Dual-boot W7 Hibernation

[commiades]

I had my HP laptop set up as a dual-boot on W7 and Cinnamon 14, both 64 bit. I eventually wiped the Linux for a number of reasons, but the major one was that I couldn't get W7 to hibernate. How do I set things up for it to be able to hibernate? I'm getting a SSD and will look at creating a dual-boot system again when that drive is installed.

[wayne128]

I eventually wiped the Linux for a number of reasons, but the major one was that I couldn't get W7 to hibernate.

What a pity.

How do I set things up for it to be able to hibernate?

Assuming you already set up win7 that is able to hibernate from Start menu.

Firstly you need to know which boot loader is controlling your MBR.

If you want Win7 to hibernate, without much fuss, then let Win7 control MBR.
If you can edit BCD then do it.
If not, then, install EasyBCD from Neosmart, add Linux OS ( grub2 ) as an entry in EasyBCD so that it can let you select to boot Win7 or Linux OS upon reboot.

Now, if you select Start>hibernate... it should hibernate , turn off power, etc.
You can see it light off at the end of saving all its configuration of your last used programs..

When you wake it up, press power button, it will give you a message "resume windows...."
and you should be back to where you left earlier.



However, most people would install grub2 as a default boot loader because the most popular distros are using grub2. Now, grub2 take over MBR and let you select which OS to boot upon reboot.
Supposing you select Win7, and eventually you hibernate it.
When you return by pressing power button, what happen? since you have allowed grub2 to take over the MBR, the computer will reboot, look at MBR and got channel by grub2..
If you choose Linux OS it boots Linux OS

if you choose Win7 ... well, it should give you 'resume windows'...

in summary, win7 should hibernate if you handle the boot loader properly.
hope this helps.

EDIT: by the way, my Win7 was installed in a single partition, keeping it easy to understand, no boot partition for windows, no boot partition for Linux.

[Mark Phelps]

Understand that when you hibernate Win7 it makes a copy of the parition tables of those filesystems open at the time. When it is then awakened later, it overwrites the partition tables with the copies it saved.

I come from the Ubuntu forums and we get LOTS of posts there about folks writing stuff to shared data (NTFS) partitions while Win7 is hibernated (writing from inside Ubuntu) and are shocked to discover, when they restart Win7, that the directories/files are gone or the filesystem is corrupted.

[commiades]

Thanks. I'll make use of your suggestions when I set up a dual-boot system again. Previously W7 wouldn't even go into hibernate. I have two partitions for my W7 system: a system one and a data one. The hibernate files would be on the system one, which Linux wouldn't look at, so I should be OK.

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[Mark Phelps]

Thanks. I'll make use of your suggestions when I set up a dual-boot system again. Previously W7 wouldn't even go into hibernate. I have two partitions for my W7 system: a system one and a data one. The hibernate files would be on the system one, which Linux wouldn't look at, so I should be OK.

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The hibernate files are not the only problem. The problem is that Win7 will hibernate the Data partition, as well.

So basically, if you're hibernating Win7, you can't write to a partition it knows about while it is hibernated.

It might work (or appear to), but when you restart Win7, it will rewrite the partition table of the Data partition, and any changes you made will be gone -- or worse -- the partition now won't mount in Linux because the filesystem has become corrupted.

Sorry ... but MS appears to presume that when it is hibernated, none of its partitions are going to be touched.