Ok, last night, I get done with my pc so I click on shutdown. The power light goes out and the fan shuts off. About half an hour later, I walk by it and notice that it’s on again. “No problem,” I think. “I must have hit restart by accident.” So I shut it down again and once again, the fan and power light switch off. I wait about ten minutes to make sure I didn’t hit restart again (It usually takes about two minutes maximum for the lights and fan to start up again.) An hour later, same thing; I walk by it and it’s on again. Fearing some kind of fault, I turn it off and unplug it.
I’m running Windows XP Pro, ZoneAlarm, and AVG. I’m on comcast high-speed, but I don’t see how it can be an outside influence, seeing how it’s shut off when it happens.
So, any advice on how to figure out what’s going on? So far, my only thoughts are either some sort of fault in the MoBo or power supply, or some sort of program hijacking me and faking a shut down when it’s really on a “delayed restart.”
I haven’t messd with the CMOS settings since I put the beast in a new case about six months ago. I’ve only had high-speed for about two weeks, but last night was the first time this has happened. Is it pretty safe to rule out some sort of outside influence though? As I said, I don’t see how that could be the problem, but I’m not computer savvy enough to know whether to rule it out.
It may be that Wake-on-LAN has always been enabled but that it’s just never been triggered before. What sort of router/cable modem do you have? Is it USB-powered, or does it have its own power supply (if so, try switching it off when the computer is off and see if that stops the errant behaviour.
You would be surprised how many computer systems connected to the Internet are compromised and the owners don’t know about it. Many DoS (denial of service) attacks on big web sites such as Yahoo are caused by compromised computers with high speed connections, especially Comcast customers.
I have a Motorola Surfboard (don’t know the model number, I’m using a friend’s pc right now.) modem, no router. It has it’s own P/S. I’ll see if anything happens unhooking the modem.
Thanks for the heads-up. I have it buttoned up so tight that it occassionally even annoys me, but I’ll give it a check-up. Fortunately, I have an old Pentium II I can hook-up at home to check thing out before I put the Beast back on-line.
**D.E.S.K.Top668 ** ,
Why don’t you just shut off all power to the computer after it powers down? Plug it into a surge protector/power strip that can be shut off. You can leave the power on to your router/modem.
Why would that be? While I’m not adverse to an additional layer of protection, would a router help in any real way? I’m running ZoneAlarm (Pro) on the highest setting, AVG (pro), Windows XP Firewall, using Firefox, and have all my security settings on High. Would a router be any real benefit?
OTTOMH, there’s 4 things that could make a PC start up w/o using the power switch
*Wake-on-LAN: already covered, check bios
*Wake-on-Ring: similar, but for your modem instead, check bios
*Various power-on-key settings: ie, turn on the PC if the spacebar is held down for 5 seconds; Check APCI settings in BIOS… do you own a cat?
*AC Power settings: You can set your PC to do 3 different things after a power outage: Turn on, stay off, or do whatever it was doing before the power went out. If you have it set to the first one, and you have a power-outage, your PC will turn on afterwards.
While that would keep the problem from happening, it wouldn’t solve the problem. I’m not too worried if it turns out to be a wonky P/S or BIOS setting, but if I’ve been hijacked in some way, I’d like to cut if off now. Nanoda, no cat, but I’ve got two kids. That’s why I got a locking case. Everything (On switch, reset switch, and all drives) are behind a locked panel. I’ll give you suggestions a try when I get back home.
Thanks for the help, all. Wake-on-ring was enabled…wheeew. If the mods don’t mind though, if anybody would mind taking up the router - why? question, I’d be most grateful.