Question about Hibernation in XP

titaniumx3 · 5 Jan 2009 at 01:04

I have Windows XP 32bit and I'm wondering, is hibernation safe to use? Does it restore everything to the exact same state as before?

I know, it sounds silly, but the last time I used hibernation I got a BSOD and had to reboot. When going back into windows I also found some of my settings magically changed.

If something goes wrong with the transferral of data from the ram to hard disk; does it screw up your windows installation?

(BTW, my system is completely stable at the moment.)

Skeeter · 5 Jan 2009 at 01:09

If somehting went wrong then there is an issue with either the physical RAM or HDD, not hibernation. I used Hibernation on my uni laptop for months, never shut down, just closed the lid and let it hibernate. Had zero problems with it. If you have had issues id suggest checkign with a HDD tool and Memtest.

Richie P · 5 Jan 2009 at 01:13

I wouldn't recommend using hibernate for months on end but you should have no problems using it when you want. I still like to shut the pc down overnight so there's no memory overhead or crap left running in the system that doesn't need to be there.

Also, any BSOD are likely to be device driver related rather than hardware. Make sure everything's up to date and you should be fine.

lokkers · 5 Jan 2009 at 06:52

I use hibernate exclusively in XP and Vista, only rebooting to install updates. Vista certainly benefits from this as the prefetch cache remains in memory and doesn't have to be rebuilt. I used it on my work XP laptop because otherwise it takes 5 minutes to fully load!

oddjob62 · 5 Jan 2009 at 14:52

another person here who uses hibernate loads without issue.

dave-lew99 · 5 Jan 2009 at 15:05

If you're getting BSODs on hibernate resume then as said it's likely to be a device driver which isn't being shutdown/started up correctly as although hibernate basically dumps ram to disk, devices still have to be re-initialised when you turn it back on again and if the driver hasn't been written with hibernate in mind then it can cause issues.

Does it do it with specific external devices plugged in? A USB TV Tuner for example?

It's perfectly safe to use, the laptop in the boot of my car never gets rebooted - it just hibernates as soon as it goes to battery power and resumes when it gets mains again.