Sleep vs. Shutdown

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

SteveGG wrote:
What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ernate-your-pc

I sometimes (but rarely) use hibernate on the LT when I want to store everything
exactly like I last used it and know I will get back to it in a few hours.
Most of the time I just shut everything down on all the machines - cleans the ram.
I never use sleep - not needed for anything.

On 08/30/2016 04:02 PM, SteveGG wrote:
What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

My laptop is always powered so sleep, using a tiny bit of power, is my
go to. I never turn it off/shutdown execpt for longgggg term off time
or to reboot into windows.

I run linux.

PS Sleep maintains power to the pc because stuff is still in memory.
Hibernate saves everything to a file (hiberfil.sys in root) and then
powers off. So one is more power friendly

SteveGG wrote:
What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

The merits show up on a Kill-a-Watt P4400 meter.

http://www.p3international.com/products/p4400.html

My networking equipment (runs 24/7) 17W
S3 Sleep (on big computer, RAM powered) 7.5W
S5 Shutdown 1.0W
Mechanical off on computer 0.0W

The above, are just from memory. I should have
written all the measurements down when I had
the chance.

Since there are no fans running in Sleep state,
and the fans are powered by +12V, and the CPU is
powered by +12V, the CPU is not likely to be
running in Sleep state. (This comment applies
to Desktop computers... Laptops are not as
indicative, as to what they're doing.)

On a desktop, the power supply is split into two
sections. The +3.3V/5V/12V is the "main" section.
The +5VSB is a separate "standby" power supply.
In the S3 Sleep state, the +5VSB runs everything
(including RAM refresh and WOL on the NIC). In the
S5 shutdown state, if you turn off WOL as well,
the motherboard can achieve a relatively low
waste power figure. One of the objectives of
the EuP/ErP Initiative.

Paul

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

First, when you say sleep, do you mean hybrid sleep? I think hybrid
sleep is the default, and I don't know for sure if it's even possible
in win7 to set the power settings so that hybrid sleep turns into
XP-style sleep, but I think it is possible. (In WinXP and earlier
there was no hybrid sleep. Everything is original sleep.)

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active

About the CPU, maybe. But the part that matters is that it applies
some power to the RAM so the RAM doesn't forget what it knew. That
way, when you start up again, the RAM is already loaded and ready to
go, just as it was before you slept it.

but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

No, Shutdown is simpler. Normal shutdown does things like close
programs that are running, delete temporary files and maybe install
pending windows updates and then it turns the power off and the
machine forgets everything that was in RAM completely.

I thought you were going to compare (hybrid) sleep with hibernate,
which is the same as Shutdown except that it first copies all the RAM
to the harddrive and sets a flag so that on restart, Windows will know
that it was hibernated the last time and it will find the hiberfil
file and copy it all back to the RAM so that it's just as it was
before you slept it.

Shutdown uses no power except what it takes for the little battery to
power the clock.

Hibernate uses the same power as shutdown, but it starts up where you
left off. Eventually you will have to reboot because things can get
screwed up, but some people go two weeks or more without rebooting.

Sleep, hybrid or not, uses power to keep some voltage on the RAM (and
elsewhere?) so the RAM state doesn't change.
In hybrid sleep, if there's a power failure or you unplug the
computer, it turns into hibernate, because the RAM is copied to the
hard drive.
In non-hybrid sleep, if there's a power failure or you unplug the
computer, it turns into Shutdown.

With Hibernate, if there's a power failure or you unplug the computer,
nothing changes.

With Shutdown, when you start, it has to boot, it has load all the
startup progams, and after it starts, none of your non-start-up
programs are running. The task bar is empty and you have to start each
one. Some programs will know where they left off the last time, but
others won't. This last sentence is worth another post.

I don't know how much power it uses during sleep, but I consider it
slightly wasteful that I use sleep even when I know I'm not coming
back to the computer for 9 hours. If I know in advance it will be 24
hours, I hibernate. The only difference in startup is about 30
seconds for 4Gigs. In XP there was a progress bar and you could watch
as the RAM was loaded from the harddrive and I had 4gigs then. Some
people have more memory than that, but otoh, hardrives, buses, and RAM
are all faster now. So it's probably less than 30 seconds per 4gigs.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 21:22:40 -0400, Micky
wrote:

In hybrid sleep, if there's a power failure or you unplug the
computer, it turns into hibernate, because the RAM is copied to the
hard drive.

