Windows vista – to hibernate, or not to hibernate?

I have had a scary weekend. Whilst using my usually reliable touch pad last Thursday, I inadvertantly (with my usually reliable fat fingers) set my laptop to hibernate, rather than shut down as normal. What panic awaited me when I tried to reboot. After a few seconds of the disc turning, it seemed the thing had died.

I tried suggestions gained from google and tech forums, powering down, letting the battery drain, battery removal, etc. The vista disc was in Leeds, I was in Brum, so tried to boot from an Ubuntu disc I had on me, but no luck.

After I got back to Leeds, the thing bluescreened on me twice trying to boot from the vista disc. Third time lucky, thank God. The moral is don’t hibernate.