Hibernation broken

[luckycharms]

Hi Folks,

Hibernation on my machine has been broken for a couple months now. Due to the crappy circumstances in which the problem occurred, no restore point is available prior to the problem cropping up.

The Problem: When I select hibernate, the screen goes black and the hard drive cranks away for 10 or 15 seconds or so. Then the computer beeps, and the login screen appears. I log back in, and all my apps are there - nothing has closed.

Standby works just fine.

I've tried disabling/enabling hibernation, and I've tried deleting the hiberfil.sys file, all to no avail. Nothing in the system logs seems to hint at any problem with hibernation (that I can decipher, anyway. there are other errors in the log, but don't seem related.).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Alex

Win 7 Pro x64
Thinkpad T400 2764-CTO
6 GB RAM

 

[ttran]

Run system file check please:

Open an elevated command prompt and enter sfc /scannow.

If it give you error and unable to fix (after several scan repretely), then please do a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

 

[luckycharms]

No errors reported (unfortunately). Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Alex

C:\Users\xxx>sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

 

[luckycharms]

I said before that there weren't any relevant errors in the logs, but perhaps that's not totally true. I get regular ACPI Event ID 13 errors:

"The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly."
​

Not sure that has anything to do with anything, but thought I'd mention it...

 

[ttran]

• A hardware device might be keeping your computer awake. USB flash drives and USB mice are common devices that can keep your computer awake. Make sure that you have the most current drivers all of your devices. For more information, see Update drivers: recommended links.
  To prevent a device from waking your computer
  
  
  1. Open Device Manager by clicking the Start button
     
     , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, and then, under System, clicking Device Manager.*
     
     If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
  2. In the list of hardware categories, find the device that you want to prevent from waking your computer, and then double-click the device name.
  3. Click the Power Management tab and then clear the Allow this device to wake the computer check box.
  4. Click OK.
  
  
• A program or scheduled task might be waking your computer. By default, Power Option settings do not allow scheduled tasks to wake the computer from sleep or hibernate. However, some programs might awaken the computer if these settings have been changed.
  To prevent programs from waking your computer
  
  
  1. Open Power Options by clicking the Start button
     
     , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, and then clicking Power Options.
  2. On the Select a power plan page, click Change plan settings for the plan that you want to change.
  3. On the Change settings for the plan page, click Change advanced power settings.
  4. On the Advanced settings tab, expand Sleep, expand Allow wake timers, choose Disable for both when your computer is running on battery and when it's plugged in, and then click OK.
  
  

 

[luckycharms]

Even in clean boot mode, with no devices attached, I can't hibernate. So, there's no device that's causing the problem. Setting Allow Wake Timers to disabled doesn't help either.

Any other ideas as to how to diagnose the problem?

thanks,
alex

 

[Borg 386]

One of my friends had this problem with a customers computer (running XP), and he tracked it down to the BIOS setting.

He also mentioned the disk had to have enough free space (25% I think).

Look at the BIOS and see if the power setting is set properly. (ACPI I believe)

 

[luckycharms]

@Borg - there doesn't seem to be any sort of setting relating to ACPI in my bios (my bios is updated to the latest version).

 

[Borg 386]

Well, it's probably different on your sys since every one is a little bit different

It would still be worth the time to look up the specs on your system & find out what the BIOS should be set on to allow hibernation, if that's not the problem, that's one probability you eliminated

 

[luckycharms]

Ok - I noticed something strange. My hiberfil.sys file is 4.6 GB. However, I have 6GB of RAM installed. I've disabled and re-enabled hibernation (powercfg -h on/off), but still have a 4.6 GB hiberfil.sys. Is this right, or is there something wrong happening here?

edit: nevermind - seems you can set your hiberfil.sys to be smaller than ram (i assume it just expands if it needs more). running powercfg -h -size 100 doesn't help.

 

[Borg 386]

I do remember coming across a thread on the MS site where other people were having problems and they told them they would have to rebuild the hiberfil.sys. Unfortunately I don't have the link.

Have you tried this yet?

How to Turn On and Enable Hibernate in Windows 7

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt with administrator rights by typing Cmd in Start Search, and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter keyboard shortcut.

