Computer Turning on Seemingly at Random

frying_pan_cat

frying_pan_cat

frying_pan_cat

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My computer has developed an odd fault. It will turn on at random times. It will occasionally turn on when I am not here or in the middle of the night when I've forgotten to turn it off at the plug but most of the time it happens when I hibernate, it will reboot instead of power down even though it has hibernated. It does not do this every time so it doesn't seem to be a problem with hibernation and it will turn on at random when completely powered down.

I have checked that power over lan is disabled and I have tried disconnecting the switch when the problem was really bad and it wouldn't turn off which seemed to fix the fault temporarily but when i reattached the switch it seemed fine for ages afterwards. The problem seems very intermittent so I don't know if the switch being disconnected was a red herring as I removed a lot of other components at the same time to try to diagnose the problem.

Does anyone have any idea what may be causing this?

Thanks
 
Hi frying pan cat,

Strange one, have you tried disabling the wake up from mouse?

Perhaps that is the problem, or maybe you can set a key combination (in bios) to allow the pc to wake and see what happens.
 
frying_pan_cat,

quality name :D


As Jason said, if you have wake up features enabled in your bios, it is possible that something is making contact with the keyboard or mouse and firing the pc up.
 
toon_mad said:
frying_pan_cat,

quality name :D


As Jason said, if you have wake up features enabled in your bios, it is possible that something is making contact with the keyboard or mouse and firing the pc up.
Click to expand...

Thanks:D

I'll have a look in the bios to see if there are any wake up features enabled. My board is an Asus p5Q-e. Does anyone know where to look for them on this board encase I miss any?
 
well it must be something to do with windows power saving features, try this:

right click desktop > properties (or personalise if vista/win7) > click ScreenSaver > in the Power management groupbox click "Change power settings" > check which plan you are using and click "Change plan settings" and then "Change advanced power settings".

Have a look through all the options in the tree, maybe under Sleep or something there might be a option thats making the pc wake up after so long you could change.

Thats all i can think of at present.
 
A bit off-topic but "power on by mouse" was the stupidest idea ever. I turned it on when I built my first PC in 2004 and turned it off straight away cos any sort of vibration to the desk like walking near it turned the PC on lol. I just left it to power on when any keyboard button is pressed.

Strangely, my current PC has more limited options for power on - I can only choose the space bar, CTRL-ESC or the "power" key (which my keyboard doesn't have).
 
toon_mad said:
well it must be something to do with windows power saving features, try this:

right click desktop > properties (or personalise if vista/win7) > click ScreenSaver > in the Power management groupbox click "Change power settings" > check which plan you are using and click "Change plan settings" and then "Change advanced power settings".

Have a look through all the options in the tree, maybe under Sleep or something there might be a option thats making the pc wake up after so long you could change.

Thats all i can think of at present.
Click to expand...

Under sleep there was an option Allow wake timers which was set to enable. I have now set it to disable so I'll see if that affects it
 
UnworthyBean said:
Open command prompt and type in "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" that will normally tell you whats waking your computer.
Click to expand...

I just did this and I get

HID-compliant mouse
HID Keyboard Device
Standard PS/2 Keyboard

Does this mean that my mouse and keyboard are set to wake the computer and if so how do I disable these as I couldn't see anything in the BIOS that was enabled?
 
UnworthyBean said:
If you go into device manager, You can tell them not to wake the computer.

Right click > Power management. I can almost guarantee it is just the mouse doing it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I've unticked the let this device wake the computer on my mouse now. Didn't even realise it was an option or I would have checked there before. Hopefully that'll fix the problem
 
Are you using Windows 7? It has a habit of turning the PC on from sleep when scheduled tasks need to run, for example checking to see if media centre needs updating bla bla bla. In the power options I found an option to disable the ability to wake the computer for scheduled tasks
 
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