Solved Win 7 starts by itself in middle of night

[Dave95694]

I went to fix an internet connectivity problem for a client of mine. While I was there they told me the computer will start up in the middle of the night. They assured me that they had turned it off in every case, but would see the light from the screen during the night. Thinking they had been hacked I downloaded Malwarebytes and ran a scan. It found nothing. In the summery I noticed that MBAM didn't scan for rootkits so I started but could not finish because of time. The computer is HP and fairly new. They have Skype and are using an add on Logitech camera. The couple is in there late 80's early 90's and not very computer savvy, so it's reasonable that they could have been conned into downloading some kind of malware. Can anyone point to something that could be responsible for this anomaly?

Thanks, Dave

 

[Brink]

Hello Dave,

The tutorials below may help to ID what is waking the computer. See the related links there as well.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/122012-lastwake-command.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/179257-wake-source-read-event-viewer-log.html
​

The usual suspect is Allow this device to wake the computer still checked for the network adapter(s).

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/122027-devices-allow-prevent-wake-up-computer.html
​

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

 

[Dave95694]

Win 7 starts by itself in middle of night new issue

"Please post back your results to help others."

I closed the other thread I had opened with the same title save for "new issue". I wrote a reply explaining what I had done and found and that the problem was solved. Then I clicked on the "mark solved" button expecting that my post would accompany the good news. It didn't and sadly I don't have a copy in Notepad. I'm not going to rewrite it. It took a long time to gather my thoughts and get them into a readable reply and right now I just too tired to start over. I was trying to add my voice to help others as requested. In the future I will post first and then mark the problem solved. I didn't know that my message wouldn't post when I clicked on the Mark Solved button.
I expected the page algorithm to take note of the fact that there was text in the message box and grab it along with the "Mark Solved" flag or warn me that I was about to loose the text. In an attempt to do a mulligan, an "oops" if you will, I may have created some problems for myself. I hope not. Brink answered my question in the original post but I don't know how to write directly to him or even if it's permitted. I wanted to make sure that he knows that I tried to contribute. I don't want members thinking I just here to mooch. I don't have much to offer save for the results of the repairs I make, so I was gretly distressed at loosing the post.
OK, I'm not so upset anymore so I'll try to recount the events. I ran MBAM and it reported that there were no problems. I also installed and ran Avast. I opened these two tutorials:
Wake Source - Read Event Viewer Log
Devices - Allow or Prevent to Wake Up Computer
Since the computer had been started and restarted several times while I was working on it Lastwake Command wouldn't have reviled anything I didn't already know. I followed the instructions to read the Event Log. From what I saw the Power-Troubleshooter log was empty. About that time the mouse became unstable. I don't know why, but I didn't want the computer to crash so I backed out of everything that was running.
Somewhere along the way I guessed that they may have just forgotten to turn the computer off. Since it wasn't a particular problem and I had ruled out hackers I showed them the right way to shut down and left it for them to call me if they wanted me to do more work on the problem.
My original question was to know if there is anyway someone could remotely turn on this or ( any ) computer after it had been shut down. Logic tells me that the answer is no, but then with these newer computers I thought perhaps hackers may have found a way. Anyway, I'm glad Brink steered me to the wake event log viewer and the Device manager window. I learned something new. If there is a set of tutorials on how to navigate and use the site please let me know. I have some studding to do.

In any case thanks for the help, Dave