PC Turns on by itself

[iLLesTKilla]

Hello. Recently my PC has started to turn on by itself every night at 12 midnight. I have nothing specific set for it to do this. The only thing I've done is updated my BIOS. I tried looking up every solution possible and did everything I could find. I even went as far as buying a new PSU and it still does it. Anyone know any solution?

 

I'm on Windows 10 64 bit.

MSI X299 Raider Mobo

Intel i9 7960X CPU

1080 TI GPU

 

I don't know what else to do.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Get a remotely controlled outlet (via remote or phone) and only activate it during the day.

[LloydLynx]

Wake on LAN could be the issue, or Windows wants to install updates because it's known to do that sort of thing.

[Tan3l6]

I'ts the antithesis of a bad occasion. 

 

Bad occasion is where it turns itself off.

[The_Other_Cody]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Get a remotely controlled outlet (via remote or phone) and only activate it during the day.

Why are you giving away our best tech secrets? When they find out elephants are behind it all, the system could collapse!

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, The_Other_Cody said:

Why are you giving away our best tech secrets? When they find out elephants are behind it all, the system could collapse!

I don't see the point in it.

[iLLesTKilla]

2 minutes ago, LloydLynx said:

Wake on LAN could be the issue, or Windows wants to install updates because it's known to do that sort of thing.

I have Wake on LAN off and I have the windows update to automatically update turned off.

[DarkEnergy]

Try disabling wake timers

[The_Other_Cody]

5 minutes ago, iLLesTKilla said:

Hello. Recently my PC has started to turn on by itself every night at 12 midnight. I have nothing specific set for it to do this. The only thing I've done is updated my BIOS. I tried looking up every solution possible and did everything I could find. I even went as far as buying a new PSU and it still does it. Anyone know any solution?

 

I'm on Windows 10 64 bit.

MSI X299 Raider Mobo

Intel i9 7960X CPU

1080 TI GPU

 

I don't know what else to do.

 

This sounds like the start of C tier horror movie. Possibly do a factory reset of the bios and clear it back to default setting to remove any auto-on functionality that started with the bios update.

[iLLesTKilla]

1 minute ago, The_Other_Cody said:

This sounds like the start of C tier horror movie. Possibly do a factory reset of the bios and clear it back to default setting to remove any auto-on functionality that started with the bios update.

I've even tried this and it still does it. I guess I could try it again.

[iLLesTKilla]

3 minutes ago, DarkEnergy said:

Try disabling wake timers

Going to have to look into this when I get off of work. I don't know exactly how to get to this.

[EpiCheeseTime]

@iLLesTKillabefore you reset. try following the command in this article to see why or what turned it back on. Also posting command to be less sketch.

 

I had this issue to and it was due to me having unifi service on my computer and my Ubiquity devices trying to call home.

 

The article also tells you how to disable wake timers.

 

https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/computer-turns-on-by-itself.html

 

powercfg –lastwake
powercfg –devicequery wake_armed

 

 

[iLLesTKilla]

1 minute ago, EpiCheeseTime said:

@iLLesTKillabefore you reset. try following the command in this article to see why or what turned it back on. Also posting command to be less sketch.

 

I had this issue to and it was due to me having unifi service on my computer and my Ubiquity devices trying to call home.

 

https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/computer-turns-on-by-itself.html

 

powercfg –lastwake
powercfg –devicequery wake_armed

 

 

I tried the powercfg lastwake option and it told me 0. But I did it after I shut it down again and turned it back on in the morning. Should I do this when it turns on automatically at midnight?

[EpiCheeseTime]

Try it after it turns on. A reboot does clear the last wake and a lastwake of 0 means its either unknown or that there is nothing in the lastwake log.

 

With this happening at midnight. I am leaning on windows updates trying to take advantage of you in your sleep.

[iLLesTKilla]

4 minutes ago, EpiCheeseTime said:

Try it after it turns on. A reboot does clear the last wake and a lastwake of 0 means its either unknown or that there is nothing in the lastwake log.

 

With this happening at midnight. I am leaning on windows updates trying to take advantage of you in your sleep.

Alright will do but im pretty sure I turned off everything with windows update to automatically turn on my PC when there is updates. Unless I'm missing something. If it does it again tonight I'm going to do the last wake before I turn it off and see what is making it do this because I messed up last time and shut it down and turned it back on in the morning when I woke up and then I did last wake.

[Mark Kaine]

Rename the update orchestrator to something like update orchestratornoghost. 

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.laptopmag.com/amp/articles/take-ownership-folder-windows-10-using-file-explorer

 

 

You will however lose automatic windows updates, or in other words, windows updates altogether, so do at your own risk. 

 

 

Alternatively you can just not use hibernate (turn this off) or sleep mode (which is both useless anyway since windows only takes 20 seconds tops to boot up nowadays) 

 

Otherwise you can forget it, many have tried, no one has ever succeeded,  but it's impossible to turn off this ghost service in a normal fashion once it got its claws on your system, outside of a complete reinstall possibly. 

