A mysterious presence within a technological system.
A mysterious presence within a technological system.
I assembled a PC for my wife a few years ago. It often restarts unexpectedly, multiple times daily. I disabled every setting in the BIOS I could think of over several years. Eventually, I concluded the motherboard had a problem. She now uses a fresh drive, new board, case, cooler, mouse, keyboard, headset, GPU, and Bluetooth adapter. Windows has been reinstalled at least a dozen times, yet it keeps working. Could the power supply be the issue? All other components are brand new except the CPU and possibly one of the bigger mechanical parts.
We turned it off and started watching TV elsewhere in the room. It turns on occasionally, about five times a day. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. I’m not sure how important the specs are, but it’s an i7 4790 with a Corsair power supply—likely around 750 watts. It has an RX 480 graphics card, though it wasn’t the one it had when it first started. The motherboard is an iGPU from Gigabyte, but I installed it less than a month ago in a pink case my wife liked, so it wasn’t the original one either. It originally came with an NVMe 500GB drive, but I swapped it out when I replaced the board with a 480GB SSD. There are a couple of 1TB HDDs attached. The only parts that were originally there are the CPU and the power supply. I’ve shared my experience in forums a few times over the past couple of years, but no one has given me any helpful advice. I actually have four other machines built at home that haven’t had this problem. Also, I’m not sure if the original power supply is the issue—it was in an older PC with an Antec 450, and I don’t remember if it was removed when I changed the board.
I would say first carefully recheck your PWR / RST / front panel header wiring, as this is a common mistake. Could be a strand of hair or something else conductive got pinched up in the connectors when they were installed. Ditto on the ATX, particularly in the green-to-black on the side which has the retaining clip, or, as mentioned previously, a worn / faulty power switch. The only other logical conclusion would be some sort of similar situation internally in the PSU in regard to its internal relay, or as also mentioned previously, some sort of worm / malware effecting some sort of remote access. Carefully go through any installed software and any processes running, and ferret out their source / manufacturer and whether you know for sure they can be trusted. I've heard of miners distributing worms that make others' GPUs mine for them, though I'm not sure if they're sophisticated enough to incorporate remote access and power-on. Edited July 10, 2022 by An0maly_76 Revised, more info
Ghost in the machine seems like a tougher problem than whiskey in a jar. It might actually be malware. Rootkits have been around for years. I’d suggest using Malwarebytes and running a scan. You said you reinstalled Windows several times, but if there’s another vulnerability—like in the modem—you could still get infected when you connect to the internet.
Disconnect the front panel power connector. It's probably a faulty power switch or wiring. If it still works, clean the PC and reattach components. If not, replace the motherboard.
It would suggest the final two instances or the last two motherboards were both faulty. I'm really here because I just reassembled her PC into another case that needed an iXT board. I was completely confident the issue would disappear after all this work. The original configuration was an NZXT case with an ASRock board, now it's a budget Chinese case and a Gigabyte board.
I've already tried a few things, and this was some of the first I attempted. I took everything off the machine, but it still works in the middle of the night. It's now on the third boot drive. I've swapped out two motherboards and two cases. I thought it was just the motherboard having a problem with Wake on LAN in the BIOS, but it's the only one of the four machines that's had issues. I wish I had an extra power supply, because as I was documenting everything, it became clear the problem might be there.