Since in the other thread we were discussing Win95, it reminded me of a one puzzle I haven't solved yet, perhaps someone here have an answer I need.

I have this old box build by IBM which BIOS supports hibernation. It used to have Windows 3.11 originally with the capability of hibernation. It was done over some proprietary IBM's app dumping current content of RAM to a file on hard disk, and reading it and loading it back to RAM on start. Thats all I remember, I no longer have any of the original software that came with this box (been moving few times since then and this box was lended to one of my old roommates for few years), anyway I really would love to have it back on this machine. It is working just as my 'network player' in a bedroom, I use it maybe for 30-60min every few days, thus obviously there is no reason for it to be powered up 24/7 as it is now (yet i keep it up because it takes too long to boot when I want to use it). Hibernating it would be best to do.

I have found various utilities, most of them proprietary apps, for old laptops, that are capable of putting the Win95/98 machine quickly into hibernation and restoring it back.
However none of them works with this particular IBM desktop (Aptiva 2168 M70). I was able to succesfully install and setup Phdisk on my old Acer notebook when I installed Win98 and tested it there, but doing the same on this IBM desktop doesnt do any good.

Any hints? tips? pointers where to look/read would be greatly appreciated, TIA!

One almost useless comment from way back, but maybe it will come in handy: I remember that what seems possible, according to visible option tabs, is not the same as what IS possible. I recall people thinking hibernation was not an available option on a given system, when in fact it simply wasn't set up right.

There were misleading articles on the web about that. So I think you can assume the machine is capable, once the technique is figured out. This suggests it is less to do with the model, and more to do with a complete understanding of the nooks and crannies in Windows. I'll snoop around and see what I can find . . . .

Yeah . . . . It's coming back to me a little bit. One method involved holding down the shift key. Suddenly the missing button is there. The wrong way of thinking was that the absence of a Hibernate tab or button indicated the motherboard or something would not support hibernation. The right way of thinking was that there was a simple little thing you could do and Surprise! there was the button, just waiting for you.

Work in progress: this is a Google search page. (I've broken it by inserting a space after "hibernation", so a repair is required to use it live

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%2B%22how+to+enable+hibernation %22%2B%22windows+95%22&btnG=Search&meta=

Thx for helping hand, Carson.
All I know about it in a nutshell:
Since release of windows ME and newer it is done by simply dumping RAM to a file and setting a loader reading content of this file and placing it back to RAM at boot, through ACPI and/or APM1.2 (IIRC). So it is controlled by OS.
But before Win ME, before ACPI and APM1.2, it was controlled by BIOS/OS cooperative I.e. Win95 fires up Phdisk to dump RAM content to a file, and BIOS must have been capable of reading such file and loading it back to RAM during boot.
Thats how it is done on that old Acer notebook I mentioned before (AFAIK).

However this IBM desktop is 3 years older than the notebook, and its BIOS has quite different settings/options to set in regard to hibernation (its called Rapid Resume there, and has extra option to "initialize adapter cards", change APM BIOS Mode to 16bit, protected mode only, 16 & 32bit, or 32 bit mode only, and few other nifty things), and even though I set this desktop as a laptop (fooling Win95) and installed Phdisk, set its dump file to the size of RAM (everything as it supposed to be - same way as I succesfully set it on my Acer notebook) etc etc - it still gives me BIOS warning msg at boot every time, regardless of enabling or disabling the Rapid Resume in the BIOS (I guess even if disabled, the RAM dump file have to be there on root somewhere), and anyway it doesn't see the Phdisk's dump file at all.

Yes, there are tons of confusing articles on the web, mainly because "hibernation" wasn't widely used before WinME or perhaps WinXP.
But I *know* for sure that it was (and should be still) supported on some old machines such as this one, since the BIOS has this option, and it was hibernating some 10 years ago already

thx for the link, I think i went through most of it already, but just checking again in case i missed on somethin

Well, this one goes beyond my tech range, but it sounds as though you could follow it. The specific article is this one:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/hiberfat32.mspx

and it is found in this general collection (I've broken the link again, so the page doesn't get stretched left-to-right):
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?view=en-us&st=b&na= 82&qu=hibernate windows+95

Of course, with luck, someone else using Windows 95 will simply turn up right here with the solution! And it helps to know it can be done--it's just a matter of knowing what to do!

pretty interesting discussion about hibernation and win95.

back then, only a few systems (mostly IBM Aptiva machines) had the hibernation feature ONLY if the BIOS supported the feature and a hibernation partition was created with a special utility. if the bios option isnt there, then forget about hibernation in those old machines.

