There are a few ways to enable or disable hibernation in Windows XP. The easiest way is to use the Control Panel. To open the Control Panel, click on the Start button and then type “control panel” into the search box. When you find the “Control Panel” folder, click on it. Then, click on the “Hibernate” tab. There you will find a few options. You can either enable hibernation or not. If you enable hibernation, Windows will ask you to set a time for when it will start hibernating and how long it will stay in this state. You can also choose whether to keep files open when hibernating or close them automatically. If you choose not to have files open when hibernating, your computer may crash while it is trying to start up again because it would need to load all of those files again before starting up again.
Depending upon how much you use your home PC should determine what route you take. If your using it only once or twice a week to check email and do some browsing then it is probably save to turn it off between sessions. If your using it several times a day … keep it on, or set it to sleep or Hibernate between sessions. This will allow you to quickly restore the computer state between usage.
The difference between Standby and Hibernation is Standby saves the current session in RAM whereas Hibernate stores the state to the hard drive. In Standby any unsaved documents could be gone if you lose power, so remember to save any documents first. When the data is stored in RAM it will be able to resume much more quickly.
Hibernation will save much more power which is a good thing to keep in mind when running low on battery power on a laptop. The session will take longer to come back from Hibernate mode versus Sleep. Also, additional disk space is required to Hibernate.
To enable or disable Hibernation in XP click Start Control Panel Power Options then the Hibernation tab
Either check or uncheck the box next to Enable hibernation. Click Apply then OK.
