How to Disable Hibernation Windows 10/7

This article will help you Disable Hibernation for Windows 10/7. As part of the guide you’ll also learn how to delete hiberfil.sys

Hibernation in computers represents powering down your machine without losing its current operational data. This data is stored in the hiberfil.sys file. Unfortunately, hibernation is not always a stable process and some people may need to disable hibernation in Windows 7/10, in order to avoid a variety of problems. Sometimes you just need to delete hiberfil.sys, but this is not always the case.

When hibernation is initiated, the contents of your RAM (Random Access Memory) are saved on your hard drive. This is because RAM is volatile and loses its data once powered down. Unlike RAM, hard drives are non-volatile and always retain their data – even if power is cut off. This advantage of this permanent storage is in the essence of hibernation. A powered down system in hibernation uses less electrical power and allows the rest of the hardware inside your machine to power down like a regular shutdown. This process allows users to retain the state of their desktops without the need to boot the system back up like a regular start up, which takes much longer time. It takes only a fraction of the time to return a system from hibernation to a usable state, compared to a normal boot. 

This feature is frequently used with laptops, because they possess a limited power source in the form of a battery. This can be set for laptops automatically once the battery reaches a low percentage. Most desktop PCs also support hibernation, including Windows since its early versions. Hibernation is a good thing and should be used, unless it’s causing problems. In that case you’ll need to disable hibernation from Windows 7/10 yourself. The reason behind a surge of problems with the latest versions of windows is because hibernation became the standard command when the power button is pressed. Instead of powering off normally, hibernation is automatically used. The problem with that is the fact that some computers have trouble hibernating, especially those with older versions of Windows or when using older hardware (essentially older PCs). These systems are sometimes plagued by various bugs, related to hibernation and disabling hibernation for Windows 7/10 may be the only way to fix the problem. Fortunately, that’s not really a hard thing to do. It’s possible to remove it completely and it’s quite simple, too. The process is described below:

How to Disable Hibernation in Windows 7/10

The Guide

  1. Open (click) the Search Bar at the bottom left corner of your screen.

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  2. Search for “cmd”.

  3. Right click on the search result “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator“.

  4. You now have an elevated version of it, which enables you to type the following command to turn off hibernation:

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(You can copy the line from here) powercfg -h off

The moment you type that command and press enter, hibernation will be disabled on your computer. Now, pressing the power button will only turn the computer off instead of suspending it in hibernation. It will also not go into hibernation if it stays idle for too long, as used to be the case before.

How to delete hiberfil.sys

In addition to this, in order to be able to store the data from RAM in a non-volatile storage, the computer creates a file named “hiberfil.sys“, a paging file, which is stored in the boot sector of your hard drive. During hibernation, the entirety of your Random Access Memory is saved in this single file. Before, it used to be as large as the amount of RAM you have, but Windows 7 introduced compression of up to 50 % of its original size (75 % by default). This means that the file is usually smaller than the amount of RAM you have. Regardless, if you have had hibernation disabled in Windows 7/10 this is just wasted memory and you should delete hiberfil.sys to free it. For computers with a lot of RAM this can free a lot of space!

If you have any problems disabling hibernation in Windows 7/10 or just want to hear our advice, feel free to post in the comments below!

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