How do I enable Hybrid Boot in Windows 8?

Question

Why is my "Enable Hybrid Boot" option grayed out in Windows 8, and how can I enable it?

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Performing a powercfg /a results in the following error being reported:

Hybrid Sleep: The hypervisor does not support this standby state.

Ask here. you shall get an answer- http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdeveloperpreviewgeneral/threads — Gulshan, Sep 23 '11 at 12:46
Without any details on your computer/OS/drivers, we can only guess; can you provide some specifications? — Tamara Wijsman, Nov 24 '11 at 13:36
see if it has a check mark beside it. If you want to adjust this setting, click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable" — , Sep 23 '11 at 16:38
@Mehrdad: Should indeed work, are all your drivers installed, WHQL and up-to-date? — Tamara Wijsman, Nov 24 '11 at 17:53
@TomWijsman: Yes, the drivers are fine. :) I'm not on Windows 8 right now, but on Windows 7 it says Standby (S3), Hibernate, Hybrid Sleep are available, and S1/S2 are unavailable. I'll run it on Windows 8 when I get the chance. — user541686, Nov 24 '11 at 18:03
@Mehrdad: Yeah, it should give useful information. It has an entry for Hybrid Boot... — Tamara Wijsman, Nov 24 '11 at 21:17
@TomWijsman: It says Hybrid Sleep: The hypervisor does not support this standby state. Which is funny, because I don't even believe I'm running on a hypervisor... — user541686, Nov 27 '11 at 23:11

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '11 at 21:19

3

“Enable Hybrid Boot” is grayed-out when it is unavailable for some reason.

From What is Hybrid Boot in Windows 8 and how does it work? :

To use Hybrid boot, your system must have a hibernation file and the drivers must support hibernation. Hybrid boot is not available if you run Windows 8 in a Virtual Machine.

To change Hybrid Boot in spite of it being unavailable, you will need click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable", but this will probably have no effect (or worse) :

enter image description here

answered Nov 20 '11 at 21:19

harrymc

480,290

I'm on a physical machine with a dedicated partition, and hibernation is enabled... – user541686 Nov 20 '11 at 21:49
If the hibernation file is large enough, then what is left in the equation are the drivers, which might not be evolved enough for Windows 8. I suppose we might be talking here about disk drivers, maybe chipset driver, and maybe even the BIOS. Try to find updates on the manufacturer websites, or you may need to wait for Windows 8 to be released for good drivers to become available. – harrymc Nov 21 '11 at 08:20
I don't understand why it would need special drivers though... it seems kinda random, considering that hibernation and hybrid boot are fine... – user541686 Nov 21 '11 at 08:40
Every new Windows version requires driver-writers to adapt to it, which Microsoft can force by virtue of its near-monopoly. It doesn't shock me that manufacturers may not have yet come up with fully-compatible software. – harrymc Nov 21 '11 at 13:45
It seems like that's nothing more than a guess. I could've guessed the same thing, but I was hoping for something more... thanks anyhow... – user541686 Nov 24 '11 at 03:46
Let's call it an educated guess, please. – harrymc Nov 24 '11 at 07:44
lol, OK, sure, whatever... I could've made the same guess myself too I guess... – user541686 Nov 24 '11 at 07:46
No comment . . . – harrymc Nov 24 '11 at 08:21
The driver architecture hasn't changed in Windows 8 Developer Preview, the majority of drivers thus install and run in compatibility mode for Windows 7. Only the drivers that have hard-coded checks break, but the amount of drivers that have that kind of code are small... – Tamara Wijsman Nov 24 '11 at 13:44
@TomWijsman: I was thinking about a new and yet unpublished driver-capability needed by Windows 8 in order for Hybrid Boot to be enabled. – harrymc Nov 24 '11 at 14:32
@harrymc: See, the thing is, I really don't see why that would be necessary -- if a computer can hibernate, then it should certainly be able to do a hybrid boot, which is essentially a stripped-down version of hibernation. Hardware-wise, it doesn't seem like it would be a special feature. – user541686 Nov 26 '11 at 06:49
I do not mean hardware, but software. In this case it can be a driver or it can also be Windows 8 itself : That Hybrid Boot wasn't (yet) in a fully-working state and so this feature was disabled by default in the Preview version. Have you tried "Change settings that are currently unavailable" ? This article for example says that this is the way to enable it in the Developer Preview. But be warned that even if it works, this means that Hybrid Boot might still be buggy. – harrymc Nov 26 '11 at 07:43
Again: Have you tried "Change settings that are currently unavailable" ? My conclusion of a driver is based on the assumption that this didn't work at all. If it does work, then it might not be a driver but rather Windows itself, as I described in the above comment. – harrymc Nov 27 '11 at 20:04

Tamara Wijsman · Answer 2 · 2011-11-28T00:26:00.457

1

Hybrid Boot is disabled when ...

