StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I go to bed, lie a bit and see that my computer starts itself up. When I go to it, there is no maintance scheduled, no special comments or errors. It just turns itself on as if I turned it on.

Any ideas what causes it?

Could it be overheating at all? Sometimes if the CPU reaches a critical temperature threshold, the unit will cut power at the PSU and kill the thing. Least that's what happened to my PC at one point, though it still tried to run at 100 degrees for a while.

Read more carefully. It's turning itself on, not off.

It will be set to wake on ring/wake on LAN/wake on PME in the BIOS, and thinks it's getting a wakeup packet over the network, frequently happens. Boot to BIOS, find the "wake on" options and disable them all.

It's not something silly, like it being set to "Wake on LAN" or anything?

Vendetta wrote:Read more carefully. It's turning itself on, not off.

It will be set to wake on ring/wake on LAN/wake on PME in the BIOS, and thinks it's getting a wakeup packet over the network, frequently happens. Boot to BIOS, find the "wake on" options and disable them all.

Yeah... I knew that.

*goes for more coffee*

Try safe mode.

And, more usefully, check your BIOS settings as above.

Like they all said.
Also, one of my computers has a scheduling option in the BIOS for powering on. See if that is on your computer.

Would switching it off at the mains not be a good idea?

If all this fails, I know the number of a good exorcist.

It might sound stupid, but are you leaning anything against your keyboard? A lot of keyboards these days have 'soft' power switches that can turn on computers and something there might be being triggered or something...

Otherwise, check your power button from the inside and outside, make sure it isn't 'sticking' or something.

Maybe a faulty power supply?

The digital clock is OK, so it most likely is the BIOS. Granted, I don't know the password.

Oh well, the manual solution it is then.

...You don't know the password to your own bios? Is it a Dell machine someone foisted off to you? Dell usually has a fun password-reset jumper on the motherboard, though if you don't know where to look, I'd suggest trying to figure out what the hell your password is.

No, one of my dad's friends set my computer together when I was younger. Since, then, because he didn't wanted me to meddle, put a password on.

I do see what I think is, the battery for the BIOS clock.

I actually had the same problem. I wanted to turn on WOL so that I could be really lazy and boot up my desktops from my laptop downstairs, but for some reason, they'd only stay off for a few seconds before booting back on. Disabling WOL fixed the problem.

Is there an attractive piece of electronics near your computer system?

That might explain it's occasional arousal...