[+11] Why would a PC turn itself on at midnight every night?

[Apolva]

My initial thoughts are also that it's a BIOS thing (Keep pressing Delete/F2/F8/F10 (varies) as you hit the power button, after a short time a blue screen should come up).

Try disabling "Wake on LAN", "Start on power failure", and any settings you find to suggest doing something at a certain time.

[Caution]

just get a new one..

Do you just throw money at everything..

[LMS16]

Right so Im laughing at every comment here...

Now when you get a PC its default settings on windows update are "install updates everyday @ 12 or so..." so check out the screeny below and let me know if it helped
Never mess with BIOS cos hardly any1 knows what the BIOS is nor understand what it stand for...



So go to control panel > windows update > change settings

and change it to something like "download the updates but let me choose when to install them"

Lew.

[Apolva]

That isn't the cause (since the update software isn't running when it's off).

Most likely a BIOS setting, which is not a problem as long as you don't go changing random things.

[LMS16]

Ok, let me explain...

So your motherboard has a battery... ok? So a small part of windows will run off this battery power and will run on the desired time... weather its from the BIOS (windows update adding it to there) this is an easy way to edit it....

If it isnt the windows update then you can resort to other things...

This is the most likely though.

Lew.

[Black_Apalachi]

My initial thoughts are also that it's a BIOS thing (Keep pressing Delete/F2/F8/F10 (varies) as you hit the power button, after a short time a blue screen should come up).

Try disabling "Wake on LAN", "Start on power failure", and any settings you find to suggest doing something at a certain time.

OK I fixed it thanks to this post. I know people may have said similar stuff earlier on but I only got around to trying out the suggestions today and this post sums up exactly how I sorted it. Turns out it was F2 I had to press and then scroll down to something like 'Automatic Start-up' and disable it. I'm guessing this has fixed it anyway, won't know for sure until midnight.

Thanks for everyone's help, rep has been given where possible

[N!ck]

Ok, let me explain...

So your motherboard has a battery... ok? So a small part of windows will run off this battery power and will run on the desired time... weather its from the BIOS (windows update adding it to there) this is an easy way to edit it....

If it isnt the windows update then you can resort to other things...

This is the most likely though.

Lew.

This isn't the area of the forum for you.

[Describe]

I haven't read other posts so I have no idea if this has been posted.

I know about a method to set a timer.

Click "Start" --> "Run"
Type: shutdown -s -t 3600
click OK

Then you can just put the little window that this is going to generate in the background

** 3600 is the time in seconds (change it to whatever time you want)

** If you want to abort the shutdown, just type: shutdown -a

So try aborting it, maybe it is there by default. Type 'shutdown -a' and see if you have any more luck.

[Black_Apalachi]

Problem has been fixed thank youuuu

[HotelUser]

My laptops and old desktops when I was a primary windows user and actually shut them off used to do that all the time, OS X has done it once to me too!