Hibernation in Windows 7

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Stephen

Now that I have Windows 7 on one of my home PCs, I wanted to get Hiberation working. It took a little searching and then reading the correct article avoiding the registry and cmd hacks.

In XP I held down the shift key when going Shut Down and the option for Hibernate appeared.
Hibernate in Windows 7 is different.

To enable Hibernate in Windows 7

Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings
Under Sleep, change “Allow hybrid sleep” to Off.

 

So what is “Hybrid Sleep” and do we need to turn if off?

Believe it or not, but the default “Sleep” is a new “Hybrid Sleep” option especially designed for desktop computers.
What this means is that Windows 7 saves the open application processes and memory both to disk AND memory. If after choosing sleep, you unplug the PC, it will boot and restore from Disk. If you leave the PC plugged in, your PC will restore from memory very quickly.

Windows 7 on a Laptop will have the Allow Hybrid OFF by default.
Windows 7 on a Desktop will have the Allow Hybrid ON by default.

It sure is a good idea. I don’t know how much power the PC uses when in sleep mode. It would be interesting to measure. As the lights on my PC glow up and down when in sleep mode, its a little distracting. I’m happy to choose hibernate. (It just takes an extra few seconds starting up as opposed to in-memory restore.) Decide for yourself if you want to turn “hybrid sleep” on or off.
References 1 | 2

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Computer House Cleaning – Removing Duplicate Files

Posted on April 18, 2010 by Stephen

So I was transferring all my files off my old computer onto my new one, organising them and putting some structure on them so I could quickly find and reuse useful reference docs and files.

I knew I had several duplicate files hidden in various sub-folders. To find them, I used the extremely useful and successful “Anti-Twin” program. It worked perfectly and quite quickly on my new Windows 7 install. I even choose “filter” and searched for duplicate files over 3MB. I had 2GB of duplicate files. It gave me a nice list showing the duplicates it found (based on file size, name and created date), allowing me to select which ones to send to the recycle bin. It even had the option of deleting the files and adding shortcuts instead. Brilliant job, and of course it was free and fully functional.

I did try some other “fast duplicate file finder”, but it did not work at all.

Anti-Twin – find duplicate files: FTW

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TortoiseSVN Cache Authentication

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Stephen

I mentioned previously over on the Linux Wiki how to remove cached SVN authentication details from your linux shell account. So after reading about how the Apache Foundation Ubuntu’s servers were compromised by hackers and how cached svn authentication details were used, this got me thinking further.

I use TortiseSVN on my Windows Box and it had my svn authentication details saved/cached (albeit it md5’d). Now I wanted to delete it. Here is how:

Delete: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\auth\svn.simple\*
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Symlinks in Vista

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Stephen

I use symlinks all the time in Linux, and they are very useful. Anyways, I was glad to know they can now be done in Vista/7. I had a dual boot OS, and I had Outlook on both OS’s and wanted 1 Local outlook store. I tried to change Outlooks storage of the ost file, but couldn’t easily edit the path. Enter symlink:

C:\>mklink /d C:\Users\sburke\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook E:\Users\sburke\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook
#mklink pathtolink pathtosourcetarget

The /d switch is for directory.
Looking at the Outlook folder in Explorer, it had a shortcut icon, and going into it, kept the path correct at c:\
Reference: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/22/create-symbolic-links-hard-links-and-directory-junctions-in-vista-with-mklink/

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