Windows 7: hibernation does not work - you can do that

If Windows 7 hibernation no longer works, there can be various reasons. In this practical tip, we will tell you what you can do about it.

Check hibernation function in Windows 7

The first thing to do is to check if hibernation is activated on the system. To do this, start the command prompt as administrator and enter the command "powercfg -a" (without quotation marks). When outputting text, pay particular attention to what the status of the idle state is.

• You can also check whether the "hiberfil.sys" file is in the system directory. If this is missing, hibernation is most likely deactivated on your system. However, keep in mind that the file is hidden and may not appear with your file manager's default settings.

Hibernation requires an active system partition

Windows can only save the file required for hibernation (hiberfil.sys) on an active system partition. Otherwise hibernation does not work. Therefore, make sure that this is marked as "active":

1. Open the Windows Control Panel. Click Manage, and then click Computer Management. Go to the "Disk Management" area.
2. Right click on the boot partition (the partition where Windows 7 is installed). In the context menu select "Mark partition as active". Confirm the security question with "Yes".

Make sure that the system partition has enough space

During hibernation, Windows writes the entire contents of the working memory to the hiberfil.sys file, which must be located on the system partition. The file can therefore sometimes become quite large. Make sure there is enough free space on the partition. For example, if you have installed 8 gigabytes of RAM in your system, you will need 8 gigabytes of free space for hibernation.

Turn off hybrid standby

Hybrid standby may be active on your operating system, which means that hibernation will not work. To turn off hybrid standby:

1. Open the Control Panel and then the "Power Options".
2. Now click on the "Change energy plan settings" link to the right of the selected energy saving plan. Select the entry "Change advanced energy settings".
3. Find the entry "Save energy" and open it. The "Allow hybrid standby mode" option is set to "Off" for both battery and mains operation. Confirm the changes with the OK button.

Switch hibernation off and on again

In some cases, it can help to briefly deactivate hibernation and then reactivate it afterwards. Now and then it works again. You only need to enter two commands in the Windows command prompt:

1. Start the Windows command prompt as an administrator.
2. Type the "powercfg -h off" command (without the quotation marks) and press Enter.
3. Enter the command "powercfg -h on" (without quotation marks) and confirm it again with the Enter key.
4. Restart Windows 7.

Repair hibernation using the Microsoft Support Tool

Microsoft offers a small tool on its website that can be used to repair Windows' hibernation. After downloading, start the program and follow the instructions of the wizard.

Hibernation does not work: further analysis of the energy saving functions

If the problems cannot be solved with the tips mentioned so far, you can also carry out a more detailed analysis of the energy saving functions of Windows.

1. Start the Windows command prompt as an administrator.
2. Enter the command "powercfg.exe -energy" (without quotes). Wait for the system behavior analysis to finish. This takes about a minute, during which time you should not be using your computer.
3. Open the file "C: \ Windows \ system32 \ energy-report.html" in your web browser. You may need to copy the file to another directory on your hard drive first.
4. Above all, a more precise analysis of the results in the area of ​​"errors" is important. Among other things, the programs and hardware components that prevent the correct behavior of the idle state are listed here. For example, you may need to update the appropriate device drivers.

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In our next practical tip, we will explain what the difference between energy-saving mode and hibernation is.