Powered Off In Sleep Mode, But Still Remembered My Data?

[Conflict0s]

Hello there,

I have a annoying sleep key on my keyboard (now disabled) that I accidently pressed last night. So I tryed to wake my pc back up with the mouse and keyboard but it didn't seem to work, so I was forced to press and hold the power button and switch off at the plug. On my return tonight I booted up and it came to the log in screen of Windows 7 RC with my account saying "locked" so I double clicked it and my websites and skype calls were still logged on as if nothing had happened.

So I am just wondering how it does this? I would of thought that it is because it is cached in my RAM but I thought that when you boot down it clears the cached files (slowly after a period of time) and I don't think it was still on my hard drives because I heard them boot down when it went into sleep mode.

So can anyone educate me how it does this please?

[Velvet Wafer]

sounds like a cool feature of windows 7... it really has some

[mastrdrver]

Hibernation, I use it always.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernate_%28OS_feature%29

[pbmaster]

Lots of viruses and other nasties like to hide in the Hibernation File, just so you know.

[Conflict0s]

Thanks guys, I understand Hibernation more after that read but I am still confused as I cut the psu off from all power. So there is no chance that it could be feeding power to the motherboard to keep the data cached in RAM or on the hard drive. Hmm... maybe it is a Windows 7 thing :/

[Mussels]

sleep mode in vista and 7, is a mix of standby and hibernate. I <3 it.


A few tidbits to feed your minds:


Viruses do not hide in the hibernation file. They hide in system restore. It would be pointless to hide there, unless you hibernated the system... the virus could never get out (and would get overwritten)

Standby (S1) basically idles hard drives and screen. hardly saves power

Standby (S3) (aka suspend to ram) turns everything off except ram. In my testing, it uses around 10W of power at most - consider that most PC's use 5W or so when 'off' due to USB devices, LED lights and such, and its hardly worth thinking about.

Hibernate (suspend to disk) is automatically enabled when you sleep in vista and 7. The idea is that you sleep the machine, and you can wake it instantly - but should you lose power (flat battery in a laptop, power outage etc) you lose no data or work, when you finally get power back to it.

Vista + 7 cache the files as you go. its one of the reasons for excessive HDD usage in vista, but they seem to have tamed it down somehow in 7.

[Conflict0s]

Arh right, interesting Thanks Mussels.

[Mussels]

oh, one thing i missed. most common cause for lockups when entering sleep mode, or trying to wake - is people trying to wake it up while its still going into sleep state.

Wait until all the fans have stopped spinning, THEN try it. i've never had a lockup following this method.

[mastrdrver]

Does it change anything if you force s3 sleep in the bios then or does it just change the way Vista/7 sleep and nothing to do with hibernation?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by mastrdrver

Does it change anything if you force s3 sleep in the bios then or does it just change the way Vista/7 sleep and nothing to do with hibernation?

Its a choice between S1 or S3 - if you set S1, you might as well have just turned your screen off, for all sleep mode will do.

Since S1 mode never powers down, it cant hibernate.

[aj28]

Originally Posted by mastrdrver

Does it change anything if you force s3 sleep in the bios then or does it just change the way Vista/7 sleep and nothing to do with hibernation?

Forcing S3 sleep in the BIOS really just enables it, rather than forcing it. The actual functionality relative to the way sleep/hibernation works is built into the OS, and dependent upon what your hardware is capable of and the way it is configured to behave.

Long story short, if S3 isn't "forced" in the BIOS, your OS may send the signal, but your hardware just won't listen. As Mussels already stated in his thorough overview, S1 is the alternative in the majority of cases...

[Mussels]

my BIOS has S1, S3 and auto for options. S3 or auto work in S3 mode, the other option is just there in case you want to force S1, for god knows what reason.