Computer boots itself

[Guest]

My computer has begun booting on its own and I have no
idea why. I have placed it in Hibernate and shut it down,
but both methods result in the computer turning back on a
few minutes later.

 

[Pavel]

There could be few reasons for this. Check your bios to make sure that the
settings for waking up PC are set in such a way as to not to wake up your
PC. These settings include "wake up on LAN", "wake up on Modem ring","wake
up at specified time" or "wake up on loss of power". Also, check to see if
perhaps you also have the "wake up on key press" or "wake up on mouse" and
if so, it's possible that defective keyboard and/or very sensitive mouse
could also trigger such event with out any user action.
Since you say that this happens when you place your PC in Hibernate then
this rules out any background scheduled tasks. Defective components can also
cause such situation. In addition, to rule out corrupted CMOS, reset it by
pulling the CMOS battery (or use Clear Cmos jumper if present on your
motherboard)

 

[Bill Crocker]

My computer has begun booting on its own and I have no
idea why. I have placed it in Hibernate and shut it down,
but both methods result in the computer turning back on a
few minutes later.

Sounds like the MBLAST virus.

Bill Crocker

 

[Pavel]

And how does the MBLAST virus make the PC turn on by it's self, Bill?

Computers infected with this worm may experience the following symptoms:

1.. Computer automatically rebooting every five minutes.
2.. Mblast.exe is located on machine or seen as a TSR.
3.. Computer freezing after first few minutes of booting.
4.. Computer causing an unexpected errors after first few minutes after
booting.

 

[Guest]

Check in scheduled tasks; This happened once when I
installed McAfee Spamkiller. The install routine put a
web update check scheduled once every five minutes!!
If the computer was in hibernate etc., this scheduled
task kept bringing it back on.

 

[NobodyMan]

Check in scheduled tasks; This happened once when I
installed McAfee Spamkiller. The install routine put a
web update check scheduled once every five minutes!!
If the computer was in hibernate etc., this scheduled
task kept bringing it back on.

More likely a BIOS problem. If the user has a broadband connection,
and the WakeOnLAN feature is enabled in BIOS, then when the computer
dectects a signal to it from the NIC it will boot the system. Very
common problem, and very easy to fix: go into BIOS and turn WOL off.