How to Change Windows Hibernation Behavior

by Rian

Did you know Windows 11 is shipped with power button replaced with hibernation? If you are starting a computer from cold boot, the computer isn’t starting a boot up process from scratch; in fact, it’s reloading the cache from what was on the previous session.

I won’t go into the details as to what the hibernation is and how to utilize it, but to put it simply, on the Mac and Linux side, it’s customary to put computer into hibernation (sleep mode) then to actually turn it off. Turning it off and on again, or restart, only happens when there is a problem that needs solving. On Windows side, it had been customary to turn it off; I was surprised to see most users nowadays don’t turn it off either.

Regardless, if you were expecting Windows PC booting from cold to solve the problems, it may not due to the new hibernation behavior taking place. The “power off” on Windows 11 is now saving the cache for faster boot up.

On Windows Power shell opened with administrative privilege, type the following command:

powercfg /h \{on | off}

Setting it “off” will disable the hibernation. I don’t know why this isn’t done with GUI, but for the time being, this will do the trick.