Microsoft deliberately disables ‘hibernation’ in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems that have more than 4GB of installed memory. It has done this because performance is affected… however there are cases where you might need hibernation support. Enabling this feature is easy, first load up Windows Explorer (right click on the My Computer icon and go to Explore) and from there click “Tools” then go to “Folder Options“. From there click the “View” tab and in the “Advanced settings:” section find the “Hidden files and folders” options and select the “Show hidden files and folders” radio box. Next find the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” check box, uncheck it and press the “OK” button.

That will now allow you to see the hidden OS files, go to the root directory of the drive that hosts the OS (most likely C:) and find the “boot.ini” file. Open it up in notepad and add “MAXMEM=XXXX” switch to the bottom, where “XXXX” is the size of your system memory in megabytes. Save the changes, reboot your system and you’re set. You can now hibernate again.

Please note that this degrades system performance, but in case you absolutely need hibernation support (like with a laptop traveling between power sources), this feature allows you to save your work easily. If you no longer need hibernation, remove the MAXMEM line from the boot.ini file.

Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Under Pick a category, click Performance and Maintenance. Under or Pick a Control Panel icon, click System. Click the Advanced tab, and in the Startup and Recovery area, click Settings. In the SystemStartup area, click Edit. In Notepad, click Edit and then click Find. In the Find what field, type /noexecute and then click Find Next. In the Find dialog box click Cancel. Replace the policy_level (for example, “OptIn” default) with “AlwaysOff” (without the quotes).

Be sure to enter the text carefully. Your boot.ini file switch should now read:

/noexecute=AlwaysOff

In Notepad, click File and then click Save.Click OK to close Startup and Recovery.Click OK to close System Properties and then restart your computer.This setting does not provide any DEP coverage for any part of the system, regardless of hardware DEP support.

Now verify that DEP is Disabled. For that, click Start, and then click Control Panel.Under Pick a category, click Performance and Maintenance. Under “or Pick a Control Panel icon”, click System.Click the Advanced tab.In the Performance area, click Settings and then click Data Execution Prevention.Verify that the DEP settings are unavailable and then click OK to close Performance Settings.Click OK to close System Properties then close Performance and Maintenance.