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List Supported Sleep States with powercfg /a

Show which standby and hibernate states the machine supports, and which are disabled and why.

WindowscmdPower & SleeptroubleshootingLow risk
Run powercfg /a to list available sleep states (S3, Modern Standby, hibernate) and the reasons unavailable ones are excluded.

01Command

Command
$ powercfg /a

02What it does

powercfg /a is the definitive answer to 'why is there no Hibernate option' or 'is this laptop on old S3 sleep or Modern Standby'. It enumerates S1-S4, Hybrid Sleep, Fast Startup, and Modern Standby (S0 Low Power Idle), and for every unavailable state it names the blocking reason — BIOS setting, hypervisor, or missing hiberfile. This is also how you verify hibernate is actually enabled after running powercfg /hibernate on.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

  • powercfg command-line options
    Microsoft Learn · vendor-doc · 2026-09-17
    Evidence: Documents /a for listing available sleep states and the reasons unavailable states are excluded.

Last verified: 2026-09-17 · Category: System & Settings

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