Home » Hibernation: Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.

Hibernation: Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.

November 6th, 2005 by Jim
2006.09.08
Update: Microsoft has released the hotfix to the public. If you have been needing the hotfix for a language other than English, you may now download it directly from Microsoft’s website.

2005.11.30
Update: Microsoft has released a new hotfix for this issue! Although it is currently unavailable to the public, a kind individual has uploaded it to Rapidshare so anyone may try it. Because Microsoft considers this hotfix “in testing” and has decided to NOT release it publically yet, the support options should be obvious: NO support unless you received it from Microsoft. Try it at your own risk!

Computers running Windows XP with more than 1 GB of RAM may fail to hibernate. The best way to describe the problem is by the steps taken and the response from the system.

  1. The user requests the system to hibernate.
  2. The system appears to think about it for a couple of seconds.
  3. As the system tries to switch video modes, just before displaying the “Hibernating…” progress bar, the Windows Exclamation sound plays.
  4. The video mode switches back, and a dialog box opens with the message:
    Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.

After the problem occcurs, the hibernation option is no longer available to the user. In fact, the hibernation tab normally found in the Power Options is hidden until the next system reboot.

I have read the same solution over and over: Apply this hotfix or update your system to Service Pack 2. Unfortunately, I am beginning to wonder how many of these recommendations are coming from users with less than 1 GB of RAM. I personally use a desktop and laptop computer, with 1.25 GB and 1.5 GB of RAM respectively, and both exhibit the problem regardless of the applied hotfix or SP2 (which includes the hotfix). If you count two of my friends who also have this problem, I know of four (4) computers that are adversely affected. In other words, with the only fix currently available, 100% of the computers I have access to are still broken!

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Revision History

2006.09.08 Updated with a link to the hotfix released by Microsoft to the public.
2005.11.30 Added the disclaimer message, since the Microsoft hotfix is considered "in testing."
2005.11.30 Updated with a link to a new Microsoft KB article, which addresses the hibernation bug with a new hotfix. A link to the hotfix, hosted on Rapidshare, is also provided for those who do not want to go through the Microsoft support hotline.
2005.11.26 Updated with a screen shot of the API error message bubble. The screen shot of the API error dialog is now on page two.
2005.11.18 Updated with a screen shot of the API error dialog.
2005.11.06 Initial revision.

Disclaimer

I do not offer a warranty or guarantee for anything described in this article. All of my tips are based on personal and professional experience, but you are solely responsible for your own actions. Please backup your data first, and exercise extreme caution when using this information, which could leave your machine unbootable, unstable, or simply unusable!

183 Responses to “Hibernation: Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.”

  1. ggishh Says:

    Have recently upgraded from 1gb to a modest 1.5gb and have also stumbled across this problem. Not sure it was even worth it now just to lost the hibernation feature which is one of XPs saving graces. If Microsoft can’t fix a simple problem like this after six years on the market I doubt it will instil much confidence in Vista…

  2. palsg Says:

    Even after reinstalling the KB909095 patch, I was still having this problem on my brand new HP dx7300 PC (1 GB RAM). Being a Core2Duo system, I at first suspected that the ntnoskrl

    After reading all the comments above, I realised that Myron’s comment was correct.

    I am running Memturbo 4 which has the LargeSystemCache option setting ON. I had this turned on (which changes the registry setting to 1).

    After reading this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895932 and this article
    http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/efa621bd-a031-4461-9e72-59197a7507b61033.mspx?mfr=true
    I quickly changed the LargeSystemCache setting to 0 and rebooted.

    LargeSystemCache is only turned ON (1) for Microsoft Server products. It should be left OFF (0) for Windows XP.

    SecondLevelDataCache should be left at 0. I refer to this article:
    http://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14878

    My system now hibernates again.

    Regards,
    palsg

  3. cs00pt Says:

    This problem is driving me nuts!!! It costs me a lot of time to have to reopen every window in when I reboot. In work it cost me around half an our every day until I boot to windows, open every window and remember what I was doing the day before.

    No it has begun happening as well at home :(:(:(

    PLEASE FIX THIS!!!!

  4. Really Disappointed Says:

    I have an Thinkpad T41p with 1GB of memory running on Windows XP Professional with pagefile disabled. After installing KB909095 system hibernate seems to work again; however, frequently the same “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API” returns. The problem is reduced to using over 300MB of memory causing hibernate to fail. A simple test is, if you have 1GB of memory w/ pagefile disabled, to open a large binary file using notepad, e.g. “notepad mybig.zip”. If I open up a file that is 200MB to 300MB in size, then it would push the committed memory over 300MB and system is guaranteed to fail hibernate.

