UKC

Hi all,

My computer seems to be possessed! It keeps randomly turning itself on after I've shut it down.
It's a Lenevo H50-50 desktop, running windows 10. Can't remember if it did this while running windows 8 also.

Any suggestions?

In reply to MikeR:

not sure of what you've already considered so apologies if I'm starting with the obvious.

Are you 100% definitely selecting 'shut down' and not 'sleep' or 'restart'?
Sleep is the one that I'm thinking more likely, and it could be that while in sleep a program is checking for updates which can wake up the machine.

If you're on a network at home it could be 'wake up on LAN' is on, but only if you're on a network (ie. specifically networked, not just sharing the wifi with another machine)

In reply to MikeR:

Disconnect the laptop from all power sources and stand opposite a mirror with a lighted candle each side. Rub garlic in the shape of the cross over the screen three times whilst saying The Lord's Prayer, to summon the demon out of the machine. Turn the mirror around and then submerge the PC for 10 minutes in holy water. The demon will be trapped in the mirror and unable to enter back in to the computer (evidenced by the fact that it will no longer turn on).

In reply to MikeR:

Turn it off and then turn it back on again.

In reply to Scarab9:

Definitely selecting shutdown rather than sleep or restart.

It's connected to the house wifi, but no other networks.

In reply to Shani:

Good advice. But would I not need a priest to perform this ceremony?

In reply to MikeR:


Wake-on-LAN can work over wifi, so it might be that some other device on your wireless network is sending the relevant 'magic packets.' Any recent changes? Any new devices on the network?

In reply to MikeR:

Not sure if it happens on windows 8/10 but on older ones this can happen if it crashes on shutdown. Since that triggers a restart.

Check your event logs when it happens.

In reply to MikeR:

You can do it yourself as long as, once you've completed it, you DON'T LOOK IN TO THE MIRROR. Keep the mirror face down until the next full moon and then take it outside (face down) to a body of water (a puddle of bowl of water is ideal). Point the mirror towards the puddle and then angle it upwards towards the moon until the moon's light is reflected from the mirror in to the water.

This transports the demon to the puddle of water from where it will safely be evaporated away (back to Hell, I guess). You can now use the mirror safely BUT DO NOT DRINK THE WATER!

(This is much cheaper than installing antivirus software I'm sure you'll agree).

In reply to Shani:


I'm trying to work in some sort of pun about sacrificing a RAM, or something....or maybe BYTE-ing off the head of a live chicken....

In reply to ThunderCat:


We live in a digital age. You should sacrifice a mouse or a (monitor) lizard. Boom!

In reply to MikeR:

Exactly the same is happening in our lenovo since updating to windows 10. If I turn it off by holding the power button rather than letting it shutdown properly it stays off. My current hypothesis is that it's something to do with a lot of updates causing it to always restart after shutting down, but it's good to know it's not just me.

In reply to ThunderCat:


Thats NASty. This type of behaviour could lose one's SANity. IOPose such barbarity.

In reply to MikeR:

I think my Window's 7 puter is doing the same thing. I'm sure that I turned it off and some mornings I wake to find it up and running. This may just be user stupidity on my part as I have two accounts, one as administrator and the other as myself with standard user rights.

Would a computer that boots up by itself know to log into me?
It would be a cleaver machine if it knew the password for the administrator account.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

No new devices on the WiFi network as far as I'm aware. How would I go about turning off the wake-on-LAN function?

In reply to kestrelspl:

Thanks for letting me know you're having the same problem, and your solution.

In reply to MikeR:
The event log will tell you what time the restart occurs ( and probably give clues to what triggers it). Then use the task manager to track down and disable the service that is causing it (assuming you want to disable it).

I wouldn't advise doing hard shutdowns repeatedly as advised above as any disk IO operations pending won't be completed risking corrupting some files. If you do this often then it's probably worth doing an occasional chkdsk so that the OS can fix any disk errors otherwise you are simply storing up (potentially) much worse problems in the future.

In reply to The Lemming:


I hope you're joking.

In reply to MikeR:


I can't find a definitive Windows 10 how-to for that; there are some relevant Windows 7 notes at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617165%28WS.10%29.aspx

However I don't now think wake-on-LAN will be relevant: googling around just now throws up a lot of posts which describe behaviour similar to that which you're seeing. 'Blame' seems to be attached to changes in Windows power management, to various updates - or to other factors.

You might care to review all such posts and see if you can find a common factor with your problem.

In general terms of design, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have machines automatically waking up now and again in order to perform some regularly-scheduled jobs - but it would be a mistake if the machines didn't subsequently put themselves back to sleep.

In reply to Shani:
Alternatively throw it out the window. Always works for me.

In reply to Willi Crater:

Yes, I should add that I'm not actually hard shutdowning it every time I turn it off, which is a bad idea as Willi Crater pointed out, I just noticed that it didn't restart after that.

In reply to MikeR:

I think I've found the cause. It seems to happen when the WiFi drops out. I've noticed it happen a couple of times now while losing wifi signal on my tablet.
Any ideas why it would do this and how to stop it?

In reply to Shani:

I like your creativity.

In reply to MikeR:

You can probably set an option in the Devices Manager to determine the behaviour on WiFi activity.

I had a similar issue with a USB mouse causing my media PC not to sleep.