 

 

[iLLesTKilla]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Rename the update orchestrator to something like update orchestratornoghost. 

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.laptopmag.com/amp/articles/take-ownership-folder-windows-10-using-file-explorer

 

 

You will however lose automatic windows updates, or in other words, windows updates altogether, so do at your own risk. 

 

 

Alternatively you can just not use hibernate (turn this off) or sleep mode (which is both useless anyway since windows only takes 20 seconds tops to boot up nowadays) 

 

Otherwise you can forget it, many have tried, no one has ever returned, but it's impossible to turn off this ghost service once it got its claws on your system, outside of a complete reinstall possibly. 

 

 

If I can't figure this out I guess I'll be turning off my PSU every night lol. Unless I move my PC into another room and leave it on 24/7.

[Mark Kaine]

4 minutes ago, iLLesTKilla said:

If I can't figure this out I guess I'll be turning off my PSU every night lol. Unless I move my PC into another room and leave it on 24/7

let me tell you I had this service haunting me for the course of a year - I tried everything literally... it would maybe stop for some weeks but it'll always come back with a vengeance, but at 4 am ! the worst possible time lol...

 

*only* shutting the pc off completely fixed it. no need to unplug it tho lol. 

 

 

But yes the renaming method works also, but it's quite tricky, and possibly other services need to be changed as well (depending on your win version) 

[Mark Kaine]

30 minutes ago, EpiCheeseTime said:

@iLLesTKillabefore you reset. try following the command in this article to see why or what turned it back on. Also posting command to be less sketch.

 

I had this issue to and it was due to me having unifi service on my computer and my Ubiquity devices trying to call home.

 

The article also tells you how to disable wake timers.

 

https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/computer-turns-on-by-itself.html

 

powercfg –lastwake
powercfg –devicequery wake_armed

 

 

It'll be update orchestrator 99% guaranteed (which cannot be turned off unless you take 'ownership' over it) 

[CommanderAlex]

Its funny I had a similar issue like what you are having with your system waking at 12AM. I did a BIOS update prior and thought it was that. @Mark Kaine might remember the story I told where it was very frustrating to find out why the system kept waking at 12AM. The only fix that worked for me after disabling wake timers and clearing CMOS was to do a clean install of Windows 10. After that, it stopped waking the system at 12AM. Had a 9800X, MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, 32GB RAM at the time.

 

Try changing the time in the date/time at the bottom right and shut down the PC with a time before 12AM (like 11:XX PM) and wait to see if the system boots. If it does, you know its Windows and not the BIOS. That was how I determined my system waking issue. I can not find a relation to the BIOS update I did or some Windows update issue. Forum posts on the Internet like Microsoft and others did not help me. 

[LloydLynx]

41 minutes ago, iLLesTKilla said:

I have Wake on LAN off and I have the windows update to automatically update turned off.

It doesn't matter if Windows update is turned off, it's just going to keep trying. Only solution if this is the issue is to make sure everything is up to date.

Another thing is an antivirus might be scheduled to run at midnight and that's what waking it.

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, LloydLynx said:

It doesn't matter if Windows update is turned off, it's just going to keep trying. Only solution if this is the issue is to make sure everything is up to date.

Another thing is an antivirus might be scheduled to run at midnight and that's what waking it.

 

Negative. 

 

 

(this is the service that turns on "update orchestrator " even if you turned "updates" off, so as long this is *functional* there really is no turning off updates in regular win versions outside enterprise I guess) 

[LloydLynx]

11 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

Negative. 

 

 

(this is the service that turns on "update orchestrator " even if you turned "updates" off, so as long this is *functional* there really is no turning off updates in regular win versions outside enterprise I guess) 

The only other thing I can think of, other than unplugging the power, is to disable Windows Fast Boot. It puts your PC in a deep hibernation state instead of shutting down so that boot up is faster, it's known to cause all sorts of issues. My thinking is that if Windows is causing the power on issues, shutting down without fast boot will give power control back to the BIOS since Windows is truly shut down.

[iLLesTKilla]

On 1/5/2021 at 9:21 AM, iLLesTKilla said:

Hello. Recently my PC has started to turn on by itself every night at 12 midnight. I have nothing specific set for it to do this. The only thing I've done is updated my BIOS. I tried looking up every solution possible and did everything I could find. I even went as far as buying a new PSU and it still does it. Anyone know any solution?

 

I'm on Windows 10 64 bit.

MSI X299 Raider Mobo

Intel i9 7960X CPU

1080 TI GPU

 

I don't know what else to do.

 

Thanks for all your help everyone. I finally fixed the issue. I guess whenever I updated my BIOS it changed some stuff around in there so whenever I reset my BIOS to its optimized defaults it fixed the problem. Thanks to everyone for trying to help me fix this problem. My PC now stays off all night after shutdown!