is there such an app? (desktop state saver)

where if you reboot (currently i have 25 windows on my taskbar...usual), all that data (telnet sessions, email, apps, websites, word processing, etc) that gets you connected is accessed (saved when you open up a window...logins, etc) and all your windows are just like you left them. (AMAP...at least connected again)
 
I doubt it, at least if it should work with any program.

But if your PC can hibernate, you're pretty close. At least if the reason to turn it off is to save power when you're not there. Hibernation is of course not an alternative to rebooting to complete an installation.

I really like the idea, and have it connected to the power button. But I must admit that it feels weird to have lots of programs running, and then just press the power button (maybe even without bothering to save changed files). Takes 15 s to shut down the PC, and 15 s to turn it on. You get it up and running even faster than to start just the OS.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hibernate rocks, especially if you're a notebook user.. i normally shut down my computer about one time a month (yep, windows updates or similar cause), the rest is on, or hibernated.

But it would be cool to be able to hibernate individual apps for an ordinary reboot, if needed. (It would be great, if windows would compress the hibernation as well, as i don't need the full 1.5gb ram written to disk (27 seconds here on the notebook), when my windows normally has only about half of the ram used while running my ordinary apps).
 
better than hibernation for a desktop PC, there's suspend-to-ram, which I enabled by going into the BIOS and choosing "stand by mode S3" somewhere. (then it's a matter of telling windows to go stand by, no shit like having to use a shortcut, or XP logon/off screen and hold the shift key. I might bind it to the power button too)

takes more like one second to turn off and on the PC. music playback even continues right where it stopped, that's cool.
I had tried hibernation before but I hated it, as I feel like writing and reading the whole RAM content is slower than shutdown and boot on my PC.
 
it's not a powersaving thing. i had an app upgrade that is making me reboot to complete it...plus we have 'pushes' (patches) from the network at work from time to time...which will reboot you while you're out. just that it takes me 10-20 minutes to get things back to like I like them.

i would even be happy to supply necessary login/info, scripts in some grammar into a file for it to use. (simulate all the mouse clicks on icons and typing i would do to login or navigate to some webpage by hand after a reboot).

like a .bat file of everything i do to establish my desktop when i reboot.

anything close?
 
a .bat file and a session-resuming browser are a good start ; for more powerful scripting you should check AutoHotkey, it's free and can do a huge lots of thing (testing if a process is running and killing/launching it, remap keys, manage windows, click on things, map anything to a hotkey etc.)
 
But it would be cool to be able to hibernate individual apps for an ordinary reboot, if needed. (It would be great, if windows would compress the hibernation as well, as i don't need the full 1.5gb ram written to disk (27 seconds here on the notebook), when my windows normally has only about half of the ram used while running my ordinary apps).

It does compress; Windows reserves the full amount of disk space equal to your ram just in case it doesn't compress well, but when it actually hibernates, it does not use all of it. Want to test this theory? Start a few dozen apps and soak up a gig of ram (VMware is great way to test) and then hibernate and watch how long it takes to hibernate -- and then to restart! Now do it again with absolutely nothing open and see the difference.

Compressability of the contents of your ram also influence shutdown / bootup time.
 
I swear there is an XP option to 'resume last session' after a reboot, just somewhere thats really easy to miss (I just tried to find it & failed)
 
I swear there is an XP option to 'resume last session' after a reboot, just somewhere thats really easy to miss (I just tried to find it & failed)

THAT would be perfect. please please try to find it. i'll try searching as well. would that reconnect all 25 tabs in my taskbar...minimized maybe?
 
I bet AutoHotKey can be made to restore a Windows session, but haven't seen a script to do this so you'll probably have to write your own. A quick search on LifeHacker returned a program called SmartClose.
http://lifehacker.com/software/windows/download-of-the-day-smartclose-windows-222617.php
Windows only: Freeware program SmartClose automatically closes all of your running Windows apps with the click of a button.

SmartClose can also take a snapshot of all the apps that were running so that you can restore the session you left at a later time.
 
I think I found what I was thinking of:
Open Windows Explorer options
On the View tab, in the list box of options, near the bottom is "Restore previous folder windows at logon"

I actually haven't tried using it so its fairly likely it only applies to Windows Explorer (even though that would make no sense).

Edit: quick test shows this only restores Windows Explorer apps :(
Maybe its more functional in XP pro?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I actually haven't tried using it so its fairly likely it only applies to Windows Explorer (even though that would make no sense).

Edit: quick test shows this only restores Windows Explorer apps :(
Maybe its more functional in XP pro?
No, it's the same in XP Pro. Why do you think it makes no sense?

Support for resuming previous sessions must be built into the application. There is no way Windows can do that for you.
 
Back
Top