Computer powers ON by itself

[iowaanimator]

I have a homegrown machine with an atx-type case, its about a year old, with a recently replaced HD. Up until now it has performed perfectly. Last night the machine powered ON by itself 3 times. Yes, that is correct. Powered ON! No one touched it or was near it. Is this indicitive of a short in the switch? power supply? something else? How do I track it down?

TIA
Selena

 

[gebbly]

Do you have any of the auto-on features active?

Such as Wake-on-LAN (would have required your pc to be connected to a network or modem) or wake-on-keyboard or any other variant?

 

[iowaanimator]

wake-on-lan is on the motherboard, but as far as I know is not active. I will check that when I get home. Wouldn't wol require a request to turn the machine on? At the time, the machine was hooked up to the network but the other machine wasn't on, and didn't power on. I don't think I have any other auto-on features, but again, wouldn't that require a request? And how would I check that? Would it be possible that a request was sent from outside (have DSL)? Would the firewall have stopped such a request (assuming it was the cause)?

 

[gebbly]

As you say the machine would only have awoken on a request from somewhere. I was assuming you had something like adsl. Didnt know the quality of your firewall but if traffic from the Internet got passed your firewall it could well have triggerred your machine to respond, or at least wake up.

Although if your machine was being woken as described it would have been doing it before. So if it is suddenly happening when things have been fine in the past this may wel not be the problem.

 

[iowaanimator]

The firewall is ZoneAlarm (the free version), and the DSL/firewall went on this past Friday, but last night was the first time I SAW it happen. Is ZoneAlarm considered a good firewall? Maybe this is happening and I didn't know it.

 

[gebbly]

Zonealarm is usually pretty reliable for a free firewall (I use it myself).

Just curious but did you ever see this happen before last friday? Heres a random thought...perhaps the new dsl firewall is polling the machines on the local network checking if they are alive which is resulting in your pc being woken each time.

check your bios and connectors tonight and make sure you have no "wake-on-XXX" enabled. (I have them all unplugged). If you see the machine turning on have a look at things like the task manager to see if you can identify what tasks and processes are running. Perhaps there is something running that will give you a clue as to the cause.

 

[mister_e]

Sounds like some pretty creepy sh!t to me. Might wanna call the Ghostbusters or somethin :tongue: .

Seriously, I would just disable the Wake-on-LAN feature and see if it happens again. I seriously doubt you would have any need for WOL at home anyways.

 

[iowaanimator]

WOL was not active when the machine was turning on. And the machine has not turned on again since then. Any other ideas? A short in the power on switch or power supply?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

its possible...power switch couldhave poor contacts

<b>Damn War! I'm too young to watch other people die!</b>
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[gebbly]

Ever seen "Ghost in the Machine"....

 

[gebbly]

Just spoke to someone who had the same problem. They found that somehow having the phone line plugged in (guessing he had a modem) was causing the pc to start up. Unplugged the phone line and the problem stopped.
Actually had one incident when just plugging the phone line in caused the pc start up as it was plugged in.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

my sister had a similar problem i remember now, though turning off WOL and other power on thinggies fixed the problem.

<b>Damn War! I'm too young to watch other people die!</b>
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[Teq]

Look in your BIOS power management and see what the "after powerloss" function is set to... If it's set to "on", even a very brief power loss will boot up your computer. To fix the problem set it so that the computer does not power up after a power loss. (the setting's actually a convenience for people who turn things on and off from a powerbar)

I had one machine do this to a friend of mine, took him a week to figure out he was getting middle of the night power outages.


--->It ain't better if it don't work<---

 

[Gpops]

I'm having a similar problem but it is a motherboard I bought from Ebay and I put it together as I have many other computers for myself and family and friends. I got it together and hooked everything up and when I turned on the power supply it came on automatically. Thought it may be a faulty case switch so I unplugged the switch and reset button. Turned on the power supply and it powered on again. How can it come on? Not getting a signal to the monitor either so can't check bios. Motherboard is Asus A8V with Athlon 64 X2 3800 and 512 MB Ram to test. AGP 512 Radeon 1650 video card. How can it power up with no switch?

 

[Gpops]

Just solved the problem. I took out the battery and cleared the bios reinstalled battery and it works fine now.

 

[habs4life]

that was going to be my next suggestion, good job.