Hibernate no longer working for desktop PC

Hi Palcouk, thanks for your comment, but I'm not really interested in whether it is a bad idea to use hibernate. Personally I think it's a great Windows feature and I've been using it for many, many years without issue on both laptops and desktops.

Hi Dave, thanks for the link.

I find it very hard to believe that isolating power during hibernate prevents hibernate from working as it seems to defeat the whole point of hibernating. Also, Googling, doesn't really give a clear cut answer, with some websites insisting no power is used during hibernate, in the same way as when the PC is shutdown. Given the process behind hibernate is to dump RAM to disk where it can be permanently saved, seems to be only necessary if power is isolated, so to require a constant trickle of power to ensure it is possible to restore from hibernation seems very strange.

However, I've just performed some further extensive checks as having previously done some testing earlier this week, I was confused with the results.

To summarise, it would appear that having hibernated my PC, once the power has been isolated, the PC will not recover from hibernation and does a full startup. In addition, further attempts to hibernate will also fail, even if the power is NOT isolated again! So, whatever is causing the issue (a corrupt hiberfil.sys file?) continues to cause hibernate to fail even though the power is never isolated again.

What appears to fix the issue, is to toggle the hibernate option in Advanced power options. So turning hibernate off, then saving, followed by turning hibernate on, then saving, "fixes" the hibernate problem and I can then hibernate as many times as I want and the PC always resumes from hibernation, providing I don't isolate the power supply! Once the power supply is isolated (while the PC is hibernating), then hibernation "breaks" again and needs to be toggled off/on to fix it. It's possible that a full shutdown/startup might also fix it, I didn't try this.

Looking at the Windows Event Log, when the PC is hibernated and the power isolated, each time it is hibernated, then powered up after this (which doesn't work), I see a Critical "Kernel-Power" entry in the log file stating "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

When the PC successfully enters hibernate, a "Kernel-Power" log file entry shows "The system is entering sleep".

When the PC successfully resumes from hibernate, a "Kernel-Power" log file entry shows the message "The system has resumed from sleep.". It's interesting that it uses the term "sleep" rather than "hibernate".

So, it would appear I can't use my smart plug to isolate all my PC devices overnight, rather than having them in standby. Disappointing.

Hi Paul,

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

When hibernated the PC is not fully shut down, the PC will need and use power, Hibernate does not use as much power as sleep, but it does use power, that process is explained on the link below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/shu....

The only way to know if the Smart plug is causing this is to disconnect it and then hibernate your Pc tonight and test in the morning if the Hibernate function has worked.

Very bad idea to leave the PC in sleep/hibernate overnight for many win reasons. Shut the PC down at the end of the day

Update ALL drivers and bios from the mobo maker