How to delete hiberfil.sys in Windows 10

Windows Hibernate

In this post I’ll look at how to delete the Hiberfil.sys file from your computer.

If you are reading this then you are probably trying to free up some diskspace on C:\ and have noticed you have a large file called Hiberfil.sys.

The Hiberfil.sys file is a file that Windows uses to write the contents of memory to when you ask your computer to Hibernate. The more memory you have in your computer the larger the Hiberfil.sys file is likely to be.

hiberfil sys file present

If you’ve tried to delete it already you’ll have seen the following error message:

The action cant be completed because the file is open in another program - hiberfil.sys

So before we can delete the file we need to disable Hibernate.




Click Start, and then type cmd.

Start - Search - CMDRight click the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Command Prompt - Run as administratorIf you have User Access Control enabled click yes to continue to open the Command Prompt window.

Type powercfg -h off and hit return.

powercfg -h offOnce complete, go and check the C:\ to see that the hiberfil.sys file has now been removed.

hiberfil sys file deleted

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1 thought on “How to delete hiberfil.sys in Windows 10”

  1. Ian

    Hi, Thanks for this. I had read other ways of doing it and they failed even though Hibernate was disabled in Power Settings, the file was still locked. Important point you could add for the reason to do it this way.

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