The Richter Scale^®

A couple of months ago I blogged about a rather annoying problem with hibernating on notebook computers with more than 1 gigabyte of RAM when using Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) installed.

Well, about a month later, I got a message from Jonathon L., another Windows user who had a similar problem, and he pointed me to Microsoft Knowledgebase Article KB90905 which exactly addresses the issue I had.

Unfortunately, the hotfix discussed by the knowledgebase article can only be obtained from Microsoft support:

To resolve this problem immediately, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the hotfix.

As anyone who had ever tried to get Microsoft support for operating systems issues knows, it’s no cake walk. It’s a major hassle, and then to add insult to injury, they try and charge you for the annoyance too. For free support they try to foist you off on your PC maker (if your Windows XP came with your system), and the PC maker can’t help you with hotfixes, sending you right back to Microsoft.

But Jonathon indicated he had tried another approach. He used the ”Send us your comments and questions about this Web site” link on the support page, which is free, and doesn’t require a phone call.

Using his advice (and his experience of having to further elaborate once he got a message asking for more details), I sent the following message via the above Microsoft comment page:

I have a Sony VAIO VGN-670TX with Windows XP Professional SP2 and when I go to hibernate I get the error “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API”.

This is documented in KB909095 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909095/en-us

That Knowledge Base item says you can provide a HotFix to me, but that I need to ask for it.

I’m asking for the HotFix now.

Thanks,

Jake Richter

In less than 24 hours I received an e-mail pointing me to a copy of the hotfix (with a time-out and password to limit broad distribution). I installed it and am pleased to report that the Windows XP SP2 hibernation problem seems to have completely disappeared in my month and more of testing.

So, many thanks to you Jonathon!