This is an example of the historical present tense. Either that or
"copied" is an adjective or participle and not part of the verb.

More clear would be that the RAM was copied to the hard drive.

Micky wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 21:22:40 -0400, Micky
wrote:

In hybrid sleep, if there's a power failure or you unplug the
computer, it turns into hibernate, because the RAM is copied to the
hard drive.

This is an example of the historical present tense. Either that or
"copied" is an adjective or participle and not part of the verb.

More clear would be that the RAM was copied to the hard drive.

In Hybrid sleep, when you select Sleep from the menu:

1) RAM contents already contain all the programs of the session.
2) Time is spent, right then and there, copying the RAM into
the hiberfil.sys. On a large computer (64GB RAM) with a lot
of programs open, this could take 7-8 *minutes*.

Consequently, for large computers, this is an issue.

The actual time taken is variable - if no programs are open,
the hiberfil.sys part happens quickly. The 7-8 minute thing
is a worst case scenario.

When a Hybrid sleep computer wakes up.

1) If the power did not fail, the power was fully maintained
during the sleep interval, the RAM contents are valid.
The CPU picks up instantly, from where it left off.
When returning from sleep, there is a delay while the hard
drives spin up. If you had only an SSD, return from sleep should
occur quickly.

2) If the power failed while Hybrid Sleeping, now the RAM
contents are not valid. And the hardware knows it happened
(power dipped too low).

Now, the hiberfil.sys has to be copied into RAM, during
the boot process. On a large computer, this could take
7-8 *minutes* , assuming a regular hard drive with slow read
speed is being used.

Regular sleep is: fast on shutdown, fast on startup, not datasafe
on power failure (the RAM contents are lost),
journaled NTFS helps with file system cleanup
if cleanup is needed.

HTH,
Paul

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

BTW, are you talking about a desktop or laptop?

If it's a laptop and it's not plugged in, sleep will run down the
battery. Hybrid or regular, same thing.

So that's another time to use hibernate if you want to keep your
place.

Shutdown if that's not imporant, or and this is important, if you want
to install updates. I've only used Win7 a little bit, although I did
about 150 updates, in 3 batches, iirc. Windows won't install updates
when you do hybrid sleep or hibernate, because you can't restart the
program just the way it was if it now has new files**. And they
won't install in regular sleep for pretty much the same reason.

In XP this was clear, because when it displayed the row of 3 icons in
the middle of the screen, for 3 kinds of ending your computer session,
only Shutdown had the little shield in the upper left corner, which
only showed up when there were updates pending. That mean the other
options didn't do updates. I miss those days because you could end
the session with winkey, U, U or winkey, U, H, and you didn't need the
mouse. It was quicker.

**I remember in the 8th grade, Health and Safety, a girl asked why
identical twins can't be one boy and one girl, and the teacher
couldn't explain it to her. She tried. They went back and forth 3 or
4 full cycles.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

Sleep = CPU goes into extremely low power mode; in most cases, just
the minimum to keep the CPU barely ticking over and the RAM refreshed.
The advantage is that it wakes up very quickly, but you are dependent
on having a constant source of power (either from a battery or from
the wall). If that power goes, then you lose any data that wasn't
saved to disk.

Shutdown = The computer is completely shutdown. All running programs
are closed and the OS neatly turns itself off, and then the whole
machine powers down completely. The advantage to this mode is that it
doesn't require any power at all - yank the battery, pull the plug, it
won't affect the computer at all! - but start-up is much slower, as
the computer has to go through its hardware-based power-up routine,
the OS has to load and any background apps need to reload... and only
then can you start up your work programs (browser, email, word
processor, games). On the gripping hand, your computer does start from
a "fresh slate".

There are also two other states of note

Hibernation = The OS saves its current state - including all apps in
RAM - to a file on disk, then fully shuts down. The advantage here is
that - once hibernation is complete - your computer doesn't need any
power, and its start-up time is reduced because rather than
initializing all its programs from start it is just reloading their
run-state from the "save-file" on disk. It's slower to start than
coming out from sleep, but faster than returning from a full shutdown
(especially on SSDs).

Hybrid Sleep = Introduced with Windows 8 (not available on XP, Vista
or 7), it is a combination of Hibernation and Sleep. It is the default
shutdown state for desktop Windows PCs (that is, even if you choose
"shutdown" on Win8+, you are acually doing a hybrid sleep. Run
"shutdown.exe /s /t 0" to manually initiate a proper shutdown). It
saves your RAMs current state to a hibernation file, then puts the
computer to sleep. It still uses a trickle of power, but if the power
fails, you don't lose any data because its all been saved to disk
anyway.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 21:57:24 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Micky wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 21:22:40 -0400, Micky
wrote:

In hybrid sleep, if there's a power failure or you unplug the
computer, it turns into hibernate, because the RAM is copied to the
hard drive.

