Computer turn on/off mysteriously

[wildgoose]

I noticed recently that my SageTV Server box seems to be turning itself on/off at odd hours. For the last 2 days it turned itself on around 6:30am and turns off after about 5 minutes.

The box is running Windows 7-64 with latest SP/updates. It does turn itself on/off to do recording as needed.

There's nothing to be recorded at 6am in the morning. It's funny that it decides to turn itself on at similar time both times. Could this be SageTV doing some kind of update/TV guide/weather check?

I checked the BIOS, no automatic power-on. The only power-on that's enabled is via keyboard, space-bar only. All other (wake on lan, etc) are disabled.

Could it be a virus? (I re-scanned the system with Kaspersky and found nothing). The system is behaving fine otherwise while running (it's kept on most of the time during the day).

How would I go about finding out why the computer woke up? and why it went back to sleep so quickly? It feels like a virus, woke up, send some stuff, then go back to sleep as if nothing happened.

[hb4]

Automatic Windows Updates?

[graywolf]

could be EPG update or Windows Update (already mentioned).

For EPG Update, check your System Inofrmation area (or via Web Server if you have that installed) for when your EPG Update last occurred to see if it matches.

[wildgoose]

This is what I see in the event log at 6:30:09am

The system has resumed from sleep.

Sleep Time: ?2012?-?10?-?15T10:18:02.784191300Z
Wake Time: ?2012?-?10?-?15T13:29:49.874400700Z

Wake Source: Timer - Windows will execute '\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\mcupdate_scheduled' scheduled task that requested waking the computer.

2 minutes later, 6:32:33am:

The system is entering sleep.

Sleep Reason: System Idle

Windows automatic update is disabled (I use a 3rd party software to do it).

Last EPG update according to Sage is yesterday 10/14 at 10:28pm. Next EPG update is in 5 hours 26 min. (now is 5pm, so it's 10:28pm again)..

You mean an EPG update will wake up the system? Is there a way for me to disable this wake up behavior? I use my PC every day, so if it happens to be off, leave it at off.

[MattHelm]

Try turning off "sync server clock with SageTV server". Windows 7 does not support programs changing the system time (from what the alerts say). I'm not 100% sure that is what is doing it, but I found a ton of system alerts on one of my Windows 7 boxes about setting time.

[wildgoose]

Found this thread to disable the mcupdate_scheduled wake timer.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...omputer-2.html

The condition was set to wake the computer. Though strangely the time is at 6:49pm everyday. So not sure why it fired at 6:30am in the morning.

[wildgoose]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Try turning off "sync server clock with SageTV server". Windows 7 does not support programs changing the system time (from what the alerts say). I'm not 100% sure that is what is doing it, but I found a ton of system alerts on one of my Windows 7 boxes about setting time.

Thanks for the tip. I have turned it off!

[rnadeau]

This happened to me. What you are seeing is a Windows media center update. If you even start media center at any time, even if you don't use it, it will start up every day to update something. I had looked at windows media center after installing windows 7 . The only other thing on the system was sagetv 7. I uninstalled sagetv 7 and found it was still starting and shutting down the same time every day. I couldn't find how to stop it so I reinstalled windows 7 and sage and haven't opened windows media center and it is not doing it anymore.

[jorton]

Might be a solution here,

http://www.sevenforums.com/media-cen...ing-s-own.html

[wildgoose]

Originally Posted by rnadeau

This happened to me. What you are seeing is a Windows media center update. If you even start media center at any time, even if you don't use it, it will start up every day to update something....

That's exactly what I did. When I installed Windows 7 I ran media center and looked at it briefly, before deciding that Sage is way better. That was ages ago and it's only recently that I noticed this behavior.. It turns on for 3 minutes and then turns off, so very hard to detect unless you happen to be there when it happens.

I was able to turn it off by using Task Scheduler. Here's the instruction in case the links becomes bad in the future:

1. Run "Task Scheduler"
2. Go to "Microsoft/Windows/Media Center"
3. Find the item "mcupdate_scheduled"
4. double click, under "Condition" tab, uncheck "Wake the computer to run this task".

That's it. You can also use the powercfg command to query why the computer turned on, and what the next turn on time is:

powercfg -lastwake
powercfg -waketimers