for free am sick and tierd of microsoft cutting corners ive had issues with theres xbox360 and now with there vista ultimate sorry but i would rather have windows 98 than ultimate so yeh
i ve been using hibernate on my new vaio laptop for the past two weeks. it seems to be f9 but every time i start the computer after hiberation a 9 gig of space seems to be used up. and now only 40 gig is left. if i do it 4 more times i would be outta space? wtf is the problem? Vista Suxx
About the sound problem after hibernation on vista with realtek drivers. I’ve just been researching it when I got here. I just booted up my vista after hibernation and the sound was out. Then I shutdown my Skype program, which was running before and after hibernation and voala - sound is back. F*** software - I am not sure is it Skype fault, cause their using hack ways to the sound and mic or is it vista/realtek issue. Anywhay, that might be(or not) the reason.
Oh, Nick, about your 9 gig lost problem - that might be system restore issue. Try shutting it of and then on (or simply levae it off like me). That should free the space it has taken. Normally hibernate should take only as much space as your hardware memory and free it afterwards. Anathour issue that comes to my mind is virtual memory. Try checking it out. There are tips in internet how to set this up. Hope this helps.
lol Vasil Vasilev… i even 4got dat i posted dat comment… neways i only use vista on my lappy now but thanx 4 da advice i will check it out. the space kinda started to become less used up after i partitioned the HDD. but i will see wot happens l8r… another problem dat has plagued me since i started using vista is dat my lappyz wifi doesnt work properly… :(. i have 2 use an external one…
Vista is crap and the hibernation feature is even worse. I used it twice and both times it crashed my computer.
does anybody know if there is a way to disable the hibernation mode on vista home prem.?
GO to control panel,Admin Tools,Performance Info and Tools,Advanced tools. You can adjust most settings from here.
Hope this helps,Cheers
Try installing SP1 for Vista,along with all driver updates including motherboard.SP1 addresses Quite a few issues…
Does anyone know how I can awaken from either Sleep or Hiberbation mode from the keyboard with Home Premium? It’s kind of a pain to reach under my desk and open the tower door to acess the power button. I think there is a way to assign a key for this but I couldn’t find it I tried Michael’s advise but it didn’t seem to translate to Vista Premium. Thanks
My laptop has been running on vista home premium since dec. I put it in hybernation frequently because boot up takes forever. I just reboot after updates. This morning I took it out of hybernation(black screen) and it did it’s “resuming windows” and my normal desk top popped up for a couple of seconds. Then it went to a blue patterned screen that says “hybernating” with the swirling circle. The keyboard won’t do anything except to put it in the black screen hybernating mode. I even tried to reboot. it just goes back to the blue swirling screen again. I have never seen that screen before and how do I get out of it?
My brother has this same problem. How do we get it back to normal?
I have Vista SP1 on a new machine, all the latest patches, all the latest updates for my vista laptop, and the hibernate “feature” causes problems.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it hangs when going into hibernation. Sometimes when I wake it from hibernation, it GOES BACK into hibernation.
Yeah, it may partially be the fault of hardware drivers. MAYBE. But MS should have made the OS more fault tolerant, and if there is a hardware problem, at least provide better ways to track it down and find a solution. Fancy graphics is a poor substitute for bad error handling.
Umm, Microsoft? Have you heard of quality?
I have recently updated my motherboard bios(firmware), and all of my drivers. When I brought my comp.out of sleep mode(space bar) it used to immediately do a mini crash dump and usually go to blue screen and suggest that there is a problem with the driver for my video card.The only problem with this was: My driver was up to date.
As soon as I updated the bios for my motherboard- Asus P5N32E SLI my system has been 100% more stable, at least the mini dumps and crashes have stopped. If you have an Asus motherboard you can upate at Asus update.com.
Hope this will be of some use to someone.
Hi Dawn, I am having the same problem as you and I cannot get out of hibernation mode. I have the word ” hibernating” on a blue and green swirling screen with a blue circle going round and round….did you have any luck getting your computer back to normal?????
Exact same problem as Dawn above. Did she ever get an answer? Can’t use the laptop at all.
I have a laptop (Sony viao CR-290) with Vista pre.
The problem is when I put my laptop in hibernate mode sometimes it wake up without any reason ( not also for updating schedule) and it was going de-charge inside my bag.
How I can solve this problem.
I have a Dell M1530 with Vist Home Premium and I am having the same problem Dawn is having can anyone help??
i purchased the acer aspire 4720
and hibernation is as perfect as with xp
in win vista
try runing the disk cleanup feature and select everything including files related to hibernation
then reeboot ur comupter
and u will se tht hobernation option is lost
so then in the start menu right click the command promt and run it as administrator the write the following and press enter in the command prompt
powercfg /hibernate on
hope the solution of the problem
Have SPI installed and still have the same problems as described by others,hibernation/sleep errors computer will not reboot crashes .command prompt powercfg did not work for me tried it last week.
Hi!
I have the worst example about hibernations in Vista Ultimate 32.
My PC never weak up after last hibernate mode, after reset (from button on case) BIOS don’t recognise SATA Drive! Any body can help! Please!
Nick the problem you are having with vista eating up your disk space is the system restore feature, Vista will use up to 30% of your disk for restore points, I have disabled my system restore and went from 100 gig free to 119 gig free, and that was in a mere 2-3 weeks of installing vista