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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
December 20, 2009
Q.
Do I need to keep the hibernate feature
active in my desktop if I never use it? If
not, can I reclaim the uses hard drive
space?
A.
I covered this in an article back in
December 2006,
but since there have been two operating
system updates since then and some
procedures have changed, I'll do it again.
A note
here: If you have 4 or more GB of usable RAM
in your computer, there is no hibernation
feature available. This will only occur if
you are running a 64 bit version of Windows
since the 32 bit version will never be able
to use a full 4 GB of RAM even if that much
is installed. To learn why this is, click
HERE.
There are
several ways to disable hibernation, and
disabling it will automatically delete the "hiberfil.sys"
file. This file is by default, the same size
as the total usable RAM in your computer so
this recovered space could be as large as
3.5 GB.
Here are
several ways to disable hibernation. They
all may not work in all versions, but at
least one will work in all versions. Since
Windows 7 is the current version, these all
apply to it.
Enable
or Disable Hibernate Through Command Prompt
Using the Command Prompt might be the
easiest way to enable or disable
Hibernation. Click on Start and type CMD
into the search box and it will be listed
under programs. Right-click on the icon and
select Run as administrator. When the
command prompt opens, enter powercfg
/hibernate off and press Enter. To
turn it back on, follow the same procedure
but enter powercfg /hibernate on.
If you
try this option to turn hibernation mode on
but it still isn't available Then you’ll
probably have to disable Hybrid Sleep by
expanding Allow hybrid sleep
and turning it Off. Then you should have
Hibernate and Sleep as part of the power
options in the start menu and will also be
an option when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Manage
Hibernation Through Control Panel
Click on the Start Orb and open Control
Panel then click on Power Options. On the
left side click on Change when the
computer sleeps. Now click on
Change advanced power settings.
In the
Advanced Power Options window expand the
Sleep tree then expand Hibernate after
and change the minutes to zero to turn it
off. You can also change the way the
computer hibernates here if you so desire.
Click OK to close the dialogs.
Disable Hibernate By Modifying The Registry:
To completely disable hibernation, you
can modify the registry. This is not
recommended for tose that are not totally
comfortable with modifying the registry. To
do this, click on the Start Orb, select Run
and enter regedit. Now browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power
and change both HiberFileSizePercent and
HibernateEnabled value data to zero. After
you’ve made the changes close out of the
Registry Editor and restart the machine.
If you
always turn off your computer or never turn
it off, you can disable the Hibernate mode
to gain a bit of extra hard disk space. In
this time when hard drives sizes are so
large, this 3+ GB of restored space may seem
insignificant, but if you can reclaim it,
why not do it? |
