It is depressing, but the fact is Microsoft has an enormous amount of the market. We may dislike using their OS at times; it may cause you to pull your hair out and rage against the machine, but the fact is there just isn't a comparable alternative for most users.
To add insult to your injury, the Hibernate feature has always been a bane to the casual user. There are just so many things that can screw it up. ACPI compatable, video drivers, networking drivers, sound card issues and BIOS problems can all be keeping you from successfully coming back from hibernation.
Not to mention, Windows is a beast and sometimes things are modified by the user that screws up other things that don't even seem to be related.
You could systematically update and rollback drivers, remove and troubleshoot each individual piece of hardware, but it sounds like a re-install is much easier.
Good luck.
