Hi,

I just got a Vista computer. when a friend upgraded his office, and
before I leave my desk, I tell it to hibernate (not hybrid). The
monitor goes black and I can't tell if it has closed the programs yet,
or how far along it is. i think I need this, for one thing, to know
when I can turn off my harddrive dock. Is this normal or is there a
remedy.

Also there is no graphic menu of choices for shutdown. Just a list at
the bottom of the screen when I click on the right thing. If there are
updates pending, will they show in the list?

Thanks in advance.

From: "micky"

Hi,

I just got a Vista computer. when a friend upgraded his office, and
before I leave my desk, I tell it to hibernate (not hybrid). The
monitor goes black and I can't tell if it has closed the programs yet,
or how far along it is. i think I need this, for one thing, to know
when I can turn off my harddrive dock. Is this normal or is there a
remedy.

Also there is no graphic menu of choices for shutdown. Just a list at
the bottom of the screen when I click on the right thing. If there are
updates pending, will they show in the list?

Thanks in advance.

Whenever anyone receives a used computer, it is always advided to WIPE the
PC and reinstall the OS from scratch.

--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

In microsoft.public.windows.vista.general, on Fri, 25 Sep 2015 09:24:17
-0400, "David H. Lipman" wrote:

From: "micky"

Hi,

I just got a Vista computer. when a friend upgraded his office, and
before I leave my desk, I tell it to hibernate (not hybrid). The
monitor goes black and I can't tell if it has closed the programs yet,
or how far along it is. i think I need this, for one thing, to know
when I can turn off my harddrive dock. Is this normal or is there a
remedy.

Also there is no graphic menu of choices for shutdown. Just a list at
the bottom of the screen when I click on the right thing. If there are
updates pending, will they show in the list?

Thanks in advance.

Whenever anyone receives a used computer, it is always advided to WIPE the
PC and reinstall the OS from scratch.

My friend's computer guy did that and I verified it.

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windows.vista.general, on Fri, 25 Sep 2015 09:24:17
-0400, "David H. Lipman" wrote:

From: "micky"

Hi,

I just got a Vista computer. when a friend upgraded his office, and
before I leave my desk, I tell it to hibernate (not hybrid). The
monitor goes black and I can't tell if it has closed the programs yet,
or how far along it is. i think I need this, for one thing, to know
when I can turn off my harddrive dock. Is this normal or is there a
remedy.

Also there is no graphic menu of choices for shutdown. Just a list at
the bottom of the screen when I click on the right thing. If there are
updates pending, will they show in the list?

Thanks in advance.
Whenever anyone receives a used computer, it is always advided to WIPE the
PC and reinstall the OS from scratch.

My friend's computer guy did that and I verified it.


In order to hibernate, the contents of RAM have to be written to
the hiberfile. You should see the disk light on for a period of
time.

As for the time it takes to hibernate, some effort is put into
reducing the amount of stuff written to the disk. So rather than
taking five minutes to happen, it takes seconds. But the more
stuff that was stored in memory at the time hibernate is requested,
the longer the write time will be. So even if a computer had 64GB
of RAM, if only 200MB was used, then a bit less than 200MB would
need to be recorded to disk. Some kind of lightweight compression
(LZO?) is used to compress the data a bit when it is written out.

For the LCD monitor, there are two definitions of "black". The
screen can go black if the OS decides to draw a black rectangle for
the entire desktop. If the monitor has status LEDs, you can tell
whether the computer is still "painting" the screen or not. My
cheap Acer monitor, the power LED is blue while the computer
is still providing a sync signal. But once all the driving signals
are disabled, the monitor LED turns yellow, indicating "loss of
signal". The screen is black in that case too.

So if the monitor fades to black, the LED is lit that says the
video card is still driving it, then you know hibernation is not
complete yet.

And another distinguishing features, is fans. If you hear the
cooling fans go off, then the hibernation phase is complete, and
the computer has soft powered off. If you flip the switch on the back
of the computer, the OS can still figure out on the next startup,
that the hiberfile should be re-loaded, as it has stuff in it.

The computer ACPI states have S names. S1 is standby (fans
remain running, screen is blank). S3 is standby suspend to
RAM (fans go off). S4 is hibernate (fans go off).
In some cases, if you request a certain state, and the visible
evidence does not line up with that state, a bit of work with
the dumppo.exe utility can tell you what ACPI states are
currently supported by the OS. So if the fans continued
to run, then chances are you're in the wrong state (through
no fault of your own).

Paul