This is an example of the historical present tense. Either that or
"copied" is an adjective or participle and not part of the verb.

More clear would be that the RAM was copied to the hard drive.

In Hybrid sleep, when you select Sleep from the menu:

1) RAM contents already contain all the programs of the session.
2) Time is spent, right then and there, copying the RAM into
the hiberfil.sys. On a large computer (64GB RAM) with a lot
of programs open, this could take 7-8 *minutes*.

I hope some day to be fortunate enough to have 64Gigs**, and it's
interesting that 8 minute for 64 is proportional to 30 seconds for
4gigs. Maybe I had actually timed it when I had XP.

So if one has a lot of programs running and he wants to resume that
way, after a plain shutdown, it will take less time to boot, but more
time to open each of the programs.. Maybe not 8 minutes, but it will
require more attention on the part of the user.

OTOH, with hibernate, one could do what I used to do when my computer
was slower, turn the computer on, then brush my teeth, wash my face,
get dressed and by then it was running.

When I turn it off, I usually don't care how long that takes.

Consequently, for large computers, this is an issue.

The actual time taken is variable - if no programs are open,
the hiberfil.sys part happens quickly. The 7-8 minute thing
is a worst case scenario.

Good to know.

When a Hybrid sleep computer wakes up.

1) If the power did not fail, the power was fully maintained
during the sleep interval, the RAM contents are valid.
The CPU picks up instantly, from where it left off.
When returning from sleep, there is a delay while the hard
drives spin up. If you had only an SSD, return from sleep should
occur quickly.

2) If the power failed while Hybrid Sleeping, now the RAM
contents are not valid. And the hardware knows it happened
(power dipped too low).

Now, the hiberfil.sys has to be copied into RAM, during
the boot process. On a large computer, this could take
7-8 *minutes* , assuming a regular hard drive with slow read
speed is being used.

Regular sleep is: fast on shutdown, fast on startup, not datasafe
on power failure (the RAM contents are lost),
journaled NTFS helps with file system cleanup
if cleanup is needed.

So one can still arrange to have regular sleep with Win7?

I thought so because when I only had XP and had never heard of hybrid
sleep, I was fiddling with my mentor's win7 computer and and I changed
things. Then I got home and read some more and realized I might
have messed him up, and tried to describe in an email how to make
things right again. He lives 200 miles away and he's my mentor on
things other than computers. On that, I am sometimes his. I never
did hear back on that topic.

HTH,
Paul

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:30:32 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
wrote:

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

Sleep = CPU goes into extremely low power mode; in most cases, just
the minimum to keep the CPU barely ticking over and the RAM refreshed.
The advantage is that it wakes up very quickly, but you are dependent
on having a constant source of power (either from a battery or from
the wall). If that power goes, then you lose any data that wasn't
saved to disk.

Shutdown = The computer is completely shutdown. All running programs
are closed and the OS neatly turns itself off, and then the whole
machine powers down completely. The advantage to this mode is that it
doesn't require any power at all - yank the battery, pull the plug, it
won't affect the computer at all! - but start-up is much slower, as
the computer has to go through its hardware-based power-up routine,
the OS has to load and any background apps need to reload... and only
then can you start up your work programs (browser, email, word
processor, games). On the gripping hand, your computer does start from
a "fresh slate".

Very clearly written.

Two comments. (Well, I planned to only make two short comments.)

There are also two other states of note

Hibernation = The OS saves its current state - including all apps in
RAM - to a file on disk, then fully shuts down. The advantage here is
that - once hibernation is complete - your computer doesn't need any
power, and its start-up time is reduced because rather than
initializing all its programs from start it is just reloading their
run-state from the "save-file" on disk. It's slower to start than

Another thing about hibernate: If your computer's not running well
when you hibernate, it won't be running any better when you come out
of hibernation. Why should it? Everything is put back the way it
was**. But because it feels so much like restarting, it took me
several times with problems to remember that problems that rebooting
would solve will still be there.

