Windows fails to recover from hibernation since dual booted with Linux

Question

I've got a laptop running Windows and Ubuntu dual booted with GRUB. Ever since it was dual booted it has started failing to recover from Windows hibernation (with BAD_POOL_CALLER BSOD). It doesn't do it every time, more often when Linux has been booted in the interim (as turning it back on brings it into GRUB), I figured this was possibly due to Linux overwriting some of the RAM required for the hibernation, but it has started happening even if Linux is not booted.

I've done a 26 hour memory check on it and it didn't find any errors. Is this something I can fix or is it just an annoying side effect of dual booting? Is GRUB possibly using hibernation memory? Should GRUB even load if Windows was hibernated?

GRUB has to load, otherwise you can't boot into any of your operating systems. Which version of GRUB are you using? — wolfgangsz, Aug 30 '10 at 13:24
It's running Vista. GRUB version I can't check at the moment (it's a friend's laptop, hence the staggered responses), thanks for looking at the question. — James L, Aug 31 '10 at 16:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 30 '10 at 14:12

The problem is... when your machine is hibernated... several key settings are stored in nvram to aid in the restore process. When you boot linux, more than likely these nvram settings are modifed/overwritten/erased... potentially, even grub could modify these settings too. As a general rule, you should never hibernate your laptop in one OS & reboot into another OS.

As far as the question between grub & windows... yes, grub will ALWAYS load. It's the bootloader. Even if windows is the default boot option, grub still loads first, then passes over to the windows bootloader... which in turn boots windows. The windows bootloader is incapable of loading anything but windows.

Getting hibernate to work in this sort of environment can be quite tricky. Just make sure that everything appears to the OS as if it's normal. I.e. make sure the windows partition has the "boot" (also sometimes referred to as "active") flag. You can easily do that in linux using gparted or some flavor of disk partition manager (fdisk can too... but you can get into trouble if you aren't paying attention) Don't let windows try & do it or you will probably lose GRUB & could potentially make your system non-bootable.

Thanks for the explanation. It's still not working but I'm just going to assume that it never will properly as long as a bootloader starts first (could still dual boot by disabling drives in the BIOS). As I think the question was a little too vague I'll accept your answer. Thanks for the input. — James L, Sep 02 '10 at 09:40

Windows fails to recover from hibernation since dual booted with Linux

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