My dad’s new computer with Windows Vista 64-bit for some reasons does not have the “hibernate” mode on the menu. After some Google search, I found that you may need to turn it on manually. Well, this wasn’t easy. I had to type “cmd” and run the cmd first. But you don’t want to type the command on that cmd window because it’s not the “administrator” cmd.

Click on the start menu, the “cmd” should now show up as the “recent” application. Right click “cmd” on the recent application, and then select “Run as Administrator”. When the cmd window pops up, it has the “Administrator Command” window. Now type on this window “powercfg -h on”. This enables the hibernation mode. However, the “hibernate” item still doesn’t show up on the list of the command.

I discovered that you need to go to the Control Panel and select “Hibernate” when Power Button is pushed and click “Apply.” Now click on the “I/O” on the menu of the Start menu, the windows show go to “hibernate.” From here forward, the hibernate mode will show up as one of the options, in addition to Sleep, Re-start and etc.

Definitely, this is a bug on Windows Vista 64-bit. Who would know how to do this except by accident?