... you have Hibernation disabled, you can enable it by executing powercfg /h on.
... your computer doesn't support Hibernation, this is rare but possible.
... your drivers don't fully support Hibernation, often seen when you use Virtualize or VHD boot.

It is best to run your OS natively and make sure all your drivers are installed, WHQL and up-to-date.

More explanation on why it doesn't work can be received by using powercfg /a.

In case you get the error The hypervisor does not support this standby state, you need to uninstall Hyper-V to fix this error and reboot your system which should make the grayed out option available to you...

edited Nov 28 '11 at 00:26

answered Nov 24 '11 at 13:37

Tamara Wijsman

57,463

Someone else already mentioned all of these, but it's none of them: http://superuser.com/questions/335792/how-do-i-enable-hybrid-boot-in-windows-8#comment-397671 ... hibernation works completely fine. – user541686 Nov 24 '11 at 17:48
@Mehrdad: I don't see VHD booting nor driver support mentioned. Updating your drivers is your best bet... – Tamara Wijsman Nov 24 '11 at 17:51
Oh, that's what I meant by "a dedicated partition" -- i.e. I'm on a physical partition, not a VHD file. And no, my drivers are fine, that's not the issue... – user541686 Nov 24 '11 at 18:04
You didn't answer my question but at least you mentioned powercfg /a so I'll give ya the bounty =) – user541686 Nov 27 '11 at 23:39
@Mehrdad: I really don't have a clue, perhaps you could try to ask at the Windows 8 DP forums how you could troubleshoot that error or wait for Windows 8 to release itself. There is no information on that error yet as far as I can see so unless someone else has the exact same problem (and doesn't have an obvious reason to have that problem) I guess all you could do is fiddle with devices/drivers... – Tamara Wijsman Nov 27 '11 at 23:42
Do you reckon that installing the Hypervisor management tools might have done something to the installation, even though I'm not actually using any of the VMs? I might uninstall it and see if it makes a difference... – user541686 Nov 27 '11 at 23:45
@Mehrdad: Yeah, that sounds pretty related and might turn the host into a VM by itself. In any case, there have been quite some improvements to Hyper-V in Windows 8 DP so that makes it plausible... – Tamara Wijsman Nov 27 '11 at 23:51
And GUESS WHAT?? That turned out to be the cause! (!!!) I just uninstalled HyperV in the components and powercfg /a no longer reports that problem. (I have yet to test it, though.) Thanks for the help! (If you'd like, edit this into your answer and I'll accept it!) – user541686 Nov 28 '11 at 00:08
Wait, noooooooo.... the setting is still disabled! But now powercfg /a says it's available! :( – user541686 Nov 28 '11 at 00:14
@Mehrdad: Did you reboot? – Tamara Wijsman Nov 28 '11 at 00:24
LOLLL of course I did. – user541686 Nov 28 '11 at 00:30
Never mind, I figured it out. Will post it in a few mins. – user541686 Nov 28 '11 at 00:51

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '11 at 00:57

Ahh I finally figured it out. :)

There were two steps to solving this problem:

I needed to uninstall Hyper-V from the Windows features (in Programs and Features in the Control Panel).

This is pretty surprising, considering that I was not supposed to be running on a hypervisor, and that the script from here indeed said my baseboard manufacturer was Sony, not Microsoft.
I manually re-enabled hybrid boot through changing the following registry setting:

Under
```
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power
```
I changed the DWORD named HiberbootEnabled to 1.

Indeed, after the change, boot was much faster, but now it didn't give me the option to boot into another OS like before. (Instead, Windows 8 took over, and asked me what I wanted to do.) The "shutdown" was slightly slower, though.

score -2 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 16 '11 at 22:09

-2

It is already enabled. The boot is much faster because the system files are stored from ram to disk like in the usual hibernation, but the services are restarted on reboot. That gives the system a real fresh start with the speed of hibernation.

edited Sep 16 '11 at 22:09

MBraedley

2,812

answered Sep 16 '11 at 18:11

teddy

1

1

er, how do you know it's already enabled? – user541686 Sep 16 '11 at 19:43
1

Wrong: The Hybrid Boot check-box is unchecked, so it is not enabled. – harrymc Nov 21 '11 at 13:47
Indeed wrong, my VHD boot outperforms my Windows 7 installation but does not support Hybrid Boot. Yet, my shiny SSD laptop gets outperformed by a native install on a 6 year old laptop with a 5400 RPM drive that does support hybrid booting. Also, it's not the services that are restarted but rather the devices... – Tamara Wijsman Nov 24 '11 at 17:55

How do I enable Hybrid Boot in Windows 8?

4 Answers4