01 October 2010

How to Enable or Disable Hibernation in Windows 7


Enabling or Disabling the “Hibernate” option in Windows 7 or Vista is not as simple as it used to be in Windows XP.

Hibernation is a power saving option which was designed primarily for laptops. Unlike “sleep mode” which puts the open documents and files into the memory, hibernation puts all the open files and documents on to the hard disk and shuts down the computer without drawing even a small amount of power. Thus hibernation becomes an excellent way to save power and resume Windows back to the state where it was left off. If you really want to use this feature on Windows 7 then you need to enable this option. This can be done as follows.

1. Open the Command Prompt with “Administrator rights”. To do so, type cmd in Start menu and then hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
2. Now type the following command in the command prompt and hit Enter.

powercfg /hibernate on

3. Type exit and hit Enter to close the Command Prompt. Now you should see the “Hibernate” option in the Start menu. If not then perform the following steps.

A. Type Power Options in the Start menu and hit Enter.
B. In the left pane, open the link labeled “Change when the computer sleeps” and then open the link “Change advanced power settings”.
Now a small window will pop-up as shown below:




C. Now expand the Sleep tree and turn off Allow Hybrid Sleep as shown in the above screenshot.
D. Now you should see the Hibernate option in the Start menu.

How to Change the Logon Screen Background in Windows 7


How would you like to change the logon screen background in Windows 7 so as to give your Windows a customized look and feel? With a small tweak it is possible to customize the Windows 7 logon screen and set your own picture/wallpaper as the background.

1. The image you need to set as the background should be a .jpg file and it’s size should not exceed 245KB.

2. The image resolution can be anything of your choice. However I prefer 1440 x 900 or 1024 x 768. You can use any of the photo editing software such as Photoshop to compress and set the resolution for your image. Once you’re done, save this image as backgroundDefault.jpg.

3. You will need to copy this image to
C:\Windows\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds
You will need to create that path if it does not already exist on your computer.

4. Now open the Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Type regedit) and navigate to the following key

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\
LogonUI\Background


If Background does not exist rightclick LogonUI, select New and then Key, and then name it Background. Now locate OEMBackground (listed on the right side). If it does not exist, right-click Background and select New and then DWORD and name it OEMBackground.

5. Double-click on OEMBackground and set the Value Data to 1.

6. Now log-off to see the new logon screen background. If you would like to revert back to the default background, just set the Value Data back to 0.

I hope you like this trick. Just try out and give your feedback!