I was always using Sleep mode and I thought that if I turn off electricity while PC is sleeping, it will just «hard» shutdown without saving any data / open apps, etc.
Today I accidentally turned off electricity for my PC (when it was sleeping), I was quite surprised when I turned it on and after boot I saw all these open apps, just like it was sleeping all the time without power interruption.
So does Windows 10 use a combination of hibernation and sleep instead of «just sleep»?
I'm pretty sure that in previous versions of Windows hibernation and sleep were two different things, now it seems that Windows saves state on disk everytime in case of losing power source and just still keeps it in RAM to instantly turn on.
Best Answer
Yes, that is exactly what Windows is using in your case. It is a mode called Hybrid Sleep. While it is still possible to setup Windows to go into a strictly sleep or a strictly hibernation mode, by default Windows 10 sleep mode is set as Hybrid Sleep on desktop computers if supported by the system. (The command
powercfg /a
gives you a list of actually supported power states regarding your system.)From thewindowsclub.com article Difference Between Sleep, Hybrid Sleep, Hibernation in Windows 10/8/7