Re: PSA: Somehow, without action from me, hyberfile.sys got turned on

On Tue, 3/31/2026 3:35 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
> This is just a PSA where my circa 2009 desktop works just fine on Windows
> 10 but today, it was out of memory even though I had about 5GB left.
> 
> Huh? 
> Where did 5GB of data suddenly go? 
>   C:\> wmic logicaldisk get name,freespace,size
>   C:\> vssadmin list shadowstorage
>        
> I checked all the usual suspects (which is a long list I maintain) such as:
>   C:\> dism /online /cleanup-image /analyzecomponentstore
>   Win+R > cleanmgr > Clean Up System Files > OK
>   C:\> del /s /q C:\Windows\Prefetch\*
>   C:\> del %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps\*
>   etc.
> 
> But it wasn't any of the usual suspects!
> It was hyberfile.sys!
> 
> WTF?
> 
> Sleep is off. Fast startup is off. Everything related to power is off.
> Point being that I haven't turned on hibernation in more than a decade.
>  Q: How the heck did hibernation get turned on without me doing it?
>  A: I don't know the answer.
> 
> But the solution was simple once I saw that hiberfile.sys was the culprit:
>  C:> powercfg /h off
> 
> Note: Obviously I had turned that off years ago, so "something" in the
> recent days turned hiberfile.sys back on. But what? I do not know.
> 

I had a hiberfil.sys change itself to a larger size.
I did not think that was possible either.

You could ask a similar question "why does my screen blanker
keep setting itself to 10 minutes?". We know how that is
happening (Windows Update), but we don't know why this is
so so important to Microsoft, to make a fetish out of it.

I've told the story before, about running a diagnostic
from the Microsoft Diagnostics that has nothing whatsoever
to do with screens or video. At the end of this particular
sequence, a message appears "we noticed your screen blanker
was set to a value other than 10 minutes, we have corrected
this for you". Well, Thank You, Daddy :-/ Such paternalism.
That's why I am calling that one a fetish.

   Paul