22nd Mar, 2007

Windows Vista Sleep Function

Microsoft Windows Vista’s new  feature is the sleep function. This function has the benefits of earlier Windows’ hibernation & standby modes. By sleep function you can easily resume you PC faster than in the state of hibernation or standby.

Before going to the sleep function details, let me quickly explain you how standby and hibernation works. Standby mode saves everything to RAM and you can resume your session from RAM as long as you have power to the motherboard. Hibernation works the same way except that it saves directly to hard disk and you can resume even after power loss. Among these, standby function is faster because it utilizes the speedy data transfer rate of RAM.

Now comes the sleep feature. Which acts as both hibernation and standby in single button. You can send your pc to sleep by pressing the power button in start menu. When you do this, your entire working session including all open documents are saved to both RAM & hard drive. When you start the PC next time, these data will be available for quick access.

The advantage of this function over standby is that, it is saved on to Hard drive as well as RAM. Thus even if you loss power, you can easily access data from hard disk.
In short, sleep function works as standby when there is still power and works as hibernation when there is power loss. I believe by combining both hibernation and standby function, MS have done a great job with Windows Vista.



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I have a new Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop, and the sleep function isn’t working as you describe. I called Dell support and they said what I’m describing sounds like it’s going into hibernate mode. It takes longer to wake up from sleep than it does to fully boot up from start. I’ve checked the power settings and it is definetly set on “sleep.” It seems I need to just have it shut down when I close the lid, and reboot each time. Pain in the butt! i hope you can get a fix out for this soon!!

Hi Greg,

How much RAM do you have ?

- Vista Guy

Goretsky: Seems that whenever my new Vista PC goes into sleep mode, it wakes up about 5 minutes later. I believe this is due to a slight movement of my mouse — is there any way to change the setting for exactly which keys/movements trigger a wakeup from sleep? Question from Robert H. Goretsky

Hi Goretsky,

I believe you can change these settings in power settings. Right click batter icon in task bar and select power options. Then select advanced power options.

I think there are lots of settings you can tweak how you want to disable certain featured when not in use.

- Vista Guy

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