Individual Application Hibernation

[Ryan McCondach]

I've just been using my computer (XP) and have lots of applications running,
taking up a lot of memory, even when minimized.

Then it hit me - why not (probably in an upcoming version of windows) have
an extra button near minimize/maximise, that puts the application into
hibernation?

The idea being that if the application needs no interaction, like possibly
you are writing a word document, but you are waiting for some information to
put in it via email. In this case, you don't really want to close word, as
the email may arrive at any time. On the other hand, you aren't using word,
so it is running in the background, taking up resources.

Why not make it so that when you click the 'Hibernate Application' button
next to minimize, it minimizes the application, and writes the active memory
onto the HDD.

Then when it is restored, load it back out of the HDD into the RAM (much
like the way the Hibernate Windows feature works).

Certain applications won't be ideal for this, such as if you hibernated an
mp3 player, it would result in stopping playback. But for other uses, this
seems an excellent feature.

It could even be expanded to restore individual applications to their
working state after a full reboot (the applications would be there when you
logon). This would safegard against losing your minimized word documents that
you have open, if there is an upexpected shutdown or reboot.

I understand that there is some optimisation going on when you minimize
applications anyway, but I'm talking about total hibernation.

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[Mark L. Ferguson]

Virtual Memory in Windows XP: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

 

[Ryan McCondach]

Hmm, but doesnt virtual memory get wiped on reboot?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Why would you choose to reboot(rather than hibernate), if you were trying to
hibernate something?

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Mark L. Ferguson
..

 

[Ryan McCondach]

Maybe if you've just installed an update or application. And if your pc
crashes unexpectedly, you would lose all your updates to open unsaved files?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:41:00 -0700, Ryan McCondach <Ryan

I've just been using my computer (XP) and have lots of applications running,
taking up a lot of memory, even when minimized.

Then it hit me - why not (probably in an upcoming version of windows) have
an extra button near minimize/maximise, that puts the application into
hibernation?

The idea being that if the application needs no interaction, like possibly
you are writing a word document, but you are waiting for some information to
put in it via email. In this case, you don't really want to close word, as
the email may arrive at any time. On the other hand, you aren't using word,
so it is running in the background, taking up resources.

With almost all applications (Word for example), when you are not
actively using it, it really uses no resources at all.

There are only two possible resources it could use: the CPU and
memory.

If you are not actively using it, obviously it's not doing anything
and there is no CPU use.

And regarding memory, the way the virtual memory system works is that
Windows keeps the most-recently used chunks of memory in real RAM, and
pages the rest out to the page file. So an inactive application will
very quickly get all its memory pieces paged out. The result is that
there is almost no performance penalty to keeping an application
running, but inactive.

So, in effect, the kind of "application hibernation" you are asking
for already exists, is automatic, and requires no button to press to
activate it. What you call "application hibernation" is virtual
memory.