There are two ways of enabling the Hibernate button in the shutdown menu.

The easy way would be to bring up the shutdown menu and pressing the Shift key, that way the Suspend button will turn into the Hibernate button, it will revert back to the Suspend button when you release the Shift key.

The second solution is to add a permanent Hibernate button to the shutdown menu.

1) Download the KB875506 update from Microsoft which is available here:  WindowsXP_KB875506_v2_x86_ENU.zip ( 681.84k ) Number of downloads: 1697
The hotfix contain a newer version of msgina.dll(5.1.2600.2833) that is necessary to enable the Hibernation button. Then apply the registry changes as below

2) Open up regedit from the run menu and browse to the following key

3) Create a new key called "System" inside the key shown at step 2 by:
a) Right clicking the key shown at step 2
b) Select New - Key
c) Name the key "System" without the quotes.
The result is as below:

4) Create a new key again called "Shutdown" inside the key shown at step 3 by:
a) Right clicking the key shown at step 3
b) Select New - Key
c) Name the key "Shutdown" without the quotes.
The result is as below:

5) While the key from step 4 is selected, move to the right panel of regedit and create a new DWORD value called "ShowHibernateButton" with a value of 1. The completed steps from regedit should be as below:


6) Restart the computer. The Hibernate button should now be available in your shutdown menu


Note: If you installed Windows using the Windows installation CD supplied by your computer manufacturer, check if your msgina.dll is already updated. If it is newer than version 5.1.2600.2180, then you might be able to enable the Hibernation button by just applying the registry tweak without installing the hotfix.

This post has been edited by nessus: May 28 2008, 06:20 PM