Re: Windows 10 and 11 power state habits: shutdown, sleep or hibernate

On Sun, 1/25/2026 11:00 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On 25 Jan 2026 19:01:27 GMT, Frank Slootweg <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>>  I'm not talking about any 'modern' power states, like Modern Standby,
>> but like old-fashioned  Sleep (S3), which you do have, and old-fashioned
>> Hibernate (S4).
>>
>>  You say that you don't have Hibernate, but I think it's more likely
>> you have not enabled Hibernate or/and do not have a hiberfil.sys file.
>>
>>  Hibernate exists since decades, so it's unlikely that a 2009 machine
>> doesn't have it.
>>
>>  Anyway, with just Sleep most things - except RAM - should power down
>> or go to a low-power state, ready to resume all your active programs in
>> seconds (if that) instead of the time you now need to get a coffee.
> 
> What I do notice is that if I leave my desktop computer (running Win
> XP) for a couple of hours, it goes to sleep, orn at lease the screen
> goes off, but I just have to move the mounse to wake it up. 
> 
> When my Win 10 laptop goes to sleep because I haven't used it for a
> couple of hours, it won't wake up by just moving the mouse -- I have
> to start it up again before shutting it down -- like when I go off to
> watch TV for a couple of hours and decide to go to bed rather than
> continue working, I have to effectivle start the laptop up and log in
> before I can stop it. 

One state would be monitor standby, like an S1.

The other state is likely to be an S3 Sleep. if
no wake function is programmed for mouse or keyboard,
the Power Button should re-awaken the thing. A
quick touch should suffice. If you hold the power
button in for more than four seconds, it could result
in all power dropping and the sleep session lost.

Another possibility, is S4 hibernate, and you may have
programmed the Power Options to make that the preferred option.

Basically, if all else fails, the Power Button is an ACPI Object
in the BIOS table, and operation can be coordinated via that button.
So if you didn't use Device Manager to set the mouse up
for awakening the computer, the Power Button is always supposed
to be available. And a quick touch should suffice to return from S3 to S0.

ACPI objects, allow communications between the OS and the BIOS, without
any threatening "giveio.dll" type stuff to make it happen. The kernel does
not normally allow you to touch hardware directly. Things
like ACPI objects give one extra mechanism for achieving a result.

I don't use sleep here all that often, but if I do, the mouse is
not normally set to wake things, and I use the Power Button
to wake the daily driver (during tests).

One of the Power Options, over on the left is

    "Choose what the power button does"

Mine is set to "Shutdown", and one reason for that is I have removed
the hibernation file with "powercfg /h off" and then the Power Button
cannot be set to hibernate.

Older PC had more buttons, so there would actually be two buttons
on the front of the PC you could press, each with a different purpose.
(And this wasn't the RESET button either :-) ). There might also have
been a LED at one time, that indicated an email message had arrived.
Such Cadillac times.

   Paul