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.

With previous Microsoft operating systems, disabling hibernation is easy. With Windows Vista/7, you can probably guess that it’s a little trickier. If you don’t ever use the hibernation feature, you might as well disable it and save some space (the size of your system memory) on your hard drive, or to get rid of that laggy delay due to hibernation start up. With Windows Vista/7 you’ll need to jump through loops before you can disable its hibernation feature though.

To disable the hibernation feature in Microsoft Vista/7, press the Windows key and type “cmd” into the “Start Search box” however do not press the “ENTER” key. Right click on the letters “cmd” and select “Run As Administrator” Continue through the UAC prompt then type “powercfg -h off” and press the “ENTER” key.

That will disable Windows Vista/7 ‘s hibernation so you won’t have to worry about putting your system to sleep.