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ERROR_HIBERNATION_FAILURE
What ERROR_HIBERNATION_FAILURE means
Hibernation requires the operating system to save memory state to disk and later restore it consistently with firmware, devices, storage, and the boot environment. A failure anywhere in that chain can prevent transition or resume.
Where it commonly appears
- System hibernate and hybrid shutdown
- Resume after firmware or hardware changes
- Systems with damaged hibernation files
- Device drivers that fail power transitions
Likely causes
- Insufficient or unhealthy system-volume storage
- The hibernation file is corrupt or cannot be written
- A driver or device refuses a power-state transition
- Firmware reports inconsistent resume state
- Encryption, storage, or boot configuration changed between save and resume
Diagnostic checklist
- Review Kernel-Power, storage, and driver events around suspend and resume
- Check free space and file-system health on the system volume
- Use supported power diagnostics and inspect available sleep states
- Update BIOS, firmware, chipset, storage, and device drivers cautiously
- Test whether the issue follows a particular peripheral
Guidance for developers
Applications should save state before power transition and must not assume hibernation will succeed. Drivers must implement power callbacks and cancellation correctly. Do not loop hibernation requests after this failure.
Guidance for administrators
Repair system files and storage issues, update problematic platform components, and recreate the hibernation file only through supported system commands. Preserve event logs before disabling hibernation for testing.
Example incident
A storage filter fails a paging write while Windows saves memory to the hibernation file. The transition aborts with this code. Driver and storage diagnostics are more relevant than changing application settings.
Related conditions
ERROR_HIBERNATED and resume-related success statuses describe completed transitions. This code denotes failure, not merely the fact that the system hibernated.
Operational decision points
For incident response, the essential distinction is between a hibernate transition condition and not merely a transient API failure. For ERROR_HIBERNATION_FAILURE, the deciding evidence is Kernel-Power events, volume health, hibernation file, firmware, failing device. Preserving this first-occurrence evidence is more useful than increasing retry frequency for investigation sequence 6.
- Impact boundary: identify the exact process, account, device, file, session, host, or connection affected by this result; do not assume the whole machine is in the same state.
- State change required: the next attempt is justified only after the relevant hibernate transition state can differ from the failed attempt.
- Partial outcome: verify whether the operation allocated resources, changed data, sent a request, or modified policy before this result was returned.
- Escalation evidence: preserve Kernel-Power events, volume health, hibernation file, firmware, failing device together with component version and the first preceding failure.
Concrete recovery example
Consider a case where a storage filter failed while memory was being written for hibernation. Repeating the same call leaves the underlying condition unchanged and produces another this result. The durable response is to repair the storage or platform condition before retrying. Validation for this Win32 error should use one controlled operation and inspect both the returned status and the resulting state associated with case 6.
Monitoring and validation
A monitoring rule for this Win32 error should distinguish first occurrence from repetition, group events by affected object, and correlate them with deployments or configuration changes. The recovery is complete only when the expected hibernate transition state is present and consistent; absence of another log line by itself is not sufficient proof.
Retain the original this result event until validation for investigation case 6 is complete. After it is corrected, verify that no partial or stale artifact specific to remediation sequence 6 remains before declaring recovery complete. This it-specific verification prevents a hidden secondary problem from surviving after remediation step 6.
References
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