Occasional morning awakenings
Occasional morning awakenings
My computer (built myself, Windows 10 Pro) has been having unexpected wake-ups over time. I’d turn it off and it would restart itself, sometimes quickly, other times much later. Recently, some strange software problems appeared, so I thought they were connected, until about a month ago. I replaced nearly everything except the power supply, motherboard, and GPU (currently: i7-12700k, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, RTX 2070). While rebuilding it, I removed the software issues and installed a brand new Windows 11 Pro. It still powers itself up randomly from sleep. I then turned on hibernate, but it also boots from there. I’ve observed it entering the hibernate shutdown, powering off, then restarting within seconds—clicking back in BIOS and it turns off again. Usually, if I reach this stage and press the power button in BIOS, it shuts down permanently. If it doesn’t turn back on right away after hibernation, I often find it still on when I wake up. Any ideas on how to identify the problem?
Are your mouse and mouse pad tidy? A small quake, such as a truck driving by outside, might make the mouse shift or the laser beam follow it. A possible fix is flipping your mouse upside down when you exit the machine. Wake on LAN should be disabled. Is that set? Updated on December 5, 2022 by Bombastinator
sleep is a terrible broken feature, particularly on a custom desktop where the likelihood of a single driver malfunctioning in one way is extremely high. it just crashes and wakes up randomly. i think wake-on-lan and pcie wake are likely causing the issue by mistakenly detecting magic packets.
On my previous system, I’d turn the mouse over to confirm it wasn’t the cause. A knock on the desk might have roused it. Once it came out of hibernation, I realized it wasn’t the mouse. Exploring Wake On LAN seemed like a good idea. I hadn’t considered this option before. Windows 11 seems to enable WOL by default, which I’ve turned off to test. I also checked the BIOS, but didn’t locate any WOL configurations.
You may need to locate wake-up signals from PCI(e) cards in the BIOS. This setting usually controls whether the network chipset is active, and fixing it should address the problem.
I tried to make it work, but it's a bit annoying... if you look closely, the update orchestrator might be waking it up. Even if not, fixing that would ensure the update orchestrator handles it (almost certain). What’s the point of adding sleep or hibernation when a modern PC boots in under 20 seconds? It’s really straightforward: check powercfg –lastwake and keep it until you remove all issues. Good luck!
WOL has a long history, possibly older than modern microcomputers. Almost every office solution includes it. It was originally in Windows 10, and I’d be surprised if it’s missing in Windows 11. I’m not sure where it lives, but I rely on the command line. It might not be in the “home” folder with the usual questions about why a private user would need a VM!
Just wanted to thank everyone for the suggestions. I turned off WOL a while back—no BIOS changes needed—and haven’t had any unexpected reboots lately. Now I’m trying to figure out what’s causing those wake-ups on my LAN, but good news: a major problem has been fixed!
It seems someone is sending WOL packets to your IP address, but the reason isn't clear. I might perform a general malware scan since Microsoft made WOL the default setting, which is unusual. It’s possible something was introduced into your system without your knowledge. Updated December 13, 2022 by Bombastinator