Phdisk doesnt work on IBM Aptiva machines because phdisk was meant for machines that had Phoenix BIOSes. IBM Aptiva pcs use a different BIOS.

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888
Yes, there are tons of confusing articles on the web, mainly because "hibernation" wasn't widely used before WinME or perhaps WinXP.

or Windows 2000. The hibernate feature was built-in windows 2000, millennium, xp and vista if you had an ACPI-ready desktop or laptop and did not rely on any proprietary tools or special BIOS settings as long as ACPI support is enabled in the BIOS.

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Carson

Of course, with luck, someone else using Windows 95 will simply turn up right here with the solution! And it helps to know it can be done--it's just a matter of knowing what to do!

AND knowing what kinds of systems that can allow hibernation. if you're trying to add the hibernate feature onto an old existing computer from a decade ago (lets say an NEC Ready desktop or a Dell Dimension PC), that is pretty much impossible.

Look here on how to use Rapid Resume. The Rapid Resume option in IBM BIOS is what made IBM Aptiva computers go into hibernation. A decade ago, it was not called hibernation or may have been referred to as something else and was limited to mostly laptop computers and very few desktop computers. ONLY IBM Aptiva machines had the hibernate-like ability using the Rapid Resume option in the BIOS. There were NO options in other BIOSes that would offer power management options similar to rapid resume. See here on the many BIOS setup screens on power management.

Hibernation might also be called "Suspend-To-Disk" or "Save-to-disk" on some laptop BIOSes



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2007 12:05AM by noel-pg2.

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Carson
Yeah . . . . It's coming back to me a little bit. One method involved holding down the shift key. Suddenly the missing button is there. The wrong way of thinking was that the absence of a Hibernate tab or button indicated the motherboard or something would not support hibernation. The right way of thinking was that there was a simple little thing you could do and Surprise! there was the button, just waiting for you.

the Hibernate feature will appear when clicking on the Shift key at the Shut Down menu of Windows XP! The Standby option will change to Hibernate when holding the Shift key at the Shut Down screen.

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I have found various utilities, most of them proprietary apps, for old laptops, that are capable of putting the Win95/98 machine quickly into hibernation and restoring it back.
However none of them works with this particular IBM desktop (Aptiva 2168 M70). I was able to succesfully install and setup Phdisk on my old Acer notebook when I installed Win98 and tested it there, but doing the same on this IBM desktop doesnt do any good.

Like I said before, PHDISK doesnt work under IBM Aptiva machines as it's for notebook computers with Phoenix BIOSes like what your Acer Notebook has. Your IBM Aptiva computer uses a different kind of BIOS.

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However this IBM desktop is 3 years older than the notebook, and its BIOS has quite different settings/options to set in regard to hibernation (its called Rapid Resume there, and has extra option to "initialize adapter cards", change APM BIOS Mode to 16bit, protected mode only, 16 & 32bit, or 32 bit mode only, and few other nifty things), and even though I set this desktop as a laptop (fooling Win95) and installed Phdisk, set its dump file to the size of RAM (everything as it supposed to be - same way as I succesfully set it on my Acer notebook) etc etc - it still gives me BIOS warning msg at boot every time, regardless of enabling or disabling the Rapid Resume in the BIOS (I guess even if disabled, the RAM dump file have to be there on root somewhere), and anyway it doesn't see the Phdisk's dump file at all.

I found the problem, 888. You were using the wrong dump file and the wrong utility. The Rapid Resume feature uses the _ps1save.dat file for hibernation! The PS1PFILE.EXE or IBMPFILE.EXE is what creates the _ps1save.dat hibernate file for IBM Aptiva machines and the RESUME.EXE is what makes IBM Aptiva computers use Rapid Resume. If you don't have these files on your IBM Aptiva machine, get them for the \IBMBUILD\RRESUME\ or \IBMBUILD\RRESUM32\ folder of the Aptiva Diagnostics and Utilities CD.
Follow the instructions here on how to fully reload or re-enable Rapid Resume on your Aptiva machine:
http://members.aol.com/mbs1058/resume.html#reload

of course, if you don't have the IBM Aptiva Diagnostics and Utilities CD, ask IBM for one if they still have any.

Hope this helps, 888!