Desktops forum: PC turns itself on!!??

the same thing happened to my gateway 820gm and you are right about the times. i would wake up in the morning and at usually 8 it would power on. i asked gateway tech support and they told me it was a virus. i was like ok right, norton couldnt find it? i think a week later, i had to clear my hard drive because i had a serious problem logging in. after i reinstalled everything, it never turned itself on anymore

Believe it had to do with someone's burglar alarm system that triggered a sensitive remote. Remember when the old auto speed radar detectors could be activated by a remote garage door opener, burglar alarm systems, or microwave ovens.

Also, when I bought my Dish Network Satellite TV system some years ago, there are two types of remotes..forget the names ..like infra red & ?, but one you point at the receiver and one you don't have to. Anyway, they caution that you can activate a neighbors satellite system with one of the remotes under certain conditions.

Read some years back that there is/was a worm or spyware with telephone dialup that can trigger your computer to turn on and the hard drive/system can then be used to do work for others. You might post in the Virus and Security Alerts forum to see what the experts there have to say.

More like.... waking up from the dead. The computer turns itself ON, after it has been completely shut down. (turned off, no power, not running) I posted on the virus/security forum and so far no one feels as if it is a virus, plus I've run a very thorough scan....twice, and I have no virus. Searched thru my bios but cant seem to find anywhere where there is something that would set it to "wake".
Thanks for everyones insight, keep the ideas coming!

Have a look in BIOS at startup; there may be some setting in there that says something like: Wake-up on Event, or Ring, or Ringtime. Sometimes someone wants to be able to take a fax when the machine is off, and this setting allows it to turn itself on to take a fax. So it may be turning on when your phone rings....

I think the ghost resides in the bios settings as pointed out by several folks. I will review my mobo manual thoroughly and seek out this wake setting, I'm sure i'll find it with some perseverance. Thanks everyone, I'll keep you posted. Rick

Most likely there are settings in your BIOS telling it to Wake on LAN or Wake on Modem activity, or even other settings telling it to not necessarily power off but to hibernate or go into standby mode and some pieces of software are waking it to perform software updates, receive e-mail, etc.