I have similar specs on my laptop, I have a i7 though. I use hibernation all the time on win7 64bit and I never run into this. Being that it's hibernation causing it you would think that maybe it would be a hardware issue perhaps ram or hard drive. But you said you ruled that out. So I am just unsure of this.

> I have more information I finally tracked down the offender, but now I can't
> find a cause or fix for it...yet.
>
> Win7 64bit and other 64bit Win os's going back to like Server 2003 has this
> problem where the System-"NT Kernel & System" process gets jacked up and runs at
> a solid 25% solid and causes the system to get slammed.
>
>
>
> Billy Connolly - Statement of the Century
> "If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking, how come they can't have a
> headache and sex at the same time ?"
>