Windows tip: How to Delete hiberfil.sys When Hibernation is Not Supported by Firmware

[Leon]

I just got a new laptop – the latest version of the Samsung Series 9. The C Drive has 2 3.7GB files on it – the pagefile.sys and the hiberfil.sys. Removing pagefile.sys is relatively straightforward as it’s a standard feature of Windows.

 

However, removing the hiberfil.sys on the Samsung Series 9 was more difficult. This is because it has firmware which does not support hibernation. As such, the computer can’t make any changes to the hibernation settings by default.

 

The standard way to disable hibernation is to run an elevated command prompt and type powercfg -h off. This turns off hibernation and deletes the file. However, this gave me the error:

 

“Hibernation failed with the following error: The request is not supported. The following items are preventing hibernation on this system. The system firmware does not support hibernation”.

 

Bit of a catch 22 – you can’t delete it because you can’t turn it off, because it’s not supported.

 

However, I was able to disable hibernation and therefore remove the hiberfil.sys via the registry editor (found as option 3 here).

 

Open the start menu and type regedit in the search box then hit enter.

In regedit, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power

Double click ‘HibernateEnabled’ and change the value data to 0.

Click OK, close regedit and restart to apply the changes.

Hey presto, the hiberfil.sys is removed from the Samsung Series 9!