    This brings up some questions. How much memory does hibernate require to be linear, and must the pagefile be enabled?

    I’m not sure what to think of this except that Microsoft’s fix is incomplete. Hopefully they’re not going to tell us consumers to buy into Vista to fix all the problems. That would be a product marking mistake because that is a slap in the face for buying feature broken product and a great insult to our intelligence for believing and choosing Microsoft over other platforms.

  5. Daniel (desparate) Says:

    XP Poro/SP2 2 GB PC3200 RAM Dual boot of two similar installations.

    Trying to Hibernate I got message “insufficient system resources exist to complete the API”

    I searched on the phrase and Microsoft had KB909095 which purported to solve the problem

    Oh. Boy perhaps it did, but all of a sudden XP refused to accept there was any hardware and
    “My Computer” showed no DVD, CD, or Drive and win.ini was blank

    Then to add insult to injury when I restarted got a message “There have been changes in hardware and you need to re-activate within 3 days”

    Gave up trying to resolve this and sent angry message to M$.

    Tried everything I know, including sfc \sannow to resolve ths problem and just made matters worse.

    Today backed up data and wiped the drive and gone through the not infrequent re-installation and now in order

  6. spankyjo54 Says:

    I am getting sick of the thing doing it to me too. And I know plenty of others who are as well. Now, Vista has been released and MS is having a lovely time fixing all the mass of bugs in it, probably too busy to help us with our little teeny problem. Yeah, RIGHT!! From what I understand, Vista is a nightmare of an OS to upgrade to from XP because allot of software and peripherals will not work with Visa. Oh, that’s NICE TO KNOW. Even if I could afford it I wouldn’t get it. Got enough problems with XP. LOL

  7. jb Says:

    No luck here as well.. HP/Compaq nx8220, Pentium M 1.86GHz, 2GB RAM. Using stand-by a lot since hibernate works sooo great :-/

    Thanks for the thread Translocator!

    ..and last but not the least a huge thanks to MS for such an excellent service to it’s paying customers – NOT

  8. Nathan Says:

    Hey, nice description of the problem!
    This frustrates me too. I’m a software developer running many resource-intensive applications at once and have never been able to hibernate my machine! I often have complex scenarios to set up to test and fix problems running in-memory databases etc and often need to leave my system in that state overnight or over the weekend. I want to save energy by shutting down my computer, but can’t!!! It’s very frustrating!!!

  9. Todd Says:

    It’s not just XP Media Center or Home edition, I have it happening on a user I’m working with using
    XP Pro Service Pack 2 (upgraded from Home edition) with 2 gigabytes of ram and a 60 gig drive with
    48 gigs free. Unfortunate.

  10. LuminousGem Says:

    Hi There,

    I’m experiencing identical problems with my current laptop. I bought it new this spring and have rarely been able to hibernate successfully. My Toshiba laptop runs XP with 2GB of RAM and 149 GB of free HD space.

    Have you found any fixes or methods to avoid this problem?

    Thanks!

  11. cant hibernate on windows - PC Apex Forums Says:

    […] This is what I found: translocator.ws » Hibernation: Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API. Hope it helps. d […]

  12. nwtgb Says:

    2 gb’s of ram, 500gb harddrive divided by 3 and it’s happening as i tickle these keys.

  13. Mike Says:

    Same problem. About every 4th or 5th time it craps out and I either have to sleep it or reboot to get hibernate working again. First few times caught me off guard, now its like playing craps, “will it or will it not???”

  14. BoilerHorn Says:

    Same problem for me on a Dell Latitude D820. I think shutdown/reboot is one solution. Another solution might be Apple.

  15. cue Says:

    I am a developer and have a lot of open programs during my daily work such as Eclipse, DB and DB tools, different browsers, email and chat clients etc…
    After I applied the Hotfix KB909095I I can hibernate until the size of current memory footprint exceeded the amount of ca. 1.3GB , so it seems to be still dependend by the actual memory usage and fragmentation.
    As a consequence I leave my system up and running to avoid a daily time wast of 20 minutes to reopen all programs.

    One should calculate the worldwide everage amount of CO2 emition or waste of productive time concerning that promised but not yet delivered feature of hibernating the current system state.

    Can sombody shine his light on any strategically advantages for MS from not fixing that issue?

