I have a Dell 300m that has been working flawlessly. I typically shut it down by hibernating, which takes about 30 sec to shut down. Suddenly, a few days ago, hibernation takes over 10 min to complete the save-to-disk activity. I can see the HD light blinking continuously during that time. Even though it takes this extraordinarily long time, coming out of hibernation still works normally and doesn’t take any longer than it used to. I have a full complement of firewall and virus SW and am running XP Pro SP2. No SW has been installed recently and nothing else appears to have changed about the computer. I tried doing a Windows Restore back to last week, and while the Restore process completed successfully, the hibernation still takes 10 min. Any clue as to what might be going on? I also tried disabling the hibernation function, rebooting, and re-enabling hibernation, also to no effect. Web searching indicates many people having problems with coming OUT of hibernation - I can’t find anyone else having a problem going INTO hibernation.
Can someone suggest the best forum to post this question (assuming the SDMB collective knowledge can’t solve)?
This is what I would do to my own computer, but that would be at my own risk - I am not an IT professional. I would recommend consulting one if you are unsure about anything
I’ve had what sounds the same problem recently. The cause in my case was that Windows had reduced the speed of the IDE channel to the hard drive. It does this automatically after it has logged a few errors to prevent them reoccuring. Mine had been reduced from UDMA-4 to UDMA-2 and the hibernation time had about doubled. I decided that the errors probably were not significant (they can happen every now and again without anything being seriously wrong) and reset the speed (see below).
In your case the errors seem more serious due to the big increase in time. I would recommend that you ensure that the IDE cable is securely in place or replace it before resetting the speed. The problem could be elsewhere though, such as the hard drive itself or the controller.
To check whether Windows has reduced the IDE channel speed, first of all start up your computer and watch the information the BIOS gives on start-up to find out what IDE channel your hard drive is connected to (primary or secondary) and whether it is master or slave. If you computer immediately shows some sort of full-screen logo instead, you may need to go into the BIOS setup to check instead.
Then, in Device Manager, under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section, view the properties for the appropriate channel and go to Advanced Settings. If the drive is a master you will probably want to be looking at Device 0. For a slave, Device 1. If your computer is less than about 4 years old and the transfer mode is less than Ultra DMA Mode 2, or if it is Multi-Word DMA or PIO, Windows has probably reduced the speed. If it is Ultra DMA Mode 2, this may not have occurred, but you may consider getting a new IDE cable anyway.
To reset the speed of the IDE channel, in device manager under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section, uninstall all controllers and IDE channels. Restart your computer fully (not hibernating) once you have removed them all. Note that they will not actually disappear from device manager at this stage - just right-click and uninstall them all in order.
When restart Windows will automatically reinstall these drivers (it’ll take a few minutes), and reset the IDE channel speed.
If this does not solve the problem it could be for one of two reasons:
1: The errors persist and Windows quickly reduces the channel speed again.
2: It is another problem altogether.
If you have replaced the IDE cable and the problem is not solved, I would consult a professional.
The other thing to check is the amount of RAM you are using when you go into hibernation. I have an HP Tablet PC that I hibernate when traveling from work to home. Usually, it took 20-30 seconds to go into hibernation. I found on a few occasions that it took 10 or more minutes. The common factor between those occasions, I found, was that I had a lot of programs open, and was using more RAM (both actual and swapdisk space) than I had allocated for hibernation.
So… does hibernation go faster if you close some programs first?
The hibernation file should have the same capacity as your computer’s physical memory. This is because, if you need more memory than the physical memory you have, Windows uses a swap file on your hard drive. As this is already on your hard drive, it does not need transferring to the hibernation file.
I believe that Windows compresses the memory contents to speed up hibernation and resuming. If so, having more programs running may slow down hibernation slightly, as the data in memory is more complex. But not by a factor of more than 20.
If hibernation takes 10 minutes from when the blue screen and progress bar first appears after normally taking 30 seconds, there is probably a hard drive-related problem. This is what I understood flex727 to be saying:
If most of that 10 minutes is before the blue screen, it could be any number of other problems.
I appreciate the help. Here are some answers and clarifications.
I checked both the BIOS and Windows Device Manager. Device Manager says I’m running in UDMA-5, BIOS doesn’t say one way or the other, but does have the HD correctly identified.
I have 640MB RAM (of course, that hasn’t changed).
Like I said, hibernation has always worked flawlessly on this laptop (as well as suspend, which remains as fast as it was previously). It’s just the last few days that it started taking over 10 min.
Yes, it’s 10 min after the progress bar appears. The HD is working continuously during that time.
No, it doesn’t matter if I have many, or no, programs running when I hibernate.
I agree that this sounds like a HD-related problem, but it seems I should see some other symptoms. Of course, I ran Windows Check Disk, and it found nothing.
Anyone want to recommend disk-checking software? I’m considering SpinRite from GRC, but it’s not cheap and I’m not sure it’s exactly what I need (though I’ll gladly pay it if it’s the right SW).