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Basically I am dual booting windows and linux on a laptop, I am using windows and i close the lid and it goes to sleep, I leave documents and programs open. When I open it up the next day it has booted into linux somehow. Nevertheless I restart the laptop from the log in menu and I boot up windows. My programs and documents pop up just as I left them. So where are the state of those documents saved? Even if I do log in to linux and then go to windows the state of things is always saved. I would have thought RAM but I just read a 2018 question here that says that is NOT the case. So how does this work?

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    Depends on your settings, but there can be a certain sleep time after which the laptop hibernates and saves RAM to disk (HIBERFIL.SYS from memory).
    – tater
    Commented Aug 21, 2020 at 13:56
  • so that means my other OS wont have full access to all my RAM?
    – Eddiea6987
    Commented Aug 21, 2020 at 14:21
  • The answer from Silver Rampart should cover it. Only one OS is active at a time with dual boot, and that will use all RAM.
    – tater
    Commented Aug 21, 2020 at 15:32

1 Answer 1

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It seems your computer is hibernating.

Windows writes all RAM to a disk file and shuts down. When you start up, if Linux is the default boot, it will boot, with use of all the RAM, since RAM contents cannot persist through power off. When you start Windows, it detects the hibernation file, and restores the RAM, and with it your apps and documents.

I'm sure there's other complications going on, but that's the gist of it.

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