My laptop did/does this thing where it will be in sleep mode but then suddenly wake up, log in (I haven’t set a user password yet), go into full awake-and-functioning mode, then go back to sleep after a few moments.
Wonder what causes this, and if there is any system log that I can go into to keep track of start-ups, turn-ons, and wake-ups to see how many times the computer has turned on or woken up, and for what reason?
Make, model, operating system, version?
What operating system are you running? If Windows 7 you might look at the Task Scheduler (go to Start and type Task Scheduler) to see what is being scheduled. For example I various backup programs scheduled late at night.
Asus Vivo, 64-bit OS, Windows 10
I had an issue with my desk top waking up every time I turned on a certain light switch in my house. The problem fixed itself so I’m not sure what’s going on there. It did take me a long time to figure out what was causing my desktop to wake though.
I had this problem a while back. Once a week a week or so I’d find my laptop on even though the lid was down. After months of casually poking around on the internet I finally found a solution, or at least something that worked. Buried deep in the power settings (Control Panel>Power Options>Edit Plan Settings) Click on Changed Advanced Settings. From there, Click on Sleep>Allow Wake Timers and change Battery and Plugged on from Important Timers Only to Disable.
The idea was that the computer was waking up in the middle of the night to install some update or do some minor housekeeping task. I’m not even sure if it actually was, for all I know it just has a flag set to tell it to do that. In either case, when I changed that, it stopped doing it.
That’s what did it for mine.
Any external USB peripherals plugged in?
On my Win10 desktop, I’ve found that disabling the “allow this device to wake computer” setting doesn’t stick. When I eventually unplug and replug a keyboard or mouse, Windows sometimes decides it is a new peripheral that is allowed to wake the computer by default. Changing that requires going all the way into device manager, where if you select a device and the “change settings” option, you’ll see a “power management” tab with the “allow this device to wake computer” setting.
edited to add: in addition to checking all the obvious things like “keyboard” and “mice and other pointing devices”, you may need to check the “human interface devices” where you might see half a dozen things named “USB input device” or “HID-compliant consumer control device”.
If you’re going that deep, make sure WOL isn’t on, in fact, make sure all the Wake On… items are off. There’s not that much use for those these days.
Also, as I read this post, I have to think that if I was having this problem, I’d probably just unplug my keyboard/mouse at night rather then go all the way into those settings every few days.
Yeah, me too. I suspect my wireless mouse is the usual culprit – at least a mouse being slightly jostled by cats or heavy footsteps seems more possible than spontaneous keypresses on a mechanical keyboard. My usual solution is just to switch off the mouse, which seems to prevent >90% of mystery wakeups.
Still, changing things in Device Manager usually works for several months, usually until the next time I unplug something by venturing into the rats nest of cables behind my desk…
If that works for months, I probably wouldn’t mess with it, but another option would be check your power options or screen saver and have one or the other have your computer go to sleep (or turn the monitor off or hibernate or shutdown, whatever you’re aiming for) after a certain amount of time. That way if mouse gets moved during the night and wakes it up, it’ll shut itself back down.
My home computer will go back to sleep after a few seconds, I think my work computer times out pretty quickly as well, but I could be wrong about that one. They’re also both password protected, so if you don’t unlock them, they seem to know they aren’t doing anything.
I think maybe the Asus / Windows 10 combo does some funny things.
I have an Asus G11CD desktop running Windows 10. The computer has no disk access light, just an LED that lights up (blue) when power is on and blinks when the machine is in standby. At some times when it is in sleep and also when it is shut down, the (blue) power LED flickers a dull reddish orange color – looks just like a typical disk access light on other computers. My screen doesn’t light up when this happens, though.
I haven’t bothered to try to run this down because I only use this machine for games, no personal or financial stuff on it – but yeah, the Asus with Win 10 does stuff even when powered off. I kind of half assume it might be Win 10 defragging the hard drive but that’s just a WAG.