How to Delete and Remove hiberfil.sys Hibernation File in Windows XP and Vista
In Windows operating system environment such as Windows XP and Windows Vista system, there is always a file named hiberfil.sys created and existed in the system root drive on boot disk. The hiberfil.sys is large and big in size, always as big as your system physical memory (RAM) size. For example, if the computer have 2 GB of DRAM memory, the hiberfil.sys file size will also be around 1.99 GB in size, taking up precious hard disk space, and in worse case increase fragmentation on the drive.
hiberfil.sys is a file that Windows system creates whenever the computer goes into hibernation mode. When system hibernates, the system state of the computer is preserved by storing a copy of all data in the memory in hiberfil.sys file located on your local disk, so that when the computer restarts, the information can be read into memory to restore the state as of exact state when computer starts to hibernate. That also explains why the size of hiberfil.sys file is always same size with computer’s memory size.
If you have ever used hibernation feature in XP and Vista, the hiberfil.sys file will be created. Actually, Windows kernel reserves hiberfil.sys file and allocates space equivalent to memory size to it when installing Windows and enables hibernate ability by default, thus the file exists too even if you never put system into hibernation mode. However, when the computer wakes up from hibernation, the hiberfil.sys file is left on the hard disk and not deleted. If you no longer use the hibernate feature of Windows XP and Vista, the safest way to remove and delete hiberfil.sys from the hard disk is to turn off and disable hibernation function.
How to Disable Hibernation in Windows XP
- Go to Control Panel, click on Performance and Maintenance link, then run Power Options applet.
- Go to Hibernate tab.
- Uncheck and untick the Enable hibernation option.
- The hiberfil.sys file should have been removed and gone, if not you can safely delete it.
How to Disable Hibernation in Windows Vista
Windows Vista has change the user interface of Power Options where it’s impossible to enable or disable Hibernation from GUI anymore. Visit guide to disable hibernation in Vista.
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December 11th, 2009 16:33
thanks for this, really helpful
November 22nd, 2009 13:47
[...] Cleaner script to remove unwanted and unneeded files in the PC, and it’s also possible to delete the hiberfil.sys of GBs in size from the [...]
July 21st, 2009 16:18
I am still trying to figure out why my system wakes right back up after standby or hibernation.
A while back I found that turning off and unplugging the USB from my external backup HDD would fix this, but not anymore.
Plus who wants to do this everytime?
Anyone got any ideas?
August 20th, 2008 11:50
oops lol i didnt read it all my bad
August 20th, 2008 11:49
how do i delete the hibefil.sys hibernation file?
October 25th, 2007 14:28
Next time I think I shall search your site first before posting anything. But I guess your post scope is bigger, while this post is a series on Vista which (not yet posted) will lead to hybrid sleep feature.
October 25th, 2007 11:11
Yeah, happened many times. Maybe MALAYSIANS think alike
October 25th, 2007 09:24
Hi Raymond, I searched your site, and I guess it’s coincident?
October 25th, 2007 08:55
Did you get this idea from my site? LOL… Happened many times that I see similar post from my blog.