    The more complex your work with your computer gets, the more programs or modules interacting with each other will be open at the same time and the more useful gets a hibernating feature but the less likely hibernate will function by the current Microsoft implementation.
    In times of a trend to flat hierarchies also the more complex work a customer is doing the more likely he will have more decision power in ongoing projects with all consequences for a bad deliverers in terms of promises and quality.

    Isn’t that an embarrassing documentation of strategically short thinking or a lag of common sense that this issue has not been fixed after more than one year now?

    I just try to understand and cannot believe that MS has not the engineering power to solve the issue because they can financially effort it.

  16. Jin Says:

    Same problem here – isnt there a fix available for this yet?

  17. Jim Says:

    Yes, the fix is available. Windows Update will give it to you, or you can download the hotfix from the URL at the top of this post.

  18. Dick Hoskins Says:

    It is Nov 10 2007 I clicked on the URL above and got

    “We’re sorry, but we were unable to service your request. You may wish to choose from the links below for information about Microsoft products and services.” As usual a Microsoft kick in the face. If I have to re-boot before I can have my machine hibernate then … I might as well just shut down my computer. The idea is to leave my machine in a state that I return to quickly later.

    No it is not fixed.

  19. Jim Says:

    Maybe it was a temporary issue with the download site? I just tried the link and it worked.

  20. brent Says:

    It seems: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909095/en-us solved this issue on my laptop

    File Name: WindowsXP-KB909095-x86-ENU.exe

  21. paul Says:

    just gone from .5 to 2 gb on my laptop, same problem as above, very annoying, huge waste of time waiting to restart all the apps. basic, basic thing this sure not that hard!!!.

  22. Crazy Virus Says:

    Very very annoying!!! I’ve applied the 909095 hotfix already with no luck. That problem’s still happen.
    I’m using HP Pavilion DV2100 with 2Gb RAM.

  23. two black eyes Says:

    I’ve had no problems up until today (2 years of WinXP SP2) with 2GB RAM, I did a Google and found this page. I guess it isn’t fixed yet.

  24. Damian Says:

    I’ve been experiencing this same annoying problem myself. Can’t Hibernate or Standby – ThinkPad T40p 2GB RAM.

  25. Joe Says:

    I have a home built system with 4 GB of Corsair DDR2 6400 RAM. Hotfix will not install. Here’s what Microshaft has to say about that…

    When you install this update, you may experience the following symptoms:
    • You receive the following error message: Failed to migrate dependent packages.

    You may experience this issue if Windows Internet Explorer 7 is installed. To resolve this issue, remove Internet Explorer 7, and then reapply the update.

    So remove a Windows component to install a fix that might work or it might not. I hate Microshaft.

  26. Joe Says:

    BTW, this problem started when I upgraded from 2 to 4 GB. I thought Windows like memory???

  27. Making Software Useful » Blog Archive » Hibernate results in ‘Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API’ Says:

    […] Hibernation: Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API by [translocator.ws] seems to be an ‘original source’ for much of the information that I found. […]

  28. Xiaxi Says:

    I find a way to solve this problem. The xp set the vitrual memory(pagefile.sys) at the C: derive(windir). And if you reset the vitrual memory at D: derive and then you can hibernate successfully.

  29. Alan Says:

    I occasionally got the problem with 1gig memory, but now have 2gig, and a regular problem. Will see if moving the pagefile helps.

  30. Alan Says:

    Caused an error on next startup, restarted using ‘last configuration which worked’. Microsoft’s 909905 fix does not work, though it seems to sometimes lets the computer come back into windows rather than hanging in attempted hibernation. The extra gig appears to be more trouble than it was worth. Very little noticable speed advantage.

  31. vuuncaet Says:

    Time to get SP3 guyz. That worked for me.

    Im running on XPS M1530. I got “that” error after i change the graphic driver. Zzz. Just being lazy and installed SP3 and whola got the job done.

  32. zach Says:

    As far as I can tell, the problem is that windows creates a file in the file system which holds all the contents of your RAM when hibernation is used. For some inane reason windows doesn’t know how to resize this file when your RAM size increases and so if you upgrade from 1GB to 2GB the file is now too small. I had this problem a long time ago on a laptop and i fixed it by disabling hibernation, rebooting, and then re-enabling hibernation. This seemed to delete the old hibernation file and create a new one with the correct size. Why windows can’t detect the RAM change and modify the file size is beyond me. Also, when I fixed the problem originally I used the Disk Cleanup tool to remove the hibernation file but I don’t think that is an option after SP2. Good luck!

  33. Khaliq Says:

    Can you guys upload again the patch for it. I cant download anything because file not found. Thank you