How to Disable Hibernation in Vista

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in Tips & Tricks

November9th2007

The Hibernation feature can be really useful for some people, but others won't ever use it, so best thing to do for them is to disable it. Why disable it? Well, when Hibernation is enabled, a file that has exactly the size of your computer's memory is created on your hard drive, and you can't remove it, even if you're not using the feature at all. When you disable it, this file automatically goes away.

In Windows XP, to disable Hibernation is very easy, but it doesn't work the same in Vista. In fact, you need to do this from the command line, because there is no option in the Vista interface that allows you to do this...

- Press the Windows key+R to bring up the Run window, and type "cmd". Be sure to run this with admin privileges!

- If you still have UAC enabled, press Continue if asked for any confirmation in the previous step. (to find out how to disable UAC, check this article)

- Type "powercfg -h off" and press Enter to disable Hibernation.

- One thing less to worry about in Vista!
No more Hibernation

That's all, folks! If you didn't figure it out, here's another tip - to enable Hibernation again, you have to type "powercfg -h on" in the command window!