XP Workstations turning on overnight

[seanos]

Anyone else come across this lately.

Round about 3:54 am, There are about 15 workstations in my office booting up on their own.

No WOL requests being sent out, no automatic updates enabled for that time, just a series of XP pro machines booting up all on their own.....

Cant figure out why....any idea's?

 

[vacunita]

Try turning off the Wake On Lan option even if you think there are no requests there might just be.

Is there someone in the office at that time that may be turning them on manually just for kicks?

If they still turn on without the Wake on Lan, then maybe some BIOS setting is triggering it if they are fully turned off. If they are just on Stand By, it may be a scheduled task within windows like Anti Virus or something waking them up.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

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[linney]

It must be some sort of Wake on Event, or Wake setting in the Bios, otherwise we may have to think about mischievous humans or ghosts?

my pc starts automaticaly after shutting down
thread779-1491512

Computer restarts after shutdown
thread779-998912

 

[BadBigBen]

Besides the WOL settings, there is also the ALARM or WAKE UP functions in certain BIOS implementations, that can wake up a machine at a certain preset time...

also careful monitoring of the affected machines could lead to the right fix, e.g. are the machines TOTALLY switched off or are they just put into SLEEP MODE?

as suggested, if the PC'S in question are just sleeping then a scheduled task may be the fault...

if they where turned off, then most likely a BIOS setting is the culprit...

if the PC's had no power and they turned on by themselves, then either suspect a prank or the building is haunted...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[seanos]

I think I'm going for haunted building

Machines are fully powered down, not in sleep mode.

Have checked 4 of the 10 effected machines and WOL is turned off. Cant see any Bios setting telling them to wake up either.

Life is mystery...... but this is just chuffin confusing. Time for the secret camera's me thinks.

Cheers.

S.

 

[Sympology]

Your not losing power at that time are you? I.e cleaner unplugging then plugging back in?

Many pc's have boot on power up / resume on power up.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[guitarzan]

Happens at exactly the same time? every night? If so, you can pretty much rule out someone physically turning them on.

For kicks, unplug the network cable on a few of them and see if it still happens to all, or just some of the machines.

 

[tlcscousin]

If you have an anti-virus solution installed look at the scheduled system scan settings and see if it corresponds with the time the computers start up themselves.

 

[eritguy]

Also check any scheduled tasks that might be set to turn the computer on to run automatically.

 

[seanos]

Tried pulling the network cable out on 2 of the machines over night, and low and behold, they didnt boot up. Both machines have WOL turned off.

Very bizarre.

 

[BadBigBen]

Go into the Device Manager, right click the NETWORK CARD(s), there under ADVANCED (see picture below) see if they have the following settings and disable them:

WakeOnLan from PowerOff
Wake on pattern
Wake on Magic packet
APM Mode Wakeup

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Sympology]

No this cannot be a windows setting as windows is NOT running.

BIOS or nothing.

Reset a BIOS to defaults.
If that doesn't work, check for updates.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[BadBigBen]

I agree, that it may not sound like it could be affected through some setting in Windows, but it can not hurt to try the above mentioned settings...

I've seen some strange things happening through Windows, e.g. changed Boot order, etc.

according to Intel,

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista are ACPI capable. These operating systems do not support wake from S5 state, only from standby. However, in some ACPI capable computers, the BIOS may have a setting that allows you to wake from an S5 state anyway.

Source:

Understanding Remote Wake-up

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-008459.htm

but what is interesting is the very last paragraph:

Other Operating Systems
In operating systems that do not support remote wake-up technology, you can still utilize the "Magic Packet" method of remotely powering up a computer. When the computer is first powered on, the Intel® Boot Agent configuration utility can be invoked by entering CTRL-S when the Boot Agent prompt appears on the screen. The configuration program has a parameter setting titled "Legacy OS Wakeup Support." If this setting is enabled, the Boot Agent will pre-condition the adapter to respond to a "Magic Packet" wake up event. This allows remote wake-up in operating systems that do not support it.

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

In a situation like this, that last bit sounds a little scary. But in some situations, I could see it as a glimmer of hope. Just depends.

Regardless...

seanos,

Have you checked your firewall logs? Surely you've got a firewall in front of all these that keeps history logs. See if any one single IP address or range out there is the culprit of doing this. If you can narrow it down, at least you can get a lead on what's going on, maybe, and/or block the attempts...

Or another thought. Set rules in your firewall/router(s) to not allow any connections during the time (and a little) when this is normally occurring. At least I'd think that'd be better than just unplugging everything when you go home.