Enabling Hibernate in Windows

Some server versions of Windows are having the hibernate feature disabled by default. So if you need to change the hibernation do the following simple steps.

1. Click start and type “cmd” or type command in the search box.

2. Then in the search results, right click the Command Prompt and click on Run as Administrator.

3. If you are prompted by the user account control click continue.

4. Then,

To turn hibernation on in your machine type -

“powercfg.exe /h on” or “powercfg.exe /hibernate on”

To turn hibernation off in your machine type -

“powercfg.exe /h off” or “powercfg.exe /hibernate off”

5. Lastly you can exit the command prompt by typing “exit”.

 

Sometimes you might get an error similar to the following while trying to enable hibernation.

Hibernation failed with the following error: The request is not supported. The following items are preventing hibernation on this system.         An internal system component has disabled hibernation.

 

This means your machine is running roles or services that are disabling hibernation feature. One such a role is Hyper-V. If your version of Windows 2008 is running Hyper-V then you cannot enable hibernation. This is not an error but is deliberately done since hibernating a server running virtual machines is a very complicated and rarely requiring service in an enterprise server.

But there is a way to enable hibernation on a Hyper-V installed machine, which you will be able to find in my next article.