Computer turned on by itself

[frying_pan_cat]

Hi

Not sure if this should go here or in GH but I guess it's probably software related rather than hardware related.

I was watching TV this morning and about 10 minutes after I had turned it on I saw the lights on my PC come on and it started to boot. It got to the press del to enter setup page then said overclock failed so I went into bios and the settings were all how I left them so I just exited and it booted fine. My PC is connected to the TV by a DVI cable if this makes any difference.

I was wandering if anyone here knows what may have caused this?

 

[frying_pan_cat]

It was turned off and had been off at the plug until I turned it on so that I could put the TV on.

Sorry for the ignorance but what is WOL?

I'll have a look at scheduled tasks this afternoon as I'm on my laptop atm

 

[frying_pan_cat]

I'd imagine somewhere in the BIOS AC Loss behaviour is set to resume with power on rather than remain off. Hence if it didn't shut down properly before the mains was disconnected then it will power back on when mains is reconnected. This is the standard setting on most servers but it's supported on many consumer motherboards too

I think it shut down properly but even if not it took about 10 minutes for it to start up again. Does anyone know where the setting for this is in the Asus bios?

I don't think it could be WOL as there is a network cable in there but it isn't connected to anything due to me needing to trail it all the way downstairs to the router whenever I want internet as I can't get my wi-fi card working with Win 7 x64 but thats another issue. If anyone knows where the WOL setting in the Asus bios is I'll check that too.

Thanks for the replies guys

 

[frying_pan_cat]

First you need to make sure your board supports WOL before wasting time looking for it, not all Asus boards support it, what model is it?

I still vote ghosties hiding in your trailing Ethernet wire

It's an Asus P5Q-E.
Just had a google and it looks like it's in
Power -> APM -> Power On by PCI Devices
If that's the case then it's disabled on mine

 

[frying_pan_cat]

I've just had a look at scheduled tasks and there do seem to be quite a few of them. It doesn't show any in the history though and there's none set for roughly 10:30 in the future, which is roughly when it turned on. If anyone wants me to post a screenshot showing the list I can do if this will help.
I'm running Win 7 RC btw if it makes any difference

 

[frying_pan_cat]

It has done it again today. I don't know when it turned on but I have just been into my room and heard the fans spinning. I turned the monitor on and it was on start up repair saying that it couldn't start even though it was fine last time I turned it off. I left it to run but it said that it couldn't repair and turned itself off. I have left it off for now and turned it off at the wall so it can't turn on again.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[frying_pan_cat]

It may be wake on USB since I had my Creative Zen Micro charging this time. Can't remember if it was connected last time.

I will check event log tomorrow. Is it just the event viewer that comes up if I type event into the start menu?

how do you turn off WOL? looked in the bios its not there

On my board WOL is under Power -> APM -> Power On by PCI Devices apparently

 

[frying_pan_cat]

Sorry for the long post but I am now thoroughly confused.

This morning it did it again. I was gonna go into event viewer and see if there was anything suspicious in there, so I was about to type my password in when the computer went into a restart loop. It would occasionally get as far as the bios screen and sometimes would just spin up and then go off again. I then cut the power at the wall and removed components one at a time to see if I could isolate the problem.

The problem was still there with the IDE cable for the DVD drives unplugged and also with the unnecessary PCI cards removed. I then unplugged the HDDs, front panel switches and one stick of RAM and now it boots fine, even with everything plugged back in.

So now I'm thoroughly confused as to what could have caused it.

I also looked in event viewer and couldn't see anything suspicious but I don't really know what to look for so if there's anything specific I should be looking at could someone let me know

Thanks

 

[frying_pan_cat]

Sounds to me like it's a PSU or switch issue like I said earlier.

When it was restarting I did think it may be PSU as it's the oldest part of my setup. I may have to get a new one but I think I'll wait and see if it does it again as it seems OK for now

I think it's the Patrick Swayze virus.

care to explain?