Very slow hibernate

[eman6]

I have a nearly two year old Compaq nx7000 notebook with Windows XP Pro. 512MB RAM and half full 40GB Hard disk.
The graphics card is the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 AGP with 64MB, set at 1680 x 1050, 32bit color
Even with no running software applications and hardly any in the system tray either (just the clock, volume and network) when I put the system in hibernate it takes very long time (5 to 10 minutes) until it gets into hibernate mode.
When I wake it up again it comes back normal, though.
This started a year ago already.
I tried to deactivate the hibernation for a while (few months) and then activate it again. Still same problem.
What could be the reason? And hopefully the solution.

Kind regards
Eman

 

[eman6]

Sorry, forgot to mention that this problem persisted even after SP1 and then SP2 installed. Also persists regardless of the anti virus.
(What else?)

 

[bcastner]

There are so many possible explanations. See:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_standby.htm

 

[MTech04]

I could be a number of things but It sounds like your having a Paging File Problem. Possible that your paging is to small are there is a lot of fragments. You can get some info in how to change it here. Sorry there are some pop-up though

http://windows.about.com/library/tips/bltip279.htm

 

[bcastner]

Mtech04,

Page file optomization explanations without popups:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm

 

[eman6]

Gentlemen
I checked all this. I even followed the advice on resetting the pagefile.sys (set to 0 then reboot then set to 2048 MB, or other values). All in vain. Even more interesting is: THERE IS NO pagefile.sys at all in my notebook.
I also checked my wife's notebook and our desktop. No such file. But hibernate works perfectly on the other systems; it only works veeery sloooowly on my notebook.
I also made sure all the memory management and graphic card settings are set rather for performance than appearance.
Nothing of all this affected the Hibernate at all.
One thing I was a little too chicken to try, is the IDE drive. One of the links you guys mentioned suggests I delete the IDE from the devic manager and reboot to have the plug and play re-install it again.
Should I really try this one?
Any other suggestions?

Thank you all so much.

Kind regards
Eman

 

[bcastner]

eman2005,

Start, Run, cmd

c:
cd \
dir pagefile.sys

Control Panel, Folder Options, View
Click to enable "Show hidden files and folders"

Please advise if neither the CMD box or Explorer shows a pagefile.sys file.

 

[bcastner]

I take it all back above.

linney has bugged me for years about the fact that certain system files will not appear in an Explorer or CMD box session. And he is right that I fooled with the file filters in the registry.

Right-click My Computer, Properties, Advanced
Under Performance Options - Change, Virtual Memory - Settings, the results returned should be accurate.

 

[gpalmer711]

No registry fiddling here and I can see it in both My Computer and Windows Explorer. CMD will not show it however on my system.

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[bcastner]

It shows in Explorer other than the SYSTEM volume.

Is that what you are seeing?

 

[eman6]

Well, gentlemen, you all seem to be so convinced that itt IS the pagefile.sys that causes the hibernate to slow down.
Remember, it is slow EVEN when I have absolutely NOTHING running, no word processing, no image processing, no email, no game, no modem,...nothing. Why would hibernate take so long? Or maybe a better question is: how does hibernate exactly work? What is it exactly doing really?
And by the way, again even though I have nothing running, if I check my task manager, I see a long list of processes.
I see right now about fourty of them with only one IE window actice. Does that play a role in slowing hibernation?
Does anyone encourage me to try the 'remove IDE' thing and reboot?

Thanks

Eman2005

 

[bcastner]

eman2005,

It was completely my fault that the topic got directed to what can be shown by a CMD box or Explorer.

Apologies.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_standby.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q266/1/69.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[MTech04]

Eman2005,

Does it have the same problem on shutdown or Reboot?

 

[eman6]

If it did, I would have mentioned it. ;-)

 

[jimp56]

to answer the general question of how hibernation works -- i believe windows essentially attempts to free any used reources, then writes the contents of RAM to a file called hiberfil.sys and then shuts down.

you might try for grins disabling the network adapter (wireless also?) prior to hibernation to see if it hibernates any faster.

regarding the hiberfil.sys - windows would have to write essentially 512mb of data to the drive prior to hibernating, so if your hard drive is slow, has errors, and/or is very fragmented, it could take some time. you may want to try disabling hibernation, setting pagefile to 0, and then run a full chkdsk to correct any filesystem issues, defragment the hard drive, then reenable pagefile and hibernation to see if anything changes.

how much free disk space is available after hibernation is enabled?

have you checked for adware/malware also? Any events listed in the event viewer (rt-click my computer->manage->event viewer) that may indicate an inability to release a hardware resource, or anything else that might be relevant?

lastly, what antivirus and/or firewall software are you using??

 

[eman6]

Hi JImp56
Disabling Network (and wireless) did not change anything.
I have a HD of 40GB, of which more than 10GB is free.
I have already run checkdisk and defrag to see if this helps. Actually this was the first thing that occured to my mind. No effect. By the way, my wife's Notebook (13" 30GB Fujitsu-Siemens) has more mess and less free space, and yet, it hibernates before I know it.
Did you say hiberfil.sys? My little searching dog could not find that in my C: drive either (That's the only hard drive I have in my Notebook).
adware/malware? No idea, but I used Norton for anti virus and recently used spybot to clean spyware, but both did not affect hibernation. :-(
I am using MS Windows XP Firewall.
As for event viewer, yes, plenty of warnings and errors.
Applications:-
Warnings: TraceLevelParameter and TraceFile not located in the registry.
Errors: IE application hangup.

System:-
Plenty of errors and warnings. I'll check them and BRB

Eman2005

************* if you cannot avoid disaster, try to minimize the damage ****************

 

[eman6]

The bsaspi32 service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

The AFP Imaging SAR3K-USB Driver (sar3kusb.sys) service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

The AFP Imaging SAR3K-USB Root Device Driver (sar3kldr.sys) service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

 

[jimp56]

yes, if hibernation is enabled the file is called hiberfil.sys. it may have something to do with your explorer not set up to see hidden or system files. it is in the root of the c:\ drive.

however, if hibernation is enabled, and the ability to view(and search for which also has to be set in the advanced options)hidden/system files is on, and you still dont have a hiberfil.sys - then that may indicate some other problem with the hard drive or security rights on the drive.

waiting to hear back from you re: system events....

 

[jimp56]

Hmmm, so what external USB devices do you have hooked up?

 

[eman6]

I don't think the USB thing is the problem.
I have two USB printers installed but usually not connected to my notebook.
Could this cause trouble? I wouldn't suppose so, should I.