Solution For Slow Hibernation

Ever since I've been using Windows XP, I've been a fan of the 'Hibernate' feature since it significantly speeds up the boot time of my machines ( shutdown may be a little slower though, but it's worth it. Also, it may actually lead to slower booting on some machines; you'll have to try it out ).

A little while ago though, I faced a very frustrating problem: Windows would take almost 10 minutes to hibernate. And it was really weird because I had reinstalled Windows a few days earlier and it had been working absolutely as expected ( notice I didn't say 'fine'; not with Windows :D ). I couldn’t' for the life of me figure out what had gone wrong.

After a little bit of Google'ing, this is the solution I discovered: you need to have 'write caching' enabled for the drive. After reinstalling, I'd turned this off and when I turned it back on, hibernation was as fast as it had been before.

To turn on write-caching for a drive under Windows XP ( I'm using Windows XP Professional ):

Right-click the icon in My Computer > Properties option > Hardware tab > Properties button > Policies tab > Check the Enable write caching on the disk checkbox



To enable hibernation under Windows XP ( I'm using Windows XP Professional ):

Right-click on your Desktop > Screen Saver tab > Power button > Hibernate tab > Check the Enable Hibernation checkbox