Microsoft confirms that user cannot put a computer that is running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008 with more than 4 GB (gigabytes) of RAM (random access memory) installed into hibernation mode. This is not a bug but by design, as Microsoft disable hibernation support on PC with more than 4GB physical memory inserted because benchmark by Microsoft shows that performance is poor on a computer that has more than 4 GB of memory and that has support for hibernation, which requires sufficient disk space to contain the contents of the computer’s memory.

As such, user cannot find the Hibernate tab in the Power Options Properties dialog box, which is unavailable. Worse still, the issue affects both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, although the x64 editions of Windows can support more than 4 GB of memory.