2003 Servers with Hibernation enabled

How many of your 2003 servers have hibernation enabled and you never realised? If you're like me, possibly a few, and I can't think of a scenario where I would want to hibernate a server.

This post provides a simple method of detecting whether hibernation is enabled, and then a command to remotely disable hibernation on each server. It works based on the premise that if hibernation is enabled, you'll have a file called hiberfil.sys on the root of your system drive.

1. Create a text file called servers.txt listing one server per-line and then run the following command
2. for /f %i in (servers.txt) do @if exist \\%~i\c$\hiberfil.sys (echo %~i,Enabled) else (echo %~i,Disabled)
3. Save the output filterd by Disabled (find /i "Disabled" results.txt) and run the following command to disable on each (assuming you have psexec)
4. for /f %i in (servers_hibernate.txt) do psexec \\%i powercfg /HIBERNATE off

This should automatically delete the hibernation file, reclaiming the hard disk space equal to the RAM of the machine.

Note that this assumes your systemdrive is C: and that you have administrative shares enabled (C$). To accurately distinguish between servers that don't have C:/C$. you could also run a nested if command (which assumes an installation directory of Windows):
for /f %i in (servers.txt) do @if exist \\%~i\c$\windows (if exist \\%~i\c$\hiberfil.sys (echo %~i,Enabled) else (echo %~i,Disabled)) else echo %~i,Not Found

You can also manually run the command to disable hibernation against one server:
psexec \\%server% powercfg /HIBERNATE off

Wayne's World of IT (WWoIT), Copyright 2008 Wayne Martin.