Hibernation is a pretty useful feature, but one thing that you have to keep in mind is that when enabled, Windows will reserve the necessary space in the hard drive to save all the content in memory (RAM) to the file hiberfil.sys; so you should expect to have a hiberfil.sys file as large as the amount of physical RAM memory installed in your computer, that nowadays it could be about 2, 4, 8 or even more Gigabytes. OK, now that you have a basic understanding of how hibernation works, let’s get to the actual procedures.

To enable Hibernate follow these steps:

  1. Go to Start and type cmd in the search box.
  2. From the result, right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator, and at the prompt window click Yes.
  3. Now in the command prompt, you need to type the command line powercfg.exe /hibernate on, and press enter.
  4. You are all done, to exit the command prompt, type exit and press enter.

Now that Hibernate is enabled in Windows, you will notice the Hibernate option will be visible from the Shut down menu, and also you can now easily configure hibernation in the Power Options settings.

To disable Hibernate follow these steps:

This is pretty much the same process as we did before.

  1. Go to Start and type cmd in the search box.
  2. From the result, right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator, and at the prompt window click Yes.
  3. Now in the command prompt, you need to type the command line powercfg.exe /hibernate off, and press enter.
  4. You are all done, to exit the command prompt, type exit and press enter.

If you enabled hibernation, but you only need to turn it OFF, follow these steps: 1.Go to Start , type Power Options and press enter. 2. Under the currently power plans, click Change plan settings and then click Change advanced power settings. 3. Or an easier way is to press Windows Key  + R to open Run and type control powercfg.cpl,,1 and click OK. 4. Then in the Power Options – Advanced Settings, expand Sleep and Hibernate after. 5. Change Setting (Minutes) to Never. 6. And under Allow hybrid sleep, change Setting to OFF. 7. To finish click Apply and then OK. If you ever change your mind, you can always come back and click the Restore plan defaults, Apply and OK.

And remember that hibernation cannot only help you to shut down the computer without losing any work and running programs and restart your computer faster, but it can also help you to save energy when you schedule to hibernate your computer after X amount of time. All content on this site is provided with no warranties, express or implied. Use any information at your own risk. Always backup of your device and files before making any changes. Privacy policy info.