[SOLVED] Desktop Powering-up Spontaneously!

[tuxalish]

Very strange happenings indeed. I shut my desktop down (correctly) every night before bedtime. On three different occasions in the past 30-40 days, I have awakened the following morning to find the computer has been turned on! Actually, last night I turned it off at around 9:00pm then stayed up till 4:00am watching TV. At 2:00am, I heard my start-up song on KDE from two rooms away. Powered down and it stayed down.

Got up this morning and cleaned/blew-out the innards the best I could and cranked her back up without problems.

Does anyone know what could possibly be causing this anomaly?

[T6]

old intel mainboards have this horrible problem from time to time

you say you did maintenance to the case and this could fix it, electrostatic interference can be the reason, weird dust can be another(specially when it ends inside the pci slots and similar places)

also check rules to turn on system, avoid the options to wake from lan, keyboard, mouse(if you have cats, this is a problem, sometimes the cats sleep on the keyboard) and power on after ac power loss

i had a really weird experience where the button itself wasn't working properly, sometimes remained in a semi pushed state and suddenly the machine turned itself off or on the way you describe, turning it on by itself

it was a hp tower, i disassembled the machine, the front panel, the button and cleaned everything, checked the mechanism and put a really small drop of oil where the button moved and that fixed the problem, one of the dumbest fixes i have done with a pc

[Texstar]

Good answer T6. I was gonna say the devil might have taken possession of his computer. 

[T6]

thank you 

i also heard about a ouija app doing weird stuff

wait, that was a movie 

[nixer]

For what it is worth I have been having this problem also.  I can't find any reason for this but it happens about 2 or 3 times per week.  
It is an intel based system with a nvidia graphics card.  Wake on lan is not supported on this system.

[nok]

Good answer T6. I was gonna say the devil might have taken possession of his computer. 

The devil had possession of mine until I formatted the hard drive and installed PCLinuxOS.

[ElCuervo]

Old Nick had control of mine, too, until I figured out what 'wake on LAN' in the BIOS meant...

[tuxalish]

@T6, I have an ASUS AMD mo-bo with integrated Nvidia 6150 GPU. No intel on this baby. Built it myself about 2 years ago. The only thing I didn't dis-assemble this morning was the front panel where the power button is of course.

i had a really weird experience where the button itself wasn't working properly, sometimes remained in a semi pushed state and suddenly the machine turned itself off or on the way you describe, turning it on by itself
it was a hp tower, i disassembled the machine, the front panel, the button and cleaned everything, checked the mechanism and put a really small drop of oil where the button moved and that fixed the problem, one of the dumbest fixes i have done with a pc

If it happens again to my machine, I'll try your fix. Thanks a lot.

[moniac]

My hp mini 311 and both my toshiba laptops do it alot. I was thinking I was closing the cover before the shutdown got to a certain point and I was putting it into some standby mode or something. Glad to see I am not the only one with this problem. This is with kde by the way. Found my desktop running in the morning before and though I forgot to shut it off. Could have been this problem.

[ThirdOfSix]

I was glad to see the post by T6. He said everything that I was going to say plus a little.

I too had exactly the same problem with a sticking switch on a tower. It took a while to figure out what was going on. I ended up sanding down the button a bit as it was off center in the hole when the front cover was in place.

I learned about checking for wake on LAN when a laptop that I was working on kept turning on.

This is definitely not good on a battery powered device.

Until I figured out what was happening, I used to pull the battery when not in use.

[tuxalish]

...There was a giant, rabid dust bunny living in the power button switch housing!! I blew him out with compressed air, he fell to his death, and my desktop is all better now.    Special thanks to you T6.

[T6]

glad to help