Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Postby Nightwatch on 06 Jul 2009 01:34

When I have noticed that I've lost the "hibernation" power mode option at the end of a system recovery that has now become rather (an unwelcome) routine for me (as I had lost it during my previous 64 bit experiments), I have decided to check the matter more thoroughly this time. Microsoft came to the help unexpectedly fast and provided the very simple answer which I hadn't considered before, pointing to my +4Gb RAM installation and confessing that they (Microsoft) themselves have actually, and literally, disabled the hibernation mode on PCs that have 4 Gb and more RAM!

They pointed me to a Microsoft article (Article ID: 888575) on the subject which confirmed this and offered further help:

Microsoft Article ID: 888575 wrote:
You cannot put a computer that is running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008 into hibernation. Additionally, the Hibernate tab in the Power Options Properties dialog box is unavailable.

Notes
    This issue occurs if your computer has more than 4 gigabytes (GB) of random access memory (RAM).
    This issue occurs in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.


This issue occurs because hibernation is disabled on computers that have more than 4 GB of RAM.

Hibernation requires sufficient disk space to contain the contents of the computer's memory. Performance is poor on a computer that has more than 4 GB of memory and that has support for hibernation. Therefore, Microsoft has disabled support for hibernation on such computers.



To re-enable the hibernation option while (if) you are determined to keep your RAM level on 4 Gb or above, this is what is being suggested to do:

Microsoft Article ID: 888575 wrote:
Note Sometimes, the Hibernation tab is unavailable even after you decrease the RAM to 4 GB or less. This issue occurs because PCI memory resources are mapped in the middle of 4 GB physical memory address spaces, and the rest of the RAM is mapped to more than 4 GB of physical memory address space. If the value of the highest physical memory address is larger than 4 GB, Windows determines that the computer has more than 4 GB of memory. Therefore, the Hibernation tab is disabled. In this scenario, you must add the /MAXMEM=4096switch to the Boot.ini file to reduce the highest physical memory to 4 GB.

For more information about the MAXMEM switch, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
108393 The /maxmem switch in the Windows Boot.ini file: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/108393/


To work around this issue on a computer that is running Windows Vista, enable hibernation. To do this, run the following command as an administrator:

powercfg /h on

To do this, follow these steps:

1-Log on as an administrator.
2-Click Start, type cmd in the Start Search text box, right-click cmd.exe, click Run as administrator, and then click Continue.
3-At the command prompt, type powercfg –h on, and then press ENTER.

To view the Power Options Properties dialog box, click Start, click Run, type powercfg.cpl, and then click OK.


This is the full article on this matter:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888575

Hope it helps to those who want to keep their +4 Gb RAM and also the hibernation mode intact.
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Re: Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Postby Grump642 on 06 Jul 2009 17:24

I can not see this, re-enabling hibernation, being a problem unless your HDD is full. If this is so, shame on you!
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Re: Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Postby Nightwatch on 07 Jul 2009 01:42

No matter is your HDD is full or empty, once you've hit / passed the 4 Gb RAM limit, hibernation is automatically disabled by pre-set Windows command, as Microsoft themselves confirms this on their article. :mozilla_smile: It's referenced above, but here the link again:

Article ID: 888575 - April 23, 2008 - Revision: 8.3
You cannot put a computer that has more than 4 GB of memory into hibernation in Windows XP, in Windows Server 2003, in Windows Vista, or in Windows Server 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888575

*****************************************************************

In the above post and on the referred article, the procedure to re-enabling the hibernation is described (however, Microsoft warns against that due to the low performance)
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Re: Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Postby Grump642 on 07 Jul 2009 01:52

What I meant , was that as long as your HDD is not close to full, you should not take a performance hit by re-enabling hibernation. Unless this is just some MS querk?
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Re: Re-enable Hibernation on PCs with more than 4 Gb RAM

Postby Nightwatch on 07 Jul 2009 14:55

Yup, sorry, I get what you mean now; you're right of course. Microsoft is as usual deciding how we should use our paid OS. They could just post a caution on the subject and let the users decide if they wanted to go ahead with using hibernation, instead of straightforward shutting this facility down!

I actually like the hibernation and prefer it to booting my PC every single time in which 100+ programs reside. (For example, Adobe suits, whether they are in start menu or not, slows the booting time at some extent). I of course reboot, but wouldn't like to reboot sometimes a few times in a day.

So, I re-enabled the hibernation, as shown above. (I have +4 Gb RAM) I don't see any performance drop at all, neither during the boot up nor during the usual usage following the boot-up. No idea how the Microsoft had come up with that ingenious :sarcasm: idea in the first place. Maybe they were too drunk, they saw the time passing very slowly in front of them and blamed the hibernation. :D
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