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I am running Windows 7 x64 on my machine and everything is perfect. I actually never turn off my PC completely but rather I always put it into hibernation mode for fast resume once I get back.

Hibernation works like a charm, but once every 50 or 100 hibernations something goes wrong and the machine reboots. After that I usually have to reset the system clock in BIOS and Windows is starting up from the hibernation image that somehow got saved to disk (that's really cool).

But: This hibernation image recovery is awfully slow, once the machine is up again it takes almost 2 minutes for it to not feel sluggish any more (I suspect this is due to pagefaults on all memory access).

I'm looking for a way to tell Windows to NOT recover from the crash but rather just boot fresh, discarding the hibernation since it's faster to just reboot rather than wait for 3+ minutes for the machine to get it's act together.

I do see the normal BIOS startup and also the Windows boot afterwards, but hitting F8 like crazy doesn't do anything. In Windows 2000 and Windows XP a menu would come up asking me how I do want to boot, but I can't find it on Windows 7.

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4 Answers 4

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F8 like crazy doesn't do anything. In Win2000 and XP a Menu would come up asking me how I do want to boot

It is the same key for Windows 7, presumably Windows is just too quick deciding to recover from hibernation.

I suppose you could just power off while the computer is starting, and you will then be offered the menu automatically, but that's a bit of a nasty solution.

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  • very nasty solution indeed. I'll investigate further. Thanks anyway
    – Tigraine
    Apr 18, 2010 at 17:50
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This is what Microsoft calls "Hybrid Sleep", suspending to RAM, then waking from RAM if no power-down (and of course, deleting hiberfil.sys), or waking from the hard drive if there was a power-down. If you are trying to do what I think you are, you're trying to disable the "waking from the hard drive" feature. If so, follow the following instructions:

Microsoft says:

  1. Go to Power Options.
  2. Click Change plan settings on the currently selected plan.
  3. Open Sleep > Allow Hybrid Sleep and select Off after clicking On.

OR:

Open a Command Prompt window and type in powercfg.exe /hibernate off.

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    He’s not asking how to disable hibernation, he’s asking how to configure Windows to discard a previous hibernation after a crash.
    – Synetech
    Aug 17, 2011 at 4:26
  • @Synetech In this case, here is an example how to do this manually. Don't know, if anything for an automated discard exists.
    – trejder
    May 28, 2015 at 6:17
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I don’t think there is any specific setting to discard a previous hibernation file after a crash, but you can try to make it easier to do it yourself.

Check your recovery settings (sysdm.cpl->Advanced->Startup and Recovery: Settings). Consider un-checking automatically restart (which is generally recommended anyway). That way, it won’t automatically restart and resume from hibernation.

Next, you can hold F8 as soon as the BIOS finishes POSTing instead of just pressing it repeatedly. Another option is to add an extra copy of the OS to the boot menu, so that you can configure the length of time it displays the menu instead of just automatically booting the default/only OS in the list:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Copy of Windows 7"

You could also add an extra boot device (eg a floppy, CD/DVD, flash-drive, live-CD, etc.) that you can use to boot after a crash and manually remove the hibernation file.

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Press and hold the power button to force a "hard" shutdown (hardware shutdown). If the OS does not have an opportunity to save the system state, it cannot resume from sleep. You will receive and "unexpected shutdown" error, but when you boot normal, it will not resume sleep state. Good Luck.

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  • Hard shutdown during resuming just killed my Win10 installation. So, it's not the best idea.. Or just my bad luck.. Oct 30, 2021 at 20:34

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