My computer keeps turning back on

August 19, 2004 10:13 AM

Here's a weird one: my computer has been turning back on two or three minutes after I power down for the night. It only stays off after I shut it down for a second time. What's strange is that it is undeniably off during those three minutes; no lights, no fans, nothing. The machine just rises from the dead.

This has only been happening for the past week or so. It's an XP computer running an Athlon 2500 on an MSI motherboard with the factory power supply. Any ideas?
posted by pheideaux to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

A lot of motheboards I've dealt with have a "wake-on-lan" or "wake-on-keyboard" features that allow it to be able to boot up without touching the power button. Go into BIOS and see if your computer has the settings and delete them. Perhaps something is triggering this wake-on features, but what I do not know.

Try also loading a newer version of your BIOS if you can. Perhaps something to corrupted, the more I think of this the stranger it seems. Perhaps your computer is going into hibernate mode. I thought all fans, lights, etc. died during hibernate mode and the RAM goes to the harddrive. I could be wrong but try disabling hibernate also.
posted by geoff. at 10:20 AM on August 19, 2004

Check the motherboard settings. There are settings that power on the computer when activity from the network card is detected.
posted by monkeyman at 10:22 AM on August 19, 2004

It's haunted.
posted by zeoslap at 11:15 AM on August 19, 2004

My suspicion is 'wake-on-lan" ... check that setting in your bios.

I had a similar problem the first time I plugged a box into a school network. Some CS-major jackass thought it was hilarious to somehow send out a 'wake-up' ping at 4am... A friend and I eventually waited up all night for him with a packet sniffer and waited for him to send out the command and trace his IP back. Half of the dorm wanted to beat the little twerp into a pulp.
posted by SpecialK at 11:29 AM on August 19, 2004

Yep, I vote for 'wake on lan' too.
posted by petebest at 11:40 AM on August 19, 2004

I gotta admit, SpecialK, that's a clever prank, although playing it on everyone at once is a pretty stupid idea. Good on you for tracking him down. Was electronic mob justice served?
posted by Songdog at 7:51 AM on August 20, 2004