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Question

Windows 7 computer wakes up from hibernate

Sep 4, 2014 12:10PM PDT

Hello,

So recently (within the past week) my computer (PC) has started waking up from hibernate or sleep within 7 minutes after I give it the command to do so.

I have not installed any new software before this started occurring, I have not added any new hardware, I have disabled all network adapters from being able to wake up the computer, and I have also used powercfg -lastwake and get the following:

Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count - 0

This means the computer doesn't show what the source is for waking it up. I also ran the devicequery command and have disabled all devices that were listed (mice, keyboards, etc) from being able to wake it up. Still no dice.

Interestingly, if I restart the computer and THEN sleep or hibernate, that works but is obviously not ideal (defeats the purpose of sleep or hibernate). So perhaps there is a process that is the culprit but I can't figure out how to identify which process that may be.

At this point, I am completely out of ideas and can't seem to find additional solutions online. If anyone has an idea, please let me know! This is so annoying and so strange that it happened seemingly out of the blue.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Most likely
Sep 4, 2014 11:24PM PDT

Most likely it's some AV program that's set to download new definition updates or something along those lines. As to why it's just now happening as opposed to not before... Who knows, but common reasons would be along the lines of registry cleaners removing an important value from the registry that controlled this behavior -- which would be pretty lucky if that's the full extent of the damage it did.

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Re
Sep 4, 2014 11:34PM PDT

So what do I do?

Is there a way to shut down processes when a computer sleeps or hibernates? I assumed that is what actually happened, seeing as the computer is supposed to be as non-responsive as possible in those states.

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Answer
check your event logs
Sep 5, 2014 7:51AM PDT

that should make mention of whatever is waking it up.

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Re.
Sep 8, 2014 1:50PM PDT

Any tips for using the Event Viewer? I thought it was Bonjour that was causing my computer to wake up (it was throwing the same error repeatedly, including during the times the computer turned back on). But I uninstalled Bonjour and my computer still came back on after hibernating.

Now, the only services that occurred (looking under Administrative Events since I assume waking up the computer would fall into that category?) are DNS Client Events which, I assume, are because my computer reconnects to the internet when it is turned back on. I don't think it could be automatically connecting and that's why it comes out of hibernate because I've manually disabled my network adapters from being able to wake up the computer.

Any ideas here or more information on where to look in the Event Viewer?

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Even if the LAN
Sep 9, 2014 5:47AM PDT

isn't waking it up, there is some program trying to use the LAN waking it up. Trojans do that, to call home and let them know it's available for botnet, hack, or whatever. Check taskmanager and see what all is open at that time it wakesup and then run each program on google to find out what it's related to.

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Answer
Sleep
Sep 6, 2014 12:12AM PDT

It seems to work if you boot the machine and then use sleep.

That would seem to say it's some product your loading after you boot.

I would think that one at a time you could narrow it down until you find the culprit.

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Re.
Sep 8, 2014 1:51PM PDT

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid somehow disabling or uninstalling all of my programs one-by-one as that sounds pretty awful. But thanks for the suggestion.