My computer powers on itself! What can I do?

Lately I have noticed that sometimes after I turn my computer off at night, I wake up and see that it has come back on. I've noticed this twice now. I've swept for malware and viruses, etc. but it comes up clean. What is causing this to happen? Anybody got any ideas? I don't recall giving any programs permission to do this.
Thanks,
Kathy

 

This behaviour caused a lot of head scratching when XP Media Center Edition was launched some years ago, and was due to the system being hard programmed to wake up at 3AM to download the latest TV guides. I have a fix somewhere, but your problem is probably different.

 

It could be an electrical issue too. I notice when my electricity goes out, when it comes back on, some things in my house will turn themselves on, even if they were off when the power went out. This can be annoying, one of the things that does it is my reciever.. If I'm listening to music before I go to bed at night, sometimes it can be pretty loud when I turn it off.. I awake in the middle of the night to a vibrating house, and people singing loudly.

Isn't there a setting in the BIOS about restarting after a power failure? that might be worth changing too.

 

I had a windows 2000 computer that turned on every night at 9pm. It drove me nuts until I could figure out why. I plugged it into a power strip and turned it off that way because if it was plugged directly into an outlet, it turned itself on.
Go into your BIOS and look for a setting like Wake on Schedule or Wake on LAN and disable it.

My computer was in an office and apparently it woke itself up a 9pm to get updates. As far as I could tell, it never turned off.

 

Thanks everyone. I have Windows XP Pro SP 3.

• I will check the BIOS, but I've had the computer a long time and it never did this before.
• I thought about that too - turning it off at the surge protector.
• I don't have a router/wireless/home network set up.
• I do have an Ethernet connection, and I also have the USB cord plugged in too. Not sure if I need both cords plugged in, but it doesn't seem to hurt it anything.

 

You really only need the one cord from your modem, any more than this may confuse the computer. Try it with just the USB and see what happens.

 

When mine turned on, it was not connected by modem, ethernet or wireless. The only thing plugged in was the power cord. Apparently a schedule was set up and the computer turned itself on to follow the schedule.

Check your security apps. If any have changed lately, maybe one of them added a scheduled task to check for updates at a certain time.

If you can't find anything, then I'd head to the malware forum just to be sure you do not have a rogue app trying to do its thing on a schedule.

 

Turns out I didn't have USB and Ethernet plugged in - just the Ethernet. I unplugged it and am using the USB now instead. It turned OFF by itself today before I did that. My first thought was malware, but I ran Spybot and my anti-virus/anti-malware program (I use A-Squared). I thought I already stopped all scheduling, but I'll check again. I will wait now and see if changing to USB connection fixes the problem. When I ran my Verizon CD to change my connection type, I got messages telling me I should stay with the Ethernet connection because it's faster and more reliable. I can't tell the difference so far.