Why do hibernate and sleep work differently in Windows 7?Windows 7 is the 1st OS where I saw the BIOS screen before I saw Windows when turning on the computer after putting it to sleep or hibernate.ThanksMark

Sleep and Hibernate are different from eachother, if that's what you're asking.Sleep mode onlypowers downparts of the system that aren't actually in use, but the system itself is still running. Hibernate shuts the entire system down, but lets you return to the state it was in before when you start it back up.If you're asking whether or not they're different from previous versions of Windows, the best answer I can give you is that Windows 7 power management still seems to be a work in progress.

There's also a third mode - hybrid sleep. Where the system goes into a low power state like sleep, but also saves everything to disk like hibernate.

I know what the different functions do, but Windows 7 is the 1st OS that I saw the BIOS screen when resuming. So I was just wondering why.Mark

I'm thinkign itmight be your computer, because mine starts right up into the OS. What kind of computer are you using?

I think it's probably because the exact way in which the modes work have changed over the years, wasn't hibernate more like hybrid-sleep before Vista? I must admit I'm not sure, as I don't use hybrid or hibernate because when you have a fair bit of RAM it's often faster to just cold boot. So I tend to use sleep or shutdown!

My computer has a P5N-E SLI motherboard, but I don't think it's the motherboard/BIOS settings.I'm running XP, Vista, and Windows 7 on this computer and Windows 7 is the only one that resumes that way.Mark

fret not mark, i also encounter the same situatioan with yursonan 'ancient' nForce-2 system.this is not happening while on Windows Vista or earlier.

kupang said: fret not mark, i also encounter the same situatioan with yursonan 'ancient' nForce-2 system.this is not happening while on Windows Vista or earlier.I was just curious, that's all. But I did find out that the hybrid sleep works normally. It's hibernate and standby that act funny, but that's okay.Mark

I have a Dell D830 laptop (June 2008 build) and the sleep mode works, albeit a little differently than I am used to with WinXP. I have it setup to sleep when I close the lid, but after several hours, the computer hibernates. The difference being that if I wake it out of sleep mode, the login screen pops up right away, but waking out of sleep mode requires the computer to retrieve the hibernate-save data while it tells me that it is "resuming Windows"... Either way, I have no wake-up issues, and the wifi is instantly available even with WPA2 encryption. -Rookie

I have a Dell D830 laptop (June 2008 build) and the sleep mode works, albeit a little differently than I am used to with WinXP.I have it setup to sleep when I close the lid, but after several hours, the computer hibernates. The difference being that if I wake it out of sleep mode, the login screen pops up right away, but waking out of sleep mode requires the computer to retrieve the hibernate-save data while it tells me that it is "resuming Windows"...Either way, I have no wake-up issues, and the wifi is instantly available even with WPA2 encryption.-Rookie Spoke too soon... I had a "Blue-Screen of Death" on resuming Win7 Hibernation.. "Bad Boot Caller" error... Grrr.The settings are silly... Why would you want to hibernate after you've already slept ? Weird...-Win7Rookie

If your system sleeps, then hibernates, it is doing the "hybrid sleep" thing. That is, you have "Allow hybrid sleep" set to "On". If you don't like it (too weird), modify your power plan to set it "Off".(Search "sleep" in forums to see the Win 7 sleep/resume failure modes, so you don't spend too much time trying to make it work.)