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General discussion

PC turns itself on!!??

May 18, 2005 6:08AM PDT

OK, I'm sure there is an easlily understood reason for this, but my PC turns itself on. I have not discovered a pattern yet. But I will shut down in the p.m. (windows xp sp2) and sometime early in the a.m it will have turned itself back on. Likewise while I'm at work. Whats the fix?

SYSTEM: AMD 2600 xp cpu, Syntax SV400 MOBO, 1Gb PC2700 DDR, 40GB Seagte HD, 128MB DDr FX5200 Video Card.

Discussion is locked

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Could be a number of things
May 18, 2005 7:00AM PDT

but most might point to BIOS settings. You could have it set to power back on after a power failure. As such, a drop in your line voltage could trigger the restart. Another could be it's set to "wake on modem" or other device. You may also have it configured to restart with the keyboard or mouse. Do you have pets? These could be by choice or by chance.

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It happened to me before
May 18, 2005 8:36AM PDT

the same thing happened to my gateway 820gm and you are right about the times. i would wake up in the morning and at usually 8 it would power on. i asked gateway tech support and they told me it was a virus. i was like ok right, norton couldnt find it? i think a week later, i had to clear my hard drive because i had a serious problem logging in. after i reinstalled everything, it never turned itself on anymore

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MY BAD MY BAD
May 19, 2005 10:48AM PDT

*******after i reinstalled everything, it never turned itself on anymore ******* i meant that it never turned itself on automatically again. it was fixed after i cleared the hard drive and reinstalled it to original factory settings. it runs perfectly fine

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Used to have a TV like that...
May 19, 2005 2:47AM PDT
Happy
Believe it had to do with someone's burglar alarm system that triggered a sensitive remote. Remember when the old auto speed radar detectors could be activated by a remote garage door opener, burglar alarm systems, or microwave ovens.

Also, when I bought my Dish Network Satellite TV system some years ago, there are two types of remotes..forget the names ..like infra red & ?, but one you point at the receiver and one you don't have to. Anyway, they caution that you can activate a neighbors satellite system with one of the remotes under certain conditions.

Read some years back that there is/was a worm or spyware with telephone dialup that can trigger your computer to turn on and the hard drive/system can then be used to do work for others. You might post in the Virus and Security Alerts forum to see what the experts there have to say.
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pc...turns on
May 19, 2005 10:42PM PDT

your pc is only going to sleep.
somewhere on your control panel list is a place where you will find that sort of thing.

it is not coming as a thief in the night

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going to sleep?
May 19, 2005 11:17PM PDT

More like.... waking up from the dead. The computer turns itself ON, after it has been completely shut down. (turned off, no power, not running) I posted on the virus/security forum and so far no one feels as if it is a virus, plus I've run a very thorough scan....twice, and I have no virus. Searched thru my bios but cant seem to find anywhere where there is something that would set it to "wake".
Thanks for everyones insight, keep the ideas coming!

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pc turns on automatically:
May 19, 2005 11:30PM PDT

You may have been in bios, but you must have missed the wake on setting. go back to bios, and make sure while you check each line that you use the scroll setting to go to a line item that must be hidden due to the number of items. I did this , and missed a bunch ofitems, because I thought I saw all of the line items. try again.

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Bios setting
May 20, 2005 12:21AM PDT

Have a look in BIOS at startup; there may be some setting in there that says something like: Wake-up on Event, or Ring, or Ringtime. Sometimes someone wants to be able to take a fax when the machine is off, and this setting allows it to turn itself on to take a fax. So it may be turning on when your phone rings....

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simple answer
May 20, 2005 2:27AM PDT

When you turn off your computer, flip the switch on your surge protector or power strip! I'd like to see your computer turn itself on now! (You don't have a ghost, do you?)

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Ghost??
May 20, 2005 2:55AM PDT

I think the ghost resides in the bios settings as pointed out by several folks. I will review my mobo manual thoroughly and seek out this wake setting, I'm sure i'll find it with some perseverance. Thanks everyone, I'll keep you posted. Rick

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System check failure due to overclocking.
Aug 25, 2006 2:08AM PDT

I know nothing about bios settings. I recently built my first computer. It is an AMD based system with the AMD barton core 2900+. When my system boots sometimes i get the message system check failed due to overclocking, but then boots and runs fine. I have not overclocked the processor myself. Could you shed some light on this and perhaps tell me how to check it.

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BIOS settings
May 21, 2005 9:33PM PDT

Most likely there are settings in your BIOS telling it to Wake on LAN or Wake on Modem activity, or even other settings telling it to not necessarily power off but to hibernate or go into standby mode and some pieces of software are waking it to perform software updates, receive e-mail, etc.