Hibernation - How to Hibernate

What is Hibernating in Windows XP?

Hibernation is a power management feature introduced in Windows XP. Windows 98 does not have hibernate option. Using hibernation you turn off your PC without closing programs and shutting down the computer. When you shutdown / turn off your computer, all open programs and data will be closed and while restarting, a fresh session will be opened. In contrast while using hibernation in windows XP all open programs / applications will be saved to hard disk and computer is turned off. While turning on the computer the system will resume all previous applications. In other words, while hibernating the data in the memory (RAM) will be saved in Hard Drive as files.

To support hibernation your system should be ACPI Compliant, nowadays almost all computers are ACPI compliant. Hibernation is not standby in which the is running but display and hard drive is turned off.

To manually put your computer into hibernation:

Open Power Options in Control Panel. Click the Hibernate tab, and then select the Enable hibernate support check box. If the Hibernate tab is not available, your computer does not support this feature. Click OK to close the Power Options dialog box. Click Start, and then click Shut Down. In the What do you want the computer to do drop-down list, click Hibernate.

When you put your computer into hibernation, everything in computer memory is saved on your hard disk. When you turn the computer back on, all programs and documents that were open when you turned the computer off are restored on the desktop.
To put your computer into hibernation, you must have a computer whose components and BIOS support this option.

To hibernate, when you press the power button on your computer, in the Advanced tab of Power Options, slect hibernate in the combobox for, When i press the power button on my computer. Now if you press the power button on your computer, the system will hibernate. Alternatively you can go to start menu -> Turn off Computer. Turn off computer Dialog box will appear. Three buttons Stand by, Turn off, Restart will appear. Now press the Shift button on the keyboard. Stand by will change to Hibernate.


Note: Disk space required for Hibernation change from system to system.