Change Battery without Rebooting?

Is this possibly with Vista, assuming there's no AC outlet nearby?

Would the Hibernate feature of XP work for this? I'm pretty sure Standby would not work, but Hibernate sounds like it would (guess I could put my desktop on Hibernate and then unplug it to test...).

But I'm not sure about this Sleep feature of Vista. Microsoft says it's a hybrid, so...hard to know exactly what it does without having it.

And is it the only option like that in Vista (I kind of like the multiple options of XP, if only Standby would work on my machine)?

 

sleep should be hybernate... depending on your power settings and bios setup.

not so sure on this tho.

 

Definately you can change batteries by after hibernation. Without actually having Vista, I believe that the new Sleep state of Vista still uses power, all be it a lot less than stand by, so I assume its not a good idea to swap batteries whilst in sleep.
Someone can correct me on this, but in XP you can definately swap batteries whilst in hibernation, since no power is being used.

 

Yeah you can.

its just a matter of finding what vista setting = hybernation.

I know my desktop hybernates with vista because I have a huge chunk of hdd space missing where it writes the hybernate file too.

 

Having only used a beta version of Vista (since removed from current laptop) I seem to remember there is a 3rd button with the power options in the start menue (one is power, one is sleep by defualt, the other brings up more options). You want to click on the button that gives you more options (its an arrow of some sort I believe), and then click on hibernate.
You can also go into more advanced options somewhere (again I don't currently have Vista to play with), and change the default settings for clicking the buttons in the start menue.

 

yeah you can change the button or your power options in the control panel.

as for the default buttons, what looks like the shutdown button is sleep, if you hit the fly out arrow you get a few more options. Im at work on XP so I cant check but I only remember seeing

> restart
> shut down
> sleep

But I changed my power save mode from efficant to max performance and I think I sleep now and I was hybernating when I hit the "sleep" button.

 

Sleep is more like standby IMO.
Go to cmd.exe and use "powercfg -h on", this will put a "hibernate" option in the start menu when you click on the arrow in the bottom right.

 

Probably better to shut down - less risk and it also contributes to your weekly reboot!!!

 

why weekly reboot ? I have my XP using hibernate for years and the longest between reboot(not because of error but microsoft's stupid auto update) last for 180 days or so.

It is a myth that one has to reboot frequently(to have a clean state as if there is constant leak in the OS) and I fail to see any reason that hibernate is riskier than shutdown.

The only think I can think of is one is extremely paranoid and worry that the hibernation image would be grabbed by someone else and dissect it to read say sensitive information. But that is kind of NSA type thing.

 

I'm on Vista Business, just hibernate and replace and boot again, no problem whatsoever. Don't use Standbye - it still uses battery power and you'll just loose everything if you take the battery out like that.

 

OK, thanks. Glad to know there's different options in Vista as well, and that a second battery could be used effectively with Sleep if I do get one.