Laptop turns itself on (1 Viewer)

birdieboy123

All The Gear, No Idea

• Apr 15, 2013

• #1

For about a week now when I go to my laptop in a morning I find that it has turned itself on, having looked into it, it does it at 3am every day
Any suggestion as to why and how to stop it

 

Mono

Hi!

Staff member

Supporter

• Apr 15, 2013

• #2

I would imagine it has some task scheduled at 3am. A virus check, some program looking for updates. If you type "Task Scheduler" into the start button search box (I'm assuming it is Windows) then you can see what is scheduled.

But it can't actually turn it on, you must just have put the machine to sleep, rather than turning it off. Have a look in "Power Options", again type it in the box.

 

Andrew Whitehouse

Professor of Listening

Supporter

• Apr 15, 2013

• #3

My work computer used to turn itself on during the night. This happened randomly rather than on regular occasions though. It turned out this was caused (I'm not totally sure how) by a faulty motherboard, which had to be replaced.

 

Andrew Rowlands

Well-known member

• Apr 15, 2013

• #4

There's also a setting within the BIOS on most machines that is used to auto-start the computer, that will need to be checked.

Also Wake on LAN in the BIOS and in the properties of the network card in Device Manager - this is usually only applicable to a wired connection.

I've also seen bad motherboards cause this.

I do wonder whether a mains spike, from something in the household or very close-by switching at that time, could be triggering it (assuming it's connected to the mains overnight).

 

S

samairawtsn

Member

• Apr 19, 2013

• #5

Andrew Rowlands said:

There's also a setting within the BIOS on most machines that is used to auto-start the computer, that will need to be checked.

Also Wake on LAN in the BIOS and in the properties of the network card in Device Manager - this is usually only applicable to a wired connection.

I've also seen bad motherboards cause this.

I do wonder whether a mains spike, from something in the household or very close-by switching at that time, could be triggering it (assuming it's connected to the mains overnight).

Click to expand...

Nice Answer...may i retrieve or Change our lappy password from Bios settings ? if i forgot my user name on the startup of my lappy.

 

Mono

Hi!

Staff member

Supporter

• Apr 19, 2013

• #6

The BIOS doesn't contain your Windows password. Most BIOSes do have a facility to have a password but that is almost never used for start up security. If you forget your Windows passwords you can use a boot disk to clear the existing passwords. If you are using a BIOS password you can reset the BIOS by removing the backup battery from the motherboard. But if this is a separate problem you would be better off starting a new thread.