Top Tips - How To Enable The Hibernate Button in the XP Shutdown Menu

There are many reasons that you might want your Windows XP computer to hibernate as opposed to shutting down,or being put to sleep, but I won’t go in to those here since you have most likely arrived at this article purely because you wish to know how to hibernate your PC as opposed to why.

Normally, when you tell your PC to shutdown via the Start menu you are presented with three options (Sleep, Shutdown, Restart), well in this article will will instruct you how to add a forth option, Hibernate.

Before we add the Hibernate button though, here are a couple of other methods you can use to place your computer into Hibernation that does not require editing the registry as we are going to do further down:

1. While the Shutdown menu is on screen, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard.  This will change the Sleep button to Hibernate.
2. Again, with the Shutdown menu on screen, just tap the ‘H’ key on your keyboard, you PC will hibernate straight away.

Now here is how to permanently add a forth button to the Shutdown menu with the Hibernate option.

This does involve editing your PC’s registry – if you don’t feel comfortable with doing this, then please use option 1 or 2 above instead.

• Go to Start > Run
• Type regedit then press Enter
• Navigate to and right click the following folder: HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System
• From the right click menu choose New the DWORD Value
• Give the new value the name ShowHibernateButton
• Now, right click the new value, select Modify and enter 1 for the Value Data
• Now, exit the Registry Editor via File > Exit and Restart your computer.  At the next logon check that the new 4th button has been added.

Congratulations, you will now have a new Hibernate button in the Shutdown menu.

If you have found this guide helpful, or would like to make other suggestions please use the comments box provided.