Or, select Run as Administrator from the Cmd in search results Type the following command, and hit Enter:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/08/12/how-to-enable-or-disable-hibernate-in-windows-7/
2.
powercfg /hibernate on

 

[luckycharms]

yep, thanks for the thought, but yeah, i've turned hibernation on and off a number of times now. That kills and recreates the hiberfil.sys.

 

[Borg 386]

I found this little tidbit -

If you have problem of Win 7 not staying in sleep mode, check power settings of your network card. Go to Device Manager, Network Adapters, Properties of your card and than Power Management. Uncheck "Allow this device to wake the computer".

I'd suggest snooping around the MS site & see if you can find anything about rebuilding the hiberfil.sys. Logically, it would seem though that something is running actively in the background that immediately wakes the system. Try checking the task manager or get Process Explorer to see if/what might be doing that.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

 

[luckycharms]

thanks for your continued help, borg. Yeah, i've made sure all the Wake Computer buttons are unchecked, and i've disabled wake on lan in the bios and all that. alas.

i'll check in process explorer, though having the problem in clean boot mode would seem to me to indicate that something's probably going on in windows itself - perhaps a corrupted file somewhere or something like that. Not sure. Still, yeah, i'll look around. Please do let me know if you come across anything else!

 

[luckycharms]

JOY TO THE WORLD! I ran some random stuff I found about a similar problem in Vista, and, BANG! It works. Holy crap.

See Hibernation fails after installation of SP 1 for the full ref, but in a nutshell:

First I ran disk partition to assign a drive letter to win 7's hidden partition, then I ran the following (thanks to darrell gorter):
1. Run CMD.EXE as administrator
2. Run the following command: bcdedit -enum all
Look for "Resume from Hibernate" in the output from the command above(example below):
Resume from Hibernate
---------------------
identifier {3d8d3081-33ac-11dc-9a41-806e6f6e6963}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winresume.exe
description Windows Vista (TM) Enterprise (recovered)
inherit {resumeloadersettings}
filedevice partition=C:
filepath \hiberfil.sys
pae Yes
debugoptionenabled No
3. Once you have found it, copy the value for identifier (in this example - {3d8d3081-33ac-11dc-9a41-806e6f6e6963})
4. Run the following command: bcdedit /deletevalue {3d8d3081-33ac-11dc-9a41-806e6f6e6963} inherit
5. Test hibernation

I have NO IDEA what BCD stores are. I can't believe this worked.

 

[Borg 386]

kewl deal....glad you found it.

Usually if something works on Vista, it'll work on Win 7.

I'll hang on to what you found for future reference

Kinda funny because you had the opposite problem most people were having - dubbed "The Black Screen Of Death", the sys would go into hibernation and refuse to wake up for anything. They have a fix for it now.

Glad you got it fixed man!

Found this for you

Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store contains boot entries for a computer running Microsoft Windows. When a computer is started, the boot manager reads the boot entries from the BCD store, and so they become available to the loader and display a boot menu to the user. BCD has now replaced the traditional Boot.ini text file in BIOS-based systems, as storing boot parameters in a text file was considered too vulnerable to malicious attacks to justify its use. The BCDEdit tool can be used to manage BCD stores at the command line.

 

[luckycharms]

Aargh! Wait!

Turns out the BCDedit stuff *wasn't* the fix! The fix is assigning a drive letter to my hidden partition! This ties in with some other problems I've been having, I think: my machine is having trouble assigning drive letters to some USB devices (http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-...ning-drive-letters-usb-drives.html#post878813), and when I hit F8 on startup, I don't get the safe boot menu (i just get a key stuck error).

So: any ideas now? Seems like windows is having trouble accessing certain volumes, or something like that? argh!

looks like others have had the same problem, without resolution: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/aa5a9a17-7fb1-4ff3-9a9e-0b90f9880ee0

 

[Borg 386]

Sorry to hear that. I think at this point you might want to go to MS and open up a case on their trouble shooting site.

I've done some checking and haven't found anything aside from the one article I can't seem to find again that suggests rebuilding the hibernation file.

I'll keep my eyes open for you though

 

[cluberti]

Not quite sure what that would be, although you could use powercfg -energy to get a readout of any errors, or go even further and use xperf to troubleshoot it.

 

[luckycharms]

@borg: thanks. what is the ms troubleshooting site? are you referring to that technet site?