Hibernation on systems with >1.5GB of RAM

[gforce]

I recently read an article on some website regarding the issue of problems with hibernation on notebooks with 1.5GB or more of RAM. Is it true by any chance??

[ChrisKinsman]

I have 2GB and cannot reliably hibernate.

[Kenn]

I also wonder if it might actually be faster to just power on and off if you've got a 2-gigger - at that point, the time it takes to read the contents of the HD to RAM is probably fast-approaching the 30-40 second boot time...

[RCube]

I have 1.5gb of ram. I never hibernate. Standby is much faster. If you really need to save power, then just turn it off. Because hibernate takes foreve. :p

[cws]

Got 2GB and no problem with hibernate (it took 22 seconds to hibernate)

[emorphien]

I have 2gb and hibernate all the time.

The system only writes as much to HD as there is in RAM, and only reads that amount back to the RAM so the time to hibernate for a 1gb or 2gb system running the same things should be essentially the same.

My experience with my system supports this.

[DIGITALgimpus]

I also wonder if it might actually be faster to just power on and off if you've got a 2-gigger - at that point, the time it takes to read the contents of the HD to RAM is probably fast-approaching the 30-40 second boot time...

If you have a 7200 RPM drive, and a fast system, yes, perhaps.

But for most, hibernation is quicker. Simply because it's minimal processing. It's pretty much moving bit by bit data from the HD (typically sequential) to the RAM.

Booting is a much more complex process.

[Kenn]

Booting is a much more complex process.

True, but this isn't exactly a direct correlation to the time it takes to restore from hibernate vs. boot up, at least in practice. With 1GB, I'm looking at nearly equivalent restore and boot times (difference of maybe 5-7 seconds). As complex as the boot sequence may be, it's 1) not making a huge difference in overhead, and 2) almost equivalent to a 1GB restore already.

Not to mention, for me shutdown is typically a bit faster than entering hibernation mode,

For now, I'm still hibernating. I like see my "uptime" clock going on 10-11 days at a stretch

[nrj45]

I also like to see the uptime growing til many days... but the standby is quicker than hibernation... My standby eats 3% of battery per night if not on AC.

So i never hibernate my 2gb system...

[Lostoutlaw]

Can you post a link to the article?

I consistently have problems hibernating. I have 1.5gb of ram installed. An error stating something like "insufficient system resources... API" pops up 95% of the time i try to hibernate--which means it doesn't allow hiberation.

Been trying to troubleshoot for some time now--but to no avail.

[DIGITALgimpus]

Booting is a much more complex process.

True, but this isn't exactly a direct correlation to the time it takes to restore from hibernate vs. boot up, at least in practice. With 1GB, I'm looking at nearly equivalent restore and boot times (difference of maybe 5-7 seconds). As complex as the boot sequence may be, it's 1) not making a huge difference in overhead, and 2) almost equivalent to a 1GB restore already.

Not to mention, for me shutdown is typically a bit faster than entering hibernation mode,

For now, I'm still hibernating. I like see my "uptime" clock going on 10-11 days at a stretch

That's you. Even my A31 (1GB RAM) was much faster in hibernate than reboot.

[RCube]

I have 2gb and hibernate all the time.

The system only writes as much to HD as there is in RAM, and only reads that amount back to the RAM so the time to hibernate for a 1gb or 2gb system running the same things should be essentially the same.

My experience with my system supports this.

this is not true. The system has to dump the entire ram into hd. So 2gb will be slower than 1gb. Also this is why the hibernate file size depends on the amount of ram.

[gforce]

Can you post a link to the article?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... us;Q330909

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic ... 75&#180632

[vhui]

I, too, have this problem with my X41 Tablet (1866-6TU w/ 1.5gb RAM)... but even after getting the "insufficient system resources... API" popup bubble message, i found that I could fool my system into hibernating ANYWAY by hitting Fn+F12 AFTER the error message appears.

If you normally hibernate by hitting [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del], or by going to Start > Turn Off Computer > [Shift]+Hibernate, you won't see Hibernate as an available option after receiving the "insufficient system resources" popup bubble. Instead I would hit Fn+F12 after seeing the popup bubble... and the system would begin hibernating. Don't know if that's bad for the operating system, but it seems to work every time on my tablet.

[Kenn]

That's you. Even my A31 (1GB RAM) was much faster in hibernate than reboot.

In reality, that probably says more about your boot-up process than my hiberantion process, especially since hibernate tends to be a sequential load process that varies much less than boot times, which depending on what you run and how old your install is, can really be all over the map.

Do you ever optimize your boot process? On my T42p, I get to shell load and gui control within 27 seconds of hitting the power button.

[asiafish]

My T42p has 1.5GB of ram currently (had 2GB before, but moved a stick to my PowerBook) and hibernation is still much faster than booting or shutting down. On average, going into hibernation takes at most 20 seconds, usually closer to 15, with resuming requiring about the same amount of time.

Standbye is much faster still, but unreliable in Windows, at least on a complex system like mine with all sorts of software running and wired, wireless and bluetooth to worry about.

[Kenn]

My T42p has 1.5GB of ram currently (had 2GB before, but moved a stick to my PowerBook) and hibernation is still much faster than booting or shutting down. On average, going into hibernation takes at most 20 seconds, usually closer to 15, with resuming requiring about the same amount of time.

Standbye is much faster still, but unreliable in Windows, at least on a complex system like mine with all sorts of software running and wired, wireless and bluetooth to worry about.

There's the 7k60 for ya. A faster drive helps both boot and hibernate, but will have the most difference on a big sequential read (hiberate).

Here are some quick stopwatch timings (averaged over three runs each) - I don't represent that these are definitive in any way, but they're what they are for a highly start-up optimized, spyware-free, disk/page/hiberernation-defragged, bootvis'd t42p, 1.8Ghz CPU, 5k80 (41GB free), 1GB RAM (512MBx2)

Startup: Start times are a bit hard to calculate accurately because shell control can happen pretty early, but things will chug and apps will continue to load in the background. I'm trying to account for both here.

Boot: 29 seconds to GUI, 45 to HD idle.
Restore: 26 seconds to GUI, 40 to HD idle (but interestingly I get a bit of churning start up whenever I start working again when I come out of hibernation - I assume it's repopulating/refreshing the pagefile. This isn't included in the time (3-6 seconds depending on apps/windows open))

Power Off: All times are from button press (click or power button) to full power screen off.

Shutdown: 25 seconds.
Hibernate: 23 seconds.

Of course, both of these numbers depend on how much you have going on - I had a few hibernates take 33 seconds (excluded from averages), and if I let shutdown close down 10-15 open apps, it can take up to 40 seconds as well.

And again, I typically hibernate just because it is a bit faster. But I have to wonder if there would still be an advantage with 2GB ram.

Caveat: This doesn't adequately take into account the "pick up where you left off" benefit of hibernation. I'm just trying to get as close to an apples-to-apples clear desktop comparison. YMMV (or rather, WILL vary, I'm sure).

[asiafish]

Mine is NOT startup optimized. It has all of the IBM applications on, in addition to ZoneAlarm Pro, Symantec Antivirus AND Symantec Firewall (redundant) slows things down.

Andrew

[DIGITALgimpus]

Can you post a link to the article?

I consistently have problems hibernating. I have 1.5gb of ram installed. An error stating something like "insufficient system resources... API" pops up 95% of the time i try to hibernate--which means it doesn't allow hiberation.

Been trying to troubleshoot for some time now--but to no avail.

I upgraded my T43 to 1.5GB, and can reproduce this error. Apparantly Microsoft's last attempt to fix this was only good for 1GB, not 1.5.