Well, that. Two friends of mine using Windows XP and the hibernation mode to power-off the computer had problems with the power source. May it have any relation to that practice?
Im not sure if this is a relevant answer to this question, but its really ironic this was asked 2 days after I managed to lose a LOT of stuff on my computer precisely because of the use of that mode.
Personally, I’ll never use it again, but im sure many can attest to the mode being perfectly safe to use.
In short, I had tried to use hibernation mode on windows XP professional the other day, and when i rebooted, I had gotten an error message saying it was missing files needed to load the operating system. Two days later, and two reinstalls of the Operating system later, I wish i had not tried out that setting.
I guess the saying curiousity killed the cat, is 100% true in my instance.
Hope this helps!
I’ve never had any problems using Sleep for my iMac, and all the Powerbook/iBook users I know put their laptops to sleep all the time. Maybe it’s an XP issue?
This might not be related to your problem, but I’ve built several HTPCs [Home Theater Personal Computers - basically a shelf-full of Multimedia gear (NTSC and ATSC (HDTV) tuner and recorder, DVD, digital radio and more) in a PC case hidden in my home theater] and it has been my experience, as well as the consensus of the AVS Forum (IMHO, the one-stop source for technical answers on HTPCs and hone A/V in general) that not all motherboards handle hibernation gracefully–or more than nominally.
To cite one example, Athlon motherboards seemed to be quite prominently inferior to Pentium motherboards for hibernation. I don’t know why, but the difference was prominent enough to move me out of the Athlon market sometime beteen the 1700+XP and the 2100. My computers spend only a year or so as a powerhouse desktop, then migrate to my project stockpile for many years -far longer than they were used as a pure desktop. Hibernation tends to be important for my secondary applications, like controllers and WOL on-demand servers
I still like AMD for cost/performance, and I look forward to moving back if the Athlon64 motherboards can conquer this glitch. Not all Intel processor motherboards handle hibernation particularly well either.
This drives MrPict crazy, but I never turn my computers off unless I’m not going to use them for months. I let the desk tops just sit there. The lap-top (which uses XP) I just close up without specifically putting it in hibernation mode. I haven’t had any problems. Desk tops are 5-6 years old. Lap top 1.5 years old.
You can run into problems as different products will implement this with varying degrees of success.
I’ve seen some problems with NIC’s not responding correctly, but again it depends on the vendor.
In some cases where it’s not absolutely crucial to keep the PC available, it’s best to do an actual shutdown if you’re concerned about power consumption.
Ook.
I have a laptop. I only use hibernation when I haven’t been paying attention to the battery and it’s alll used up. (It goes to hibernation automatically then.) and I’ve never had any problems.
Not sure about the new Dells but when I purchased my Dell 8200 they didn’t recommend using hibernation.
They said hibernation was to be used only on laptops.
I have mine set to shut down the monitor and hard disk in 30 minutes of no activity. I shut down the complete system if it’s not going to be used in the next couple hours.
I hibernate my Gateway Intel 1.7-M laptop and my homebuilt Athlon 1800+ desktop, both running WinXP Pro, and I’ve never had any problems with either. A problem with the power supply is a problem with the power supply - I doubt hibernating the computer is to blame.
KP - what motherboards did you have a problem with?
My company manages thousands of laptops, and according to the techs here hibernation mode is a very tricky animal. It is often difficult for it to reliably work, and they generally gave up recommending its use until XP Pro and the latest laptops came out. And even then, they still see a large number of problems where a hibernating laptop simply will refuse to wake up, or else will forget it hibernated and reboot as if it had been hard shut down.
I tried an experiment with mine where I did nothing but hibernate it while on the road. I found that by the 3rd or 4th time it was starting to become fairly unstable, and by the 3rd day it was unusable until I shut down. This isn’t the way technology is supposed to be - they’ve had YEARS to get this seemingly simple function to work, after all. 
I’m another that never turns a computer off. mainly because I’m very frequently on it. But I did find one reason to at least restart it on a semi regular basis. After installing a program that was just loaded to the gills with spyware, I could not for the life of me get rid of it all, regardless of Adaware and Spybot, etc. The only solution was to rollback the computer using the System Restore function so niftily included with XP. Unfortunately, the last reboot had been weeks before, and so I lost a lot of settings and installs (but of course, not the actual files) simply because there wasn’t a more current restore point.
In summary, I never shut down, but I do reboot regularly (every other day or so), so that the system will set a restore point.
I love hibernation mode! I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 and I use the hibernation mode several times a day with no problems. It is nice being able to start at excatly where I left off. I would say I use my laptop more than average, it is in use 10+ hours a day. I develop programs (.net with a local SQL Server database) on it, play games like ghost recon and unreal, and plug my ipod and digital camera into it. Only problems I encounter with an unstable OS is when I write a buggy program. I reboot every couple of weeks and that is almost always because I am installing a software or patch.
I gone through 4 laptops starting windows 2000 then XP and hibernation mode has never caused me a problem.
I think you can create these manually without shutting down, which is helpful if you’re about to install something, especially multi-part.
To answer the OP, no hibernation has nothing to do with the power supply (PSU). However, a faulty PSU can cause computers to do wacky things and produce all kinds of errors. If the PSU was dying, it’s just as likely to cause errors sitting there doing nothing as it is shutting down or hibernating.
PS - Using a P4GE-V now and used to use a CUSL2-C motherboard and no problems with hibernation here.
On my laptop, I’ve had problems with the TCP/IP stack getting confused when I hibernate at work (100BaseT), then resume at home (wireless), then hibernate again and go back to work without logging out.
Add in the fact that hiberation and resuming with 1 GB of memory is almost as slow as booting and logging in to Windows XP, and I don’t hibernate much anymore.
-lv
rjung, that’s “sleep.” “Hibernate” is when the machine writes its memory to the hard drive and turns itself off. If you reboot, you see the PC’s POST test and everything again, typically. It can be better than sleep on a laptop, since it’s truly “off” (as off as a computer gets these days), rather than in just really, really low energy mode.
Given that, I put the PowerBook to sleep all the time, leave the QuickSilver running all the time, and leave the Windows XP box off almost all of the time.
I’ve never had a severe problem with Windows XP hibernating. It’s a generic $100 motherboard/Intel chip combo. Soundblaster 32 (cheapie version) has a problem in that it doesn’t work after sleep or hibernate, but I kind of like this 'cos Windows is way to noisy otherwise.
I looked on my power save options under “Screensavers” "(which I have turned off, currently), and noticed it will turn off the monitor after 15 minutes of non-use, the hard disk after 30 minutes. What, precisely, does this mean, and can I turn this feature off with no ill effects?
D’oh! :smack:
In an attempt to salvage my geek cred…
The options are precisely as you describe – turning off the monitor puts your monitor into standby mode, where it won’t display anything until the computer tells it to wake up. Turning off the hard drive lets it spin down and park the heads, and it won’t wake until the computer needs to access it. You will not suffer any ill effects if your computer is still running when these events happen; they simply power down, independent of the CPU, to save some electricity.
Ah, I see.
Thanks.
So basically, it would take a nap, so to speak, and then if I “woke it up” by touching the mouse, it would come back? (Just as analogies, I don’t know about “sleep” and “hibernate” modes)
Thanks.
Generally, “sleep” mode wakes upon pressing a key, moving the mouse, or hitting a Function key. Generally, hibernate is woken up from by pressing power, since when in hibernation, the PC is not actually on.