**Well, almost everything, but not necessarily that which depends on
an outside source. I seem to remember that if you're in the middle of
watching a video, at least a streaming video and not a video file on
your own computer, you'll be back at the start again. And I'm 98%
sure that when I listen to live radio, through the web, using
RadioMaximus and probably anything else, when it starts up again it
finishes playing what was still in the buffer when I hibernated (so in
that regard it's just where I left off), and then there's a period of
silence while the program reconnects with the net and the server with
the radio program. And since it's live, it doesn't start up where
the buffer left off. But even if it weren't live, I don't know that
it would do better than youtube videos do.

coming out from sleep, but faster than returning from a full shutdown
(especially on SSDs).

Hybrid Sleep = Introduced with Windows 8 (not available on XP, Vista
or 7), it is a combination of Hibernation and Sleep. It is the default

Au contraire, mon ami. I have it in Vista, and I only used 7 for a
week, but I think it was in 7, especially since it's in vista.

Even though it woudl be overkill, for the OP I was going to quote the
whole Vista Help entry (one of two when I searched on "hybrid") but it
keeps talking only about mobile PCs and makes little or no effort to
include non-mobile ones. and it says:

"Sleep is typically the best power-saving state to leave your mobile
PC in when you're not using it."

This is ridiculous. Shutdown or Hibernate is the best-power saving
state for a mobile PC if it is unplugged. Sleep will run down the
battery. I had a laptop with a battery that would only keep it
running for about 3 minutes, only enough time to change electric
outlets in the same house. I don't know how long it would have
lasted on sleep but not that long.

" Shut down your mobile PC or put it into hibernation only when you
must turn off the power (for example, when you want to add memory or
you don’t plan to use the computer for several days)."

Only when you want to add memory! Why not when you want to replace
the CD drive or the screen? Several days! Vista does seem to
work better than XP on the matter of not needing rebooting as often,
(but it does need it before I add more memory). And on my desktop it
will usually last several days but that would drain a laptop battery
for no good reason.*** Whoever wrote this doesn't seem to notice
the difference between plugged in and charging vs. running on the
battery.

***Can you get a laptop with 64GB? If not, what is the max?

shutdown state for desktop Windows PCs (that is, even if you choose
"shutdown" on Win8+, you are acually doing a hybrid sleep. Run
"shutdown.exe /s /t 0" to manually initiate a proper shutdown). It
saves your RAMs current state to a hibernation file, then puts the
computer to sleep. It still uses a trickle of power, but if the power
fails, you don't lose any data because its all been saved to disk
anyway.

It's a very good idea. I wish I'd thought of it.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active but Shutdown is
more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

Others, particularly Paul and Spalls (?), have described fully the
differences between the various states, I will describe how I think they
are best used, that is, how I use them :-!

I set all my PCs to disable Hybrid Sleep, and to sleep first, then
hibernate, as follows:
Sleep after 15 mins on battery, 30 mins on mains;
Hibernate after 30 mins on battery, 60 mins on mains;
With laptops, hibernate on lid close.

I used to use hibernate mainly on laptops, but nowadays I use it on
desktops as well. The original reason that I didn't use hibernate on
desktops were that, on Windows 2000:
:-( It takes a long for the PC to hibernate
:-( You often have to close FF12 to allow it to happen
Now I do use it, even on my two old W2k PCs, because:
:-) They power up much, much more quickly

In fact, switching both machines back on at once from a state of
hibernation, a 3GHz P4 running W2k gets to the login screen before a quad
core laptop running W7. That's W7's bloatware for you :-(

--
Please reply to newsgroup

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

Especially, what is best for the life of the computer,
especially the moving parts?

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 10:21:23 -0400, Micky
wrote:

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:30:32 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?

snip

Very clearly written.
Two comments. (Well, I planned to only make two short comments.)

Hibernation = The OS saves its current state - including all apps in
RAM - to a file on disk, then fully shuts down. The advantage here is
that - once hibernation is complete - your computer doesn't need any
power, and its start-up time is reduced because rather than
initializing all its programs from start it is just reloading their
run-state from the "save-file" on disk. It's slower to start than

Another thing about hibernate: If your computer's not running well
when you hibernate, it won't be running any better when you come out
of hibernation. Why should it? Everything is put back the way it
was**. But because it feels so much like restarting, it took me
several times with problems to remember that problems that rebooting
would solve will still be there.

Same thing with sleep. For that "fresh boot" feeling, nothing beats a
proper shutdown/restart.

**Well, almost everything, but not necessarily that which depends on
an outside source. I seem to remember that if you're in the middle of
watching a video, at least a streaming video and not a video file on
your own computer, you'll be back at the start again. And I'm 98%
sure that when I listen to live radio, through the web, using
RadioMaximus and probably anything else, when it starts up again it
finishes playing what was still in the buffer when I hibernated (so in
that regard it's just where I left off), and then there's a period of
silence while the program reconnects with the net and the server with
the radio program. And since it's live, it doesn't start up where
the buffer left off. But even if it weren't live, I don't know that
it would do better than youtube videos do.

As it was once explained to me, this is really the fault of the apps,
not the OS. Windows isn't just doing a raw RAM dump to disk and
restoring it on boot; it's more complicated than that. Rather, the OS
sends the signal, "hey, sleepy time everybody; give me your save
states so we can restore you to exactly where you were before!" and it
is up to the app to provide the proper information. Some apps -
possibly due to copy-protection - only provide basic info like "I'm
running with these windows open and I have this .AVI file open" but
not any specifics like - as you pointed out - how far they've gotten
through the movie. I once had a text editor that lost information
whenever it hibernated (or slept) because I didn't save the file
first; the editor opened after I woke up the PC, but with no file and
- gasp - no data :-/. The app wasn't passing all the necessary
information to the OS so Windows couldn't restore it properly after
coming out of hibernation.

At least, that's what I was told was causing the problem.

Hybrid Sleep = Introduced with Windows 8 (not available on XP, Vista
or 7), it is a combination of Hibernation and Sleep. It is the default

Au contraire, mon ami. I have it in Vista, and I only used 7 for a
week, but I think it was in 7, especially since it's in vista.

You are correct. I was thinking of the "hybrid shutdown" that became
the default shutdown for Win8+. This is essentially a hibernation mode
but - assuming your hardware supports it - allows Windows to bypass
the hardware power-up tests. That's why Win8+ boots so much faster
than Win7.

shutdown state for desktop Windows PCs (that is, even if you choose
"shutdown" on Win8+, you are acually doing a hybrid sleep. Run
"shutdown.exe /s /t 0" to manually initiate a proper shutdown). It
saves your RAMs current state to a hibernation file, then puts the
computer to sleep. It still uses a trickle of power, but if the power
fails, you don't lose any data because its all been saved to disk
anyway.

It's a very good idea. I wish I'd thought of it.

I realize my explanation above was made confusing by the placement of
my parenthetical aside.

Hybrid sleep creates the hibernation file, then puts the computer to
sleep; it still uses power but should the power get cut off suddenly,
you don't lose data.

Using "shutdown.exe /s /t 0" is a full shutdown and does NOT create a
hibernation file. The OS quits all the apps, then shuts itself down,
then turns off the hardware; if you are lucky, you get prompted to
save any unsaved data first ;-). Since it doesn't have a hibernation
file and isn't in sleep mode, it has the slowest of boots, but it's
also the only way to get that "fresh boot" feeling. When changing
hardware (or tinkering with anything that might modify the boot
sector), it is best to use a "full shutdown". Unfortunately, because
the hybrid-shutdown method is the default in Win8+, the only way to do
this is with the "shutdown.exe /s /t 0" command.

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:32:10 -0700, masonc
wrote:

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:02:54 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

What's the relative merits of these states for an inactive PC ?
Sleep appears to have some function of the CPU active
but Shutdown is more thorough and involved. Opinions ?

Especially, what is best for the life of the computer,
especially the moving parts?

This gets into the argument, "is it better to keep my PC running or
shut it down?", of which both sides have their adherents.

On the one hand, there are those who argue it is better to shutdown
(or hibernate) your PC since - obviously - if your PC isn't running at
all, there's less wear-n-tear on the machinery. On the other hand, the
other side points out that starting up the PC is a shocking blast of
electricity to cold circuits that can cause more damage (infintesimal
as it is) than it would endure if you just kept it running.

(I also wonder at how much effect the creation of the gigabyte-sized
hibernation.fil files has on SSDs. That's a lot of extra read-n-writes
on the cells.)

Personally, I think that - for average PCs at least - you are more
likely to replace the device because of its obsolescence long before
any damage (from restarts or keeping it running) accrues to the point
of noticability. I tend to shut down if I know I'm not going to use
the computer for some hours (overnight) and otherwise just lock it
(running but with a password) or let it sleep. I schedule a full
shutdown/restart of all my Windows computers once a week though
because, well, it's Windows ;-)