Computer turning itself on during night

[Leonard704]

Similar to a post with the same title from August 2009, My computer starts up from a complete shut down(power off) in the middle of the night. I have checked the Task Scheduler and there are no tasks scheduled that are optioned to wake the computer to initiate. I have 3 network connections, Gigabit ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Virtual Wi-Fi. The Ethernet and Virtual Wi-Fi connections are not connected and have never been used. I have checked the wake on lan options for all three connections and all of the options are disabled. The ethernet card has 4 wake options including magic packet and pattern match, and all of the options are unchecked.
After the most recent incident I used the "powercfg –lastwake" command and the results were:
"Wake History Count - 0".
My system is password protected so when the computer starts up over night, it is always sitting at the password prompt when I come to turn it on in the morning. I have actually been in the room at about 1:20 AM when it started up on its own.
The system is a new build and all the components are new. None of them appear to have any problems. Other than the self startup there are no system problems that I am aware of.
Norton Internet Security says the system is virus free.
Does anyone have any new suggestions?

Thank you.

 

[AddRAM]

Welcome Leonard704

Do you live with Sheldon ? LOL

Go to control panel / power options / sleep / advanced settings / sleep / make sure allow wake timers is set to disable.

 

[Leonard704]

Thanks for your reply.

I take it that Sheldon has or had a similar problem. Everything under sleep in the advanced power options is set to Never, Off or Disable. The allow wake timers setting was set to Enable and I just disabled it.
Is there any command other than "powercfg –lastwake" that can show what event initiated a power up. The computer is always off when it powers up by itself. I don't allow it to go into sleep or hibernate mode and I always shut it off at night.

 

[AddRAM]

Sheldon and Leonard are on The Big Bang Theory.

I keep all my equipment on surge protectors and are switched off when I`m done with the pc for the nite, I highly advise you to do the same. At least have it connected to a zip strip you can switch off.

Leave the pc as is, now that you have disabled allow wake timers, to see if it stays off through the nite.

You can also flip the power supply switch to off, if your PS has a switch.

 

[PooMan UK]

Some of the Asus MB have a setting in the Bios to turn on the PC at a desired time, you might want to also look for a RTC setting in the Bios

A real time clock alarm is a feature that can be used to allow a computer to 'wake up' after shut down to execute tasks every day or on a certain day. It can sometimes be found in the 'Power Management' section of a motherboard's BIOS setup.

 

[Dsn California]

Could be a virus . . .

I would certainly consider all the suggestions posted.
You could possibly have a virus, that is causing this.

Have you tried scanning?

 

[Leonard704]

My computer is on surge protection with battery backup.
It may take a couple of weeks after disabling the "Allow wake timers" option since the power on appears to be random. The computer has gone as long as a week without starting up and then starting up 2 or three times a week after that. There were 4 nights between the latest incident and the previous one.
Turning the power switch off on the PS does eliminate the symptom, but it does not solve the problem. I would like to find out what is causing the problem and resolve it. If it turns out to be a hardware problem I need to find it before the warranty expires.

The real-time clock option is disabled in bios.
I have done a complete scan several times over the past month in addition to the scanning that Norton does on a regular basis.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will continue to follow up on any other suggestions you may have.

 

[Dsn California]

Last Resort

I can only think of one other suggestion.
Call customer support while your computer
is still under warranty, if nothing else works.

Good luck!

 

[Leonard704]

I agree. If the problem persist after disabling the wake timer I think my next direction is hardware.

 

[Digital Life]

There is also a setting in the bios to start the computer when there is a power failure the machine might turn itself on but you said you had a battery backup and im not sure how long yours would last with the computer is turned off, It would still drain your battery even with the computer off

 

[AddRAM]

Why do you have a battery backup ? Is your pc on 24/7 ?

 

[Leonard704]

Good suggestion. I have already checked that option and made sure it is set to remain off after a power failure.

Thanks

 

[Leonard704]

It is a carryover from a work from home job when I lived in an area where short power failures and brown outs were not infrequent. I don't really need it today, but it has surge protection as well as power backup.

 

[AddRAM]

Unless it`s a work pc that has to be on 24/7 I see no point in having it. I have 3 of them, don`t use em anymore. You might as well throw money out the window.

 

[Leonard704]

Most of us have our little vices that we spend money on. In the businesses i was associated with the purpose of the battery backup was not to keep the computers up 24/7. It was to allow time to shut down critical applications to prevent the possible corruption of databases or critical files in the event of a power failure. I have no real justification for a battery backup, but I do run a photo application whose catalog or database could be corrupted if there were a power failure while it is performing certain operations. It may not cost me any money, but it could sure cost me a lot of time trying to reconstruct from backup. Depending on when a failure occurred there could be data that is unrecoverable because it had not yet been backed up. Besides the cost of a battery replacement every 3 or 4 years is somewhat negligible. To me it is as justifiable as buying video games or play station or spending 3 to 10 bucks for a drink at a bar. I don’t play video games and my bar hopping days are long gone.

There are probably things you spend money on that to me would be the equivalent to throwing money out the window from my perspective.

Enough philosophy. Thanks for all your help. It is past my bed time so I am going to shut down shortly.

 

[Digital Life]

You said that you checked the bios for wake timers but you did not say that you checked for the wake on lan option. This reminds me of one of my room mates years ago, I gave him a Win 7 machine that he kept in his bedroom sometimes in the middle of the night I would wake it up and log on with RDP and I had it setup to run concurrent users and I would update it for him and his monitor would stay at the logon prompt

 

[Leonard704]

I also checked bios for wake on lan options. There are several for pci and pcie devices, and they are all disabled. There are several wake on lan timers for network connections but they are all set in the network and internet connections area. They are all disabled as well.

 

[RealGem]

thanks for your reply.

I take it that sheldon has or had a similar problem.

LOL!

Unplug the PC from the mains. If it still manages to switch itself on, leave the house and never go back!

:devil:

 

[Leonard704]

Well none of the changes I have made to date solved the self start problem. I was out of town for a couple of days and when I returned home the system was on and sitting at the lonin prompt. I attached a copy of the system event log starting from the time of initial system activity at 8:50:14 AM until I logged on at 8:40:40 PM. I tried looking up some of the event id codes and could not find any of them associated with the Source descriptions.

Can any of you figure out what might be happening from the log entries?

Thank you.

 

[danno2]

Hey all, I am new here and found this page searching for an answer to the same question. New build, same issue.
asus P8Z77-Vpro , intel 3770k, corsair vengence 16 g, ssd intel, couple old wd hd's, windows 7 pro.
Any help would be appreciated, don't like ET phoning home without permission... Disabled scheduled task, checked bios couldn't find recommend "wake on LAN" in BIOS, don't have ethernet drivers installed as they created fatal boot issues.
Any help is appreciated...