Alternative to hybernation?

Hi Guys,
I would like to restore the programs and documents that I have opened when I shut down my PC, but without hibernating.
I mean, hibernate saves everything in the RAM, but I'd like something much simpler: Just record which programs and which documents I had opened. Don't care the rest. sort of a "save opened tabs" in firefox, but for the desktop.
Does anyone knows a software that does it?
Thanks.

 

Alternative to hypernation, is hyponation.

No for real though, try just using "sleep mode"?

 

What is the difference between what you described and hibernation? Your way, the documents and applications will have to be opened after Windows starts up. So the result is exactly the same thing. Why not just use the built in hibernation?

Gary

 

Actually hibernation saves everything to your hard disc (that's why if you enable/disable it you'll see about 450mb devoted to that or not), while sleep saves it to the ram. Both have the same effect, but hibernation allows your laptop to not draw any power while sleep needs to keep memory going to your ram to preserve everything there. Both are faster than a restart, but hibernation takes a bit longer than sleep to recover from usually. So the trade off between sleep and hibernation becomes either faster startup but drains your batter (sleep) or slower startup, still faster than a cold boot, and no drain on your battery (hibernation).

If you want something specific to run at startup you can always add it to your startup folder. Well, not sure if this is a lot of help, but I know in Ubuntu it's possible to have programs and folders and whatnot that where running when you shut down run at the next startup.

 

So you are looking for a program that will save the current layout of applications at shutdown and restart them at startup?

Are you looking to save the application states? If you are, I think you are out of luck, since most applications don't support state saves. Hibernation is gonna be the closest thing to what you find in Ubuntu.

 

Gotta move to Linux if you want a "desktop state" saving. It's theoretically doable in Windows, but I haven't seen anything that will do it, especially since hibernation actually works pretty well.

What is your problem with hibernation that you don't want to use it?

 

no, it's theoretically undoable in windows. why? because a system wide lock could get lost, and an app would still have had the lock while it got frozen, resulting in a deadlock, a.k.a. a crash, or actually an app you can't unfreeze anymore.

yeah, what's the problem with hibernation. it's reasonably fast, and doesn't use much space on the hdd.

 

Probably his laptop has hibernation compat issues.

 

No, no issue, but it takes 4 gigs of my HD. Not nice.
Also, restarting the PC sort of "cleans" the system.

 

You can enable "Restore folders at logon" for the explorer windows at least, where it opens all of the windows you had open (My Computer, Music, C:\Windows, those things) after a restart; but you're not going to be able to do that with most programs as stated.

4GB isn't that much (unless you have a 80GB hard drive or something). IIRC there's also some odd feature called Hybrid Sleep where it does both Hibernate and Sleep actions, but I don't remember seeing it used often (and wouldn't help you in this case either).

 

Well, I have 250 gb, but I left only 25 for C:/ so 4 is some deal. If only I could store the hyb file in another partition.
Thanks anyway guys.

 

you might have to deinstall some programs from C and reinstall them to your other partition to free up some space on C:

or, clean out your other partitions, save the data off, deinstall software, etc, etc. Then, delete the partitions and extend c: to take the whole disk. This extending of c: is probably better done off line with a linux-based tool

google is your friend.

This is the downside of partitioning disks with an OS that doesn't have a good, native, on-line LVM. You will *always* have free space in the wrong place.

 

i had hibernation enabled on a 32gb ssd with vista on it, and never had a problem with the lost gigabytes. so you shouldn't have a problem with it just as well.

edit: you could remove your partitions to only have one, so you never get into the hazzle of having one partition too small, and space left on the other.. others disagree with this, but it would solve the unbalanced storage issue.

 

Or Acronis Disk Director - great at changing partition sizes.

 

I'll take this suggestion, and merge two of my partitions (C plus a 70 Gb one). Thanks.
Now, question: Will this affect the stability of the system. I mean, messing with partitions is not a very good idea in order to keep stability. Would you guys disagree? May be this "Acronis" software does the work perfectly?

 

Been using it for quite a while and it's always performed perfectly. When I switched from a single drive (3 partitions - Boot, Data and Recovery) to a dual drive I used it to clone the original. Then remove the data partitions from the original, allocating the space to Boot. Then remove the Boot and Recover partitions from the new drive, leaving just the data.

 

Haven't had the chance to use acronis, but I've always used Gparted. It's free, and I've only ever had success with it.

 

It won't affect the "stability" in any way. Just be sure you have a good backup of the drive BEFORE you start messing with pratitions. That way if anything should go wrong, power loss, cat walking across the keyboard, or whatever, you have a way out of the mess.

Gary

 

Or you could just keep the two partitions. 25 - 4 = 21GB free. Windows will run just fine with just 21 GB free. In fact, I know Server 2008 runs just fine on 4GB free. (